Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [321]
When the last course had been served and the last dinner platter cleared, Ysandre de la Courcel clapped her hands. Servants came round again to fill our glasses of cordial and set out dishes filled with candied orange and lemon peel, arranged to resemble bunches of flowers with sugared violets at their centers. Partway down the table, Thelesis de Mornay rose and bowed, commanding our attention as she announced the entrance of Gilles Lamiz, her gifted apprentice-poet. We dipped our hands in the finger bowls of rosewater before applauding politely.
I had seen the young man before in Thelesis' quarters; he assisted her in many things, and had taken notation for her when I related the long tale of my adventures. 'Twas forher work on the Ysandrine Cycle, I had assumed, only partially correct. Thelesis' dark, lovely eyes glowed with pleasure as her surprise was revealed—Gilles Lamiz was working on his own, more modest offering, too.
'Twas a poem based upon my exploits, and those of my companions.
It was not a bad effort and he recited it well, in a clear tenor voice that owed its richness to his mentor's training. I rested my chin in my palm and listened, amazed to hear my own deeds recounted thusly, if not wholly as I remembered them. Young Gilles had listened well and captured the grieving madness of La Dolorosa, but he omitted the stench and tedium. My retort to Melisande Shahrizai's offer resounded with dignity, and not the skull-splitting reality of the desperate defiance I recalled. I thought the magnificent daring of Joscelin's attack on the black isle was well rendered, and Ti-Philippe's heroic marshaling of their scarce-trained Yeshuite allies to hold the tower, but both of them laughed afterward, saying there was a considerable measure of panic and terror that went unmentioned.
So it went, and I must own, it sounded a good deal more impressive when set into verse. The sea-flight, the kríavbhog and the storms were all fearful, which was no more than the truth. Kazan Atrabiades came off as rather dashing, which made me smile; it would have pleased him, I think. In Gilles' version, Demetrios Asterius, the Archon of Phaistos, rendered his aid out of adoration for my beauty. I reckoned that did poor justice to his shrewd trader's wiles, but the D'Angeline nobles around the table glanced at me from the corners of their eyes and nodded sagely, more than willing to believe it true.
One tale missing was that of the thetalos, for that I had not told, even to Thelesis de Mornay. It is a mystery, and of such things one cannot speak to the uninitiated; it sufficed to say that there was a ritual, and Kazan Atrabiades of Epidauro was cleansed of blood-guilt.
Gilles Lamiz' poem ended in the Temple of Asherat, with my proclamation from the Oracle's balcony and Joscelin'sheart-stopping duel with the Cassiline traitor David de Ro-caille. I daresay the latter read well enough without embellishment, and even Joscelin did not argue with it. Although all the realm knows his name because of it, it is not a deed in which he takes pride. No longer do two Cassiline Brothers attend the ruler of Terre d'Ange at all times. Ysandre broke with seven centuries' tradition after La Serenissima and Brys nó Rinforte's defection on the battlefield, dismissing them from