Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [346]
This, too, met with considerable approval.
It was Terre d'Ange, after all.
I was flushed when I made my curtsy to Drustan mab Necthana, the Cruarch of Alba. His eyes glinted with amusement and gladness. "So you did it after all."
"Yes." I knew what he meant. Drustan had been there, when Hyacinthe paid the price both of us would have taken on ourselves had it been allowed. I drew a deep breath and loosed it in a tremulous laugh, feeling strange with this unmixed, untempered joy. "We did."
And Drustan too kissed me, and we passed through the gate that the procession might continue, while the cheers rose around us in endless waves beneath the cloudless sky, free of spite or envy, surging in the bright air of the City of Elua, for once celebrating a victory unalloyed with defeat.
I was content.
We were home, all of us.
ONE HUNDRED ONE
THE SUMMER passed swiftly.
I was visibly and undeniably in favor once more, and the same nobles who had shunned me during the long and bitter winter sent small gifts and jocular invitations to this event and that, most of which I declined, pleading an over-full schedule, which was no lie. At Hyacinthe's word, Ghislain nó Trevalion sent a galley to retrieve the library from the Master of the Straits' tower, and I had my hands full cataloguing some four hundred tomes and scrolls, many of which had been believed lost. Word of this was leaked, and I had to field a half-dozen bids from academies and universities throughout the realm that wished to increase their archives.
Of course, I intended to see first what was there and have fair-copies made.
Hyacinthe, for his part, dwelt at the Palace and spent long hours closeted with Queen and Cruarch and his intended, Sibeal. What transpired in those sessions, I cannot say, save that an agreement was reached and Drustan mab Necthana granted them a coastal territory in Alba, north of Bryn Gorrydum, where the erstwhile Master of the Straits might maintain his vigil. Thence would they travel, come autumn, after plighting their troth before the Cruarch's mother and kin in Alba.
Of a surety, he met with the baro kumpai of the Tsingani, the four families who were foremost among their folk, and a successor was chosen among them. This meeting took place outside the walls of the City of Elua, for full-blooded Tsingani who follow the Long Road have ever been uncomfortable in enclosed spaces, and I am told it was the greatest gathering of their kind ever held in the shadow of the City walls.
I missed it, for we were in Montrève at the time, returning to my long-neglected estate.
It was good to visit Montrève. Imriel loved it there; I hadn't reckoned on that. I should have, raised as he was in the mountains of Siovale. The pace of life is slower, there. We found everything much in order, for if I had been two years absent, Purnell Friote and his wife Richeline were capable seneschals, maintaining the manor in impeccable readiness for our return, all the while carrying on effortlessly without us. They had three children between them, Imri's age and younger, and he fell in among them with ease, squabbling and scrapping and jumping out of hay-lofts as a boy his age ought. It did my heart good to see it.
Between them, Joscelin and Ti-Philippe saw to the security of our estate, riding the borders and ensuring that every outlying crofter and free-holder knew the value of what they warded, setting up a system of watchers and messengers to maintain the borders. They are a shrewd folk, the Siovalese—and we had won their loyalty, as much by benign neglect as aught else. Siovalese prefer not to be troubled by their overlords, and I had surely done that much. If they had been uncertain of me at the beginning, they had accepted my stewardship of Montrève over the years. Now it had become a matter of pride, and not a few families sent sons and daughters to the manor to take positions in my