Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [51]
"It was a fortnight before the eve of the new-made adepts' debut. They have leave to design their own costumes, at Eglantine." Cecilie picked up one of the proposals and glanced absently at it. "There was some dissent over the advantage it gave her, I heard. Jealousy is a cruel mistress. Who's the Baroness de Chariot and what do you want with a team of matched blood-bays?"
I took the parchment away from her. "Nothing. But House Chariot breeds very fine horses. In Kusheth. And blood-bays ... oh, never mind, Cecilie, I'm not accepting it. What else have you heard?"
"Are you feeling quite well?" Cecilie looked mischievously at me. "I think you should pay a visit to the Palace."
More than that, she would not say, leaving me to learn it for myself. I bethought myself of visiting Thelesis de Mornay, but an opportunity came quicker than I reckoned when Ysandre sent an invitation to attend a concert held in honor of a tentative reconciliation between her uncle, the Duc L'Envers, and the Stregazza family. Echoing the theme of liaison, an Eisandine composer—music and medicine are among the gifts of Eisheth—and a Siovalese engineer had collaborated on a concerto involving a cunningly wrought instrument of Siovalese design that used a bellows-and-pedal system to force air through myriad pipes of differing pitches.
It made for a strange and haunting sound that was not displeasing, full of odd harmonics. Seated toward the rear of a half-dozen rows of chairs, I listened with half an ear, my attention on the principles at the front of the salon. Tibault, Comte de Toluard—Marquis, now, as reward for his role in defending against Selig's invasion—sat beaming; an avid Siovalese scholar himself, he was also the engineer's patron. Many of Shemhazai's line are interested in such things. I daresay if Delaunay had been here, he would have wished to examine the instrument too. Severio Stregazza was seated between the Queen and Duc Barquiel L'Envers, and I noted how Ysandre leaned toward him and whispered from time to time. She was as anxious, I thought, to have this rift mended as Severio was to acquit himself well.
Barquiel L'Envers managed to lounge in his stiff chair, stretching his long legs before him. One might take it for irreverence, or not; I never knew with him. He had been a long while posted in Khebbel-im-Akkad, and claimed to prefer its cushioned comforts. For all that, I would never make the mistake of reckoning him soft.
Beside L'Envers, I was surprised to see Percy de Somerville, the Royal Commander, his son Ghislain and daughter-in-law Bernadette beside him. The last I had known, he had been reviewing the strengths of the border guard in Camlach—the remnants of d'Aiglemort's men who called themselves the Unforgiven. No one had a stronger motive for dedicating themselves to the protection of the Skaldi borders, having once betrayed our nation; but then again, Ysandre was wary enough to keep them under watch.
If Percy de Somerville had returned, perhaps then so had those men posted on guard the night Melisande escaped from Troyes-le-Mont, I thought hopefully. I would have to dispatch my chevaliers for a scouting expedition to the barracks.
Less cheering to my eyes was the sight of Marmion Shahrizai in the second row, near enough to the Queen to murmur in her ear, as I saw, twice, he did. There was a youngish woman seated next to him whom I knew not at all; slight, with an upswept mane of bronze-gold curls. She treated Marmion coolly, I saw, but I saw too a faint, amused smile on her face as she watched him address the Queen. Barquiel L'Envers turned once and said somewhat to her, grinning. I thought that she laughed.
When the concert was done, we applauded politely. The musicians—it had taken three to operate the instrument— bowed, and then the composer and the engineer bowed, and the engineer invited the audience to inspect the instrument. Tibault de Toluard, for all that he must have known it better than any noble there, was first on the