Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [244]
“Kratos.” Sidonie touched his thick forearm. “No one in the City knows you. ’Tis my thought to tell them that you were my lord Astegal’s most loyal bodyguard, the cherished comrade of his boyhood. That he trusted you with my safety, and that you have repaid it a thousandfold. That I now trust you with my poor deluded kinsman’s care. Are you up to the task of playing this role?”
Kratos bent his head toward her. The firelight danced over his blunt features, his bristling hair. “I will arise to any challenge her highness sets me.”
“We don’t deserve you, Kratos,” I murmured.
He turned his hard, shrewd gaze on me. “Don’t say that, my lord. I was plucked from a slave-market by a foppish young D’Angeline to serve as his bearer. I saw something in him worthy of serving. When I spoke, he listened. You listened.”
“Leander listened,” I said. “By the time I knew myself, I’d already seen the measure of your worth.”
“Ah, well.” Kratos glanced back at Sidonie. “I suspect there was a fair bit of you in there all along, my lord.”
On the third day, we reached the outskirts of Yvens, an unassuming little village on the Aviline known for its olives. As before, Sidonie and I waited while Marc Faucon and a couple of his men rode ahead to secure the way.
It was a lovely spring day, clear and almost balmy. We waited alongside an olive grove. They were venerable old trees with gnarled trunks. The afternoon sun slanted through their leaves, through the clusters of delicate white flowers blooming on their branches. Sidonie and I walked in the grove while Kratos and Faucon’s men kept watch.
“It seems impossible to think of war on such a day,” Sidonie said wistfully.
“I know.” I laid my hand on a sun-warmed trunk, thinking about the night years ago when I’d stood atop the walls of Lucca with Deccus Fulvius, watching the ancient olive groves outside the city go up in flames. “But even without magic’s urging, men will make war despite all the beauty in the world.”
“As a child, one of my favorite stories was hearing how my mother averted a civil war in Terre d’Ange.” She glanced unerringly toward the north. “How she refused when Lord Amaury begged her to raise an army in Caerdicca Unitas and rode toward the City with only a small escort, throwing coins to the folk along the way that they might know her face, that they might know their Queen had returned, alive and well.”
“And a throng of people trailed after her,” I said softly. “Farmers and weavers, beekeepers and chandlers.”
“And children.” Sidonie’s voice broke on the word.
“And children,” I echoed. “And when they reached the City of Elua, they never halted. Arrows rained down upon them, and they answered with showers of coin. Ysandre de la Courcel rode forward, flanked only by the ranks of the Unforgiven. The rebel soldiers gazed at the coins in their hands and wept, knowing they’d been fed a lie. They laid down their arms and knelt.”
“Yes.” Sidonie wiped her eyes.
I was quiet. I knew the tale well; indeed, the coins had been Phèdre’s idea. But it was different for Sidonie. Ysandre was her mother as well as the Queen. If Terre d’Ange went to war, it would be on her order. To have that great legacy of courage and valor lost forever was an ache too deep for words.
And Phèdre and Joscelin . . .
That, I couldn’t bear to think.
“They averted a war and restored peace,” I said. “We will do the same. We’ll bring the circle around to a full close. We won’t fail them, Sidonie.”
She didn’t answer, only nodded.
Shortly thereafter, Marc Faucon returned with word. Gilbert Dumel had received L’Envers’ message and he was prepared to ferry us into the City, but he advised that we wait until nightfall to enter Yvens. And so once more, we waited. Faucon’s men had brought savory meat pies, fresh bread, and goat cheese back with them from the village, but the thought of food made my stomach churn.
Come nightfall, we entered the village.
It had the same eerie quietude as Turnone and every other town we’d passed through on our journey. Through a gap in the curtains, I could see that lamplight glowed