Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [167]
I laughed as I slid helplessly to the floor, seeing the shock dawn across her lovely face.
"Phèdre!"
It was only the second time I had heard it, her melodious voice unstrung with astonishment. Wet warmth made its way down the back of my neck, trickling forward to pool in the hollow of my throat, a scarlet rivulet. Truly, I had cracked my skull.
"What in the seven hells are you thinking?" Melisande muttered urgently, eyes intent and fearful as she knelt by my side, pressing a wadded kerchief to the back of my head. Dizzy and pain-battered, I righted myself to look at her. "I swear, Phèdre, you're ten thousand years of torment to me living!"
Melisande's face and my cell reeled in my sight, swamped by agony. She cared, she really did care about me, and I could not stop laughing at it, having found my own useless triumph in the dazed madness of pain. For all that Kushiel's red haze veiled my eyes, for all the ache in my head, my thoughts were clear. The balance of power had shifted, rendering us, for once, equals. A frown of concentration creased that flawless brow as Melisande sought to staunch the flow of blood.
"Hold this," she said shortly, pressing my limp fingers about the blood-soaked kerchief. I obeyed, watching her go to the door, knocking sharply for the guard. "Fetch a chirurgeon," she ordered him in crisp Caerdicci. "Or the nearest thing you have in this place."
He must have gone quickly; I could hear his footsteps receding down the hall. Melisande eyed me silently, drawing a dipperful of water from my drinking bucket and using it to rinse my blood from her hands, carefully and thoroughly. I sat with my back to the wall, pressing her kerchief against my head. Already my hair was matted with blood.
"You'll have to move fast," I said presently, as if I were not sitting bleeding on the floor of my cell. "Barquiel L'Envers is no fool, and he has his suspicions. He'll retain the throne as regent the instant he hears the news, and demand a full investigation before he cedes it."
"Four couriers on fast horses will depart La Serenissima the instant the bell tower in the Great Square tolls Ysandre's death," Melisande said coolly. "With fresh horses waiting on relay all the way to the City of Elua. Percy de Somerville will take the City before Duc Barquiel hears the news."
"And he named a conspirator, I suppose." I shifted on the flagstone, sending a wave of fresh agony pounding in my head. "How is Ysandre to die?"
"You know enough." A key in the door; Melisande stood back to admit the warden and a guard. He looked expressionlessly at her and came over to examine me, drawing my head forward and parting the blood-damp locks. I felt his fingers probing my wound.
"A gash to the scalp," he pronounced, rising and wiping his hands on a towel. "It is not serious. Head wounds bleed. It is not so deep that it must be stitched. Already, it begins to clot." The warden turned his flat stare on the guard. "Let her rest undisturbed for a day. Principessa." He inclined his head briefly to Melisande. "Is there aught else?"
"No." Her tone was unreadable. "Give me a few more moments with the prisoner."
He nodded again. "Knock when you are ready."
Melisande gazed at the door as it closed behind them. "The tradition holds that a member of his family has served as warden of La Dolorosa since Asherat-of-the-Sea first grieved," she remarked. "They first guarded the body of Eshmun, after Baal-Jupiter slew him. So they say. And they say he is incorruptible, having been appointed by the goddess." She looked at me. "But you already learned that."
I shrugged. "Would you expect me not to try?"
"Hardly." She glanced around the barren cell. " 'Tis a dire reward for his ancestor's service. It seems to me a dubious honor, to win a god's favor."
"Yes, my