Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [162]
"He jumped into the canal, actually." Melisande's voice was surprisingly even. "From the balcony. It seems Rousse's sailor-lads swim like fish. Marco is of the mind that he's dying of the ague, if he yet lives. The canals are known for pestilence. La Serenissima is well-cordoned, they'll notleave it by water or land, nor send word either. Even if they did, they know too little to undo our plans. Still, too little is too much. But we will speak more of this later." She came close, too close, smiling, and reached up to lay one hand against my cheek. "Think on my offer."
Her touch was cool, and yet it burned me like fire. I closed my eyes, shaking like a leaf in a storm. I could smell her scent, a faint musk overlaid with spices. 1 wanted to fall to my knees, wanted to turn my head, taking her fingers into my mouth.
I didn't.
"Think on it," Melisande repeated, withdrawing her touch. "I'll be back."
FORTY-THREE
An offer.
A dangerous offer.
After Melisande had left, I sat huddled on my pallet, arms wrapped around my knees, thinking. It had been different, before. There is a certain calmness in despair. Now even that luxury had been torn away from me.
I had to think.
Joscelin and Ti-Philippe, alive! They were in the Yeshuite quarter, I was sure of it. It was the one place neither Benedicte nor the Stregazza would think to look; it was the first place Joscelin would have gone. And if Ti-Philìppe had escaped, if he was clever and able enough, it was where he would look. I gave thanks to Elua, now, that my chevaliers had been suspicious enough to follow Joscelin during his disappearances.
They knew enough, the two of them, to lay charges against Percy de Sotnerville—although they had no proof". It was what they didn't know that could kill them. Prince Benedicte ... Benedicte and Melisande. Still, I thought, TiPhilippe was smart enough to run, when he saw Benedicte's guards.
Percy de Somerville's guards, whom we all thought Prince Benedicte took into his service all unwitting.
He knew Remy, Fortun and I left for the Little Court, never to be seen again.
But he would not know why, and a great many "accidents" could have befallen us between home and palace. I mulled the problem over and over in my mind, and came inevitably to the same conclusion. The scope of it was simply too vast, too hard to encompass. Neither Ti-Philippe nor Joscelin would guess Benedicte's treason.
What you seek you will find in the last place you look...
I hadn't thought it; nor would they. The best I could hope for was that my disappearance and the traitorous guardsmen would make them wary, wary enough to avoid the Little Court and go straight to Ysandre.
If they lived. If Ti-Philippe wasn't lying on a cot somewhere sweating out his last ounce of life with some dreadful canal-bred pestilence. If Joscelin wasn't halfway to the northern steppes, chasing some arcane Yeshuite prophecy.
And if they could reach the Queen, which Melisande, who brooked few illusions, believed impossible.
If, if, if.
It is a dire thing, to hope against hope.
I did not doubt the veracity of Melisande's claims. It is a truism; history is written by the victors. With the solid support of Duc Percy de Somerville and Prince Benedicte de la Courcel behind her, her reputation would be restored, nearly spotless. There would be protest from a few, silenced swiftly. A few might rebel; not many, I thought. I had not forgotten the murmurs among the nobility when Drustan mab Necthana rode into the City of Elua.
Many, too many, would be glad to be shed of a Pictish Prince-Consort, whose bloodline would taint the heirs of House Courcel. None of that for Benedicte, still Ysandre's heir. No, his Serenissiman-born children would inherit here.
For Terre d'Ange, a true-born son, gotten on his D'Angeline wife.
Melisande's son.
And as for Ysandre de la Courcel, I thought, she would become a tragic footnote in D'Angeline