Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [91]
Twilight hovered smoky and blue on the waters of the canals and soft roseate hues washed the buildings around the Campo Grande, here and there picked out with a brazen note of gilt where the sun's dying rays still pierced. Laughter carried over water, and voices raised in song. The painted bissoni and gondoli were out, young men of the Hundred Worthy Families courting and wooing in the ways of Serenissiman nobility.
It could have been my world. I even entertained the thought— once, briefly, for a heartbeat's space of time. Severio Stregazza, who isthe Doge's grandson, proposed marriage to me in this city. His family would never have permitted it, of course. Still, he did not know it at the time.
I looked at Joscelin's profile, silhouetted against the deep blue of falling night.
I never doubted that I chose aright.
It made it all the harder to ask him what I had to ask, that night in the dining-hall of our elegant inn, the same we'd stayed in before. I'd no more inclination than I'd had the first time to burden any of my acquaintances in La Serenissima with this visit. The rooms were fine and the service well-trained; the food was outstanding for Caerdicci fare.
"Joscelin."
Amid the clamor of voices and rattling cutlery, he caught the hesitation in my tone. "What is it?"
I beckoned for the neatly-attired servant to bring more of the sweet muscat wine the inn served with its dessert course. He bowed, smiling with pleasure, and refilled my glass. I took a sip, and another, delaying. "I want to go alone tomorrow."
Joscelin sat unmoving, then blinked, once. Something hard surfaced in his expression. "To see Melisande. Why?"
"Because." I turned the delicate wineglass, watching the candlelight refracted in the fluted rim. It was exquisitely made. Serenissiman work, no doubt, blown on the Isla Vitrari. "What I have to tell her... it is about her son. And it is a matter between her and Kushiel. No one else."
"Oh, Phèdre." It was the sorrow in his voice that jerked my gaze back to his. "Do you have such a care for her pride? Even still?"
"It's not only that. Not pride." I shook my head. "Joscelin . . . you saw the children, the children we saved. And they were the lucky ones. I have to tell her that."
"It is Kushiel's justice," he said softly. "You said so yourself."
"Yes." I drained my glass and set it back. "Did you think it just, when we found those children in Amílcar?"
He didn't answer immediately. "It is not for me to judge."
"Nor I. But I think ... I think there is no one in the world who despises Melisande Shahrizai with the same purity of emotion as you." My voice was shaking, a little. "And I think that when she learns that Kushiel has chosen to punish her by exacting payment for her sins fromher son ... I think that even Melisande deserves to hear it alone."
Joscelin's voice was harsh. "Do you think she would offer you the same compassion?"
To impart suffering without compassion . . .
"It doesn't matter." I swallowed, hard. "Joscelin, I am not easy in my heart with this. I have served Kushiel all my life, and never questioned his will. I question it now. I do not see that the end justifies the means. And I am made to endure pain, to revel in it, not to inflict it. To deliver this news with you glowering over my shoulder ... I don't think I can do it."
"I wouldn't glower," he said automatically, then sighed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye-sockets. "All right. All right, all right. Do as you must, and I will wait in the Temple proper." Dropping his hands, he looked at me with slightly bloodshot eyes. "Will it suffice?"
"Yes," I whispered. "Thank you."
"Don't." He shook his head. "I think your compassion is wasted on Melisande."
Thence the need for an anguissette to balance the scales.
"I know," I said miserably. "And mayhap you are right. But I can only act according to the dictates of my nature, not hers."
"Love as thou wilt," said Joscelin, and sighed again.
In the morning we went to the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea.
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