Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [285]
I blinked awake.
Moonlight spilled through the bedchamber, a moon just past fullness.
In the balcony door, Sidonie turned. “Imriel.”
I propped myself on one arm. “Did I miss aught?”
“No.” She came over and ran a lock of my hair through her fingers. “How’s your head? Lelahiah said it was best to let you sleep.”
“Better,” I said. “I think it was mostly exhaustion. I felt like a candle that had been blown out.”
“Can you eat?” she asked. “I’ll send someone to the kitchens.”
“Later.” I folded back the bed-clothes. “Come here.”
Sidonie shed her robe and slid into bed, slid into my arms, warm and naked. Her body pressed against mine. She shivered, a shiver that owed nothing to coldness. “I keep thinking about it. The demon. It bowed to us.”
I tightened my arms around her. “I know. Mayhap even a demon may be grateful.”
“Mayhap,” she murmured.
There was nothing else to say.
We slept.
Eighty-Six
In the days that followed, Terre d’Ange slowly found its bearings.
Sidonie and I met with Ghislain nó Trevalion and determined to dispatch five hundred soldiers throughout the realm, carrying copies of the transcript of our audience to be read in every city and village. She appointed Raul L’Envers y Aragon to head a delegation to Amílcar with a pledge of aid should it be needed. The Siovalese lord Tibault de Toluard volunteered to serve as an ambassador to the fledgling Euskerria, carrying a charter stamped with the royal seal confirming Terre d’Ange’s end of the bargain. Together we drafted letters to D’Angeline ambassadors scattered around the world, assuring them that Terre d’Ange had regained its wits.
Drustan sent his honor guard to Alba carrying a message of peace and apology to his heir Talorcan.
Those members of Parliament who had remained ensconced in the City gathered their retinues and departed for their own estates, in many cases reuniting families torn apart by Carthage’s spell.
The priesthoods of Blessed Elua and his Companions announced that the month of Sidonie’s regency would be a time of contemplation for all. They bade their own members to meditate on the near-tragedy in an effort to discern what divine lessons it might hold.
I kept my word and dispatched a letter to my mother and Ptolemy Solon on Cythera, giving sincere thanks for their aid and including a generous reward for Captain Deimos and his men drawn on the Royal Treasury. It also included an official declaration stamped with the royal seal and signed by the Regent of Terre d’Ange confirming that Melisande Shahrizai de la Courcel’s sentence of execution had been reduced to one of exile.
Across the realm, there was no rejoicing, only quiet relief. In the City, a somber mood prevailed.
It was a strange time. I’d returned to the City and been treated with wary care as an invalid, deranged and harmless. All of that had changed. Without being asked, the folk of the realm treated me as an unofficial co-regent. The captains of the Palace Guard and the City Guard consulted me on their decisions. Claude de Monluc, continuing as the head of Sidonie’s personal guard, regarded my word as interchangeable with hers. And then there was Kratos, our unlikely hero, loyal to us both.
“Gods be thanked,” Sidonie said when I commented on it.
Her workload was heavy. Within two days of the spell’s breaking, petitioners began pouring into the City, heedless of the injunction to spend the time in contemplation. It seemed ten thousand petty disputes had sprung up during the time of madness. The judicial system