Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [199]
Like as not, my time would have been better spent resting, but my nerves were strung too tight. Anger, guilt, longing, grief…my emotions were at war with one another. A part of me wished we'd simply left the City and kept going, ill-provisioned or no. A part wished I'd stayed at the Palace to face the storm of acrimony. A part wished the Queen would send someone to fetch me, to force matters to a head.
It wasn't until nightfall, when it was obvious that no one was coming, that I felt my tension ease. Isembart's staff prepared a sumptuous meal, the second of the day. Aside from Timor and Gilbrid, who were on sentry duty, we all dined together. The dining hall was ostensibly a rustic affair, with rough wooden beams crossing the high ceiling and a great hearth where a roaring fire would be laid in winter, but the meal was served on plates of gleaming white porcelain, so fine they were nearly translucent, and eaten with gilded utensils, their handles wrought in the interlocking key pattern that was the emblem of House Shahrizai.
It made me smile to see Urist and the others fumble with their forks and spoons, surreptitiously resorting to belt knives and bare hands. I didn't care. They were warriors, not courtiers. I set down my own spoon and picked up a steaming bowl of venison broth, putting it to my lips and slurping. Others followed suit with relieved alacrity, woad-stained hands gripping the delicate bowls gingerly.
It would have made Dorelei laugh.
I wished she were here to see it.
'Twas a melancholy thought, but there was sweetness in it, too. There had been good times between us, many of them. I might have lost sight of that if she hadn't extracted this promise from Urist. During the days of my convalescence, when I had thought only of vengeance, I'd hardened my purpose by remembering her death. Her open, unseeing eyes, head turned at an unnatural angle. Blood soaking the cloak that covered her. The knowledge that beneath it lay our son, so near to full term, slain in the womb.
I wouldn't forget. I would never forget.
But I would remember her alive, too. The delight in her dimpled smile, the way she'd laugh when I played the song about the little brown goat. Her shy pleasure when she had presented me with the vambraces she'd had made for me.
All those things, and a thousand others. And above all else, I would never forget that if I ever found happiness in my life, somewhere on the far side of vengeance, I would owe it all to Dorelei mab Breidaia, my wife.
Chapter Forty-One
In the late morning of the following day, Sidonie came. After the first day, I'd steeled myself against expecting her. In the midst of a dramatic moment, her promise had sounded well and good, but in the cold light of reason, I thought it unlikely that Ysandre would permit it. The Queen was a stubborn woman.
But then, so was her daughter.
Urist's sentries let them pass. I was in the armory, testing hunting bows, trying to gauge the measure of my slowly returning strength against the sort of draw required to slow down a charging bear. I didn't believe it when Isembart came to fetch me.
"Forgive me, my lord," he said politely. "I understood your orders were to admit the Dauphine. Mayhap I was mistaken.”
"No," I said. "Elua, no!”
I hurried to the receiving salon, my heart racing. I felt unaccountably nervous. I hadn't been yesterday. Whatever I'd felt, it had been too incomprehensible and vast to admit mere nerves. Today it was different. And I still wasn't entirely sure it was true.
It was, though.
Sidonie was there, accompanied by a dozen guards. Palace Guards, clad in livery of Courcel blue, but there were vertical