Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [3]
Thus stood politics in Terre d'Ange, after ten years of peace, the day I rode to the palace to hear the news from Azzalle.
Azzalle is the northernmost province of the nation, bordering the narrow Strait that divides us from Alba. Once, those waters were nigh impassable, under the command of he whom we named the Master of the Straits. It has changed, since Hyacinthe's sacrifice and the marriage of Ysandre and Drustan—yet even so, no vessel has succeeded in putting to shore on those isles known as the Three Sisters. The strictures change, but the curse remains, laid down by the disobedient angel Rahab. For so long as his punishment continues, the curse endures.
As the Master of the Straits noted, the One God has a long memory.
I felt a shiver of foreboding as we were admitted into the courtyard of the palace. It might have been hope, if not for the dream. Once before, my fears had been made manifest in dreams, although it took a trained adept of Gentian House to enable me to see them—and they had proved horribly well-grounded that time. This time, I remembered. I had awoken in tears, and I remembered. An old blind woman's words and a shudder in my soul warned me that a decade of grace was coming to an end.
TWO
YSANDRE RECEIVED us in one of her lesser council chambers, a high-vaulted room dominated by a single table around which were eight upholstered chairs. Three men in the travel-worn livery of House Trevalion sat on either side, and the Queen at its head.
"Phèdre." Ysandre came around to give me the kiss of greeting as we were ushered into the chamber. "Messire Verreuil." She smiled as Joscelin saluted her with his Cassiline bow, vambraced arms crossed before him. Ysandre had always been fond of him, all the more so since he had thwarted an assassin's blade in her defense. "Well met. I thought you would wish to be the first to hear of this oddity."
"My la ..." I caught myself for perhaps the thousandth time; bearing the Companion's Star entitled me to address the scions of Elua as equals, a thing contrary to my nature and training even after these many years. "Ysandre. Very much so, thank you. There is news from the Straits?"
The three men at the table had stood when the Queen arose, and Ysandre turned to them. "This is Evrilac Duré of Trevalion, and his men-at-arms Guillard and Armand," she announced. "For the past year, they have maintained my lord Ghislain nó Trevalion's vigil at the Pointe des Soeurs."
My knees weakened. "Hyacinthe," I whispered. The Pointe des Soeurs lay in the northwest of Azzalle in the duchy of Trevalion, closest to those islands D'Angelines have named the Three Sisters; it was there that the Master of the Straits was condemned to hold sway, and Hyacinthe to succeed him.
"We have no news of the Tsingano, Comtesse," Evrilac Duré said quietly, stepping forward and according me a brief bow. He was a tall man in his early forties, with lines at the corners of his grey eyes suchas come from long sea-gazing. "I am sorry. We have all heard much of his sacrifice."
They would, in Azzalle. It was there that we had come to land, D'Angelines, Cruithne and Dalriada, carried to the mouth of the Rhenus by the mighty, surging wave commanded by the Master of the Straits, the wound of our loss still fresh and aching. And it was Ghislain nó Trevalion who met us there; Ghislain de Somerville, then. He has abjured his father's name since, and for that I do not blame him.
"Be seated and hear." Ysandre swept her hand toward the table.
Although the realm is at peace, they maintain the