Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [78]
Now she contented herself with dabbling. She bought slaves who struck her fancy and gave them their freedom, offering them positions within her household with generous pay. A few took their freedom and fled, but most stayed. In time, she made an offer of Guild training and far greater wealth to those she deemed quick-witted and loyal enough to be useful to her. Then she sent them forth to spy on her behalf.
Over the course of the day, I learned a few things about the Guild. I learned that there were indeed factions within it. Alliances were formed. Ephesium, looking over its shoulder at powerful Khebbel-im-Akkad, favored the rise of Carthage. Most of Caerdicca Unitas, remembering the lessons of history, opposed it and sought ties to nascent Skaldic states. I learned that the Guild’s origins lay in the east, and that their influence was weak in the western realms.
Mostly, though, I talked.
I talked for hours.
Many of the details of my life she knew. Her spies in Terre d’Ange—and their identities was one thing she wouldn’t divulge to me—had kept her well informed. But Melisande wanted to hear about my life from me.
And I found myself talking about things that surprised me. How the difficulty of being her son was compounded by measuring myself against the extraordinary heroism of my foster-parents. How I’d learned to let go of that for good when I’d accepted failure in Vralia. How I’d felt in Clunderry after Dorelei and I had learned to love one another on our own terms, watching her belly swell with our child. How I’d grieved for their deaths. How I’d gone from sheer hatred and a cold desire for vengeance to feel a measure of compassion for Berlik at the end.
When I’d talked myself dry, my mother was very quiet for a time. We were seated in her salon, drinking a cool white wine made on the villa’s grounds. Blue twilight was beginning to fall outside.
“You’re a good man,” Melisande murmured. “Elua knows, if I did one good thing in my life, it was binding myself to a promise to allow you to be raised by Phèdre nó Delaunay and that damned Cassiline of hers.”
“The only gift I would accept from you,” I said, remembering what Phèdre had told me. “I thank you for it.”
She glanced out the window. “It’s growing late. Will you pass the night here?”
There was a yearning hunger in the question, and fear, too. I found myself wanting to assuage both. I was in her debt. It would be easy, so easy, to offer the simple balm of my presence. And yet in the back of my mind there were black armbands and down-turned thumbs. There was a blood-soaked battlefield. Waldemar Selig had begun to skin Phèdre alive there.
“I can’t,” I said.
Melisande inclined her head. “I understand.”
And so I left to await word from Ptolemy Solon. The stable-lad that Leander had made blush brought the Bastard around. My mother escorted me to the courtyard herself. In the twilight, her beauty deepened. I thought about her likeness hanging in the Hall of Portraits at the Palace. In her youth, she’d had a beauty as keen and as deadly as a blade. Now, oddly, it cut deeper. Sorrow became her.
“I’ll see you on the morrow,” I said awkwardly. “No doubt you’ll wish to be a part of this intrigue.”
A wry edge returned to her voice. “No doubt.”
I hesitated, holding the Bastard’s reins. He was unusually compliant, still out of sorts from the lengthy sea voyage. “Mother . . . why did you name me Imriel? I’ve always wondered.”
“Eloquence of God.” A smile touched her lips. Melisande Shahrizai tilted her head, regarding me in the twilight. “Because when you were born, for the first time, I understood it. Love as thou wilt,” she said, musing. “I have always adhered to the precept of Blessed Elua in my own way. And yet, until you were born, I didn’t truly know what it was to love another living soul. Beyond thought, beyond reason. And I thought, for once, that the gods were speaking clearly to me.”
I swallowed