Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [13]
Others had not.
Bertran de Trevalion was one of those, and despite my wishes, he would be attending. I'd greeted him civilly upon my return. I was glad to know he'd been ignorant of his mother's intrigues, and I'd made my uneasy truce with her. Still, I'd rather not have to be polite to them at the dinner table just yet. Being targeted for murder had that effect.
"I'd truly prefer it if House Trevalion wasn't in attendance," I said to Phèdre.
"I know, love." There was a slight furrow between her brows.
"Believe me, so would I, and Joscelin, too. But there are blood-ties between House Trevalion and Courcel, and other ties, as well. You know how Ysandre can be about such things. This is the price of the choice you made, and unless you wish to change your mind, you'll have to bear it.”
I shook my head. "I made a promise.”
I'd made my choice, in part, because of the Queen. Ysandre de la Courcel, the product of a contentious marriage and inheritor of a throne plagued by treachery, had a fierce determination to heal old wounds and unite the members of her family in harmony. It had not, however, extended to holding her uncle accountable for his actions in the public milieu. It still galled me, and all the more after learning that Bernadette de Trevalion had tried to have me killed because of it. Somehow, I blamed him more than I did her.
"At least Maslin de Lombelon won't be there," Phèdre commented.
"He's still in disgrace?" I asked. She nodded. "Why did he do it, anyway?”
Maslin de Lombelon was a minor lordling because I'd made him one. I'd given him an estate, Lombelon; the smallest of my holdings. I'd done it because I knew he loved it, and I thought we understood each other, at least a little bit. His father had been a traitor, too. I'd been wrong. He'd left Lombelon to enlist in the Queen's Guard, where he glared daggers at me at every opportunity and later disgraced himself by administering a beating to one Raul L'Envers y Aragon, who was also distant kin to the Queen.
Betimes, returning to the City made my head ache.
"Raul challenged him," Phèdre said dryly. "Maslin carried it too far.”
The first time I'd seen Maslin, he'd been attacking pear trees with a pruning hook. I wouldn't have cared to cross him then, and that was before he learned to wield a sword. By all accounts, he was very, very good. And for some obscure reason, my cousin Sidonie was fond of him. Even before I left, there were rumors they were lovers and that she'd promised him the captainship of her Guard one day.
"I wonder why," I mused.
Phèdre shrugged. "Some slight Maslin offered to Colette Trente. An ungentle rebuff, mayhap. Lord Amaury was angry, too.”
"Hmm." I tried to peer at the wax tablet on which she was scratching a list. "So no Maslin, which is all to the good. Who else is attending?”
"You'll see." She covered it with one hand and smiled at me, one of those heart-stopping smiles that no poet could hope to describe. "There's a surprise, somewhat I didn't tell you in letters. You'll like it," she added when I looked dubious.
"Will I?”
Phèdre nodded, her eyes sparkling. She was still in the prime of her beauty, and when she smiled like that, she scarce looked older than Claudia Fulvia, whose husband I had so thoroughly cuckolded in Tiberium. "Don't you trust me?”
I smiled back at her. "Always.”
It was true. There were only two people in the world I would trust with my life and beyond. If I were standing on the edge of a cliff and Phèdre or Joscelin bade me close my eyes and step off it, I would do it. It was why I struggled so with my feelings.
"What about…the other matter?" I asked.
"The Unseen Guild?" Phèdre lowered her voice, glancing at the door of her study. I rose and closed it. "I've not had time yet. But I found the reference to the blind healer's notation you mentioned. I