Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [80]
“You needn’t look amused,” I said to her.
“He brought it on himself,” she said complacently. “A skilled Guildsman ought to know better than to mince words with a desperate D’Angeline in love.”
“Is he?” Solon asked her.
Melisande gazed at me. “So it seems.”
“A mother knows her child.” Solon gestured at me. “Continue.”
I told him everything I could remember about observing Bodeshmun’s preparations the day of the occluded moon. Solon halted me numerous times, pressing me for details. He brought out a book with symbols of the Houses of the Cosmos. I racked my memory, struggling to place them exactly as they’d been aligned on the great mirror in proximity to the mirrors on the City’s walls. His pen scratched furiously, sketching a diagram.
“Again,” he said when I had finished.
I told him again, this time dredging up the exact words he’d said to Sidonie. The brief bow he had accorded her. A green gem on a chain swinging into view.
Solon’s nostrils flared. “Describe it.”
I tried, but I’d seen it only briefly. All I could tell him was that it was the size of a child’s fist and multifaceted.
“Were there symbols incised on the facets?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I couldn’t tell. But I did see a flash of emerald green the next night, when it happened.”
He held up one hand. “Don’t rush. Continue.”
“After we visited Elua’s Square . . .” My voice faltered. “Truly, there wasn’t aught of significance until the following evening.”
“How can you be sure?” Solon asked.
My mouth was parched. I took a long drink of water. “Sidonie and I quarrelled. I was uneasy. I wanted her to beg Ysandre to call off the spectacle. She didn’t think it was possible without cause. We made up our quarrel that night.” I traced a water-ring on the table with one finger, remembering the feel of her moon-silvered skin against my bare flesh. I hadn’t thought about the fact that our argument might have played some role in this. “It was the first time we’d argued since we’d become lovers. Do you think it’s significant?”
“No,” Solon said gently. “I don’t. Continue.”
I relived the night of the spectacle for him. The endless dinner that had preceded it. The details of every dish I could recall. The carriage-ride to Elua’s Square, the throngs that packed the City. The moon’s slow, steady occlusion, and its eerie red hue.
The long wait, the crowds jostling around the mirror.
Sunjata’s whisper in my ear, following him.
In a dispassionate voice, I told him all I could recall. Standing pressed together beneath Elua’s Oak. The searing pain of the needle driven deep into my vitals, the rush of icy fire in my veins. Falling, the world whirling. Sunjata’s voice, telling me to seek Ptolemy Solon’s aid. An emerald glow, a flash of brightness. A gasp from the crowd. Sunjata’s hand tugging the ring from my fingers. Roots writhing like serpents. Sunjata’s voice apologizing for serving two masters. Telling me I was lucky my mother loved me. Telling me to go to Cythera.
And then the tide of madness swallowing me.
“Again,” Solon said.
I closed my eyes and told him again, shutting out the sound of his pen scratching, shutting out everything. This time, there was nothing new. When I had finished, I was drained. I opened my eyes. “Do you wish to hear about the madness now?”
Solon began to reply, then caught my mother’s warning glance. “No,” he said in a circumspect tone. “Later, perhaps. Tell me about the ring. Is it significant?”
Tired as I was, I almost laughed. Sidonie had given it to me before I’d wed Dorelei. When I’d struck out from Skaldia into the unknown in search of Berlik, I’d sent the ring back to Sidonie with a message that I would return to claim it. And when I’d been stuck waist-deep in a Vralian snowbank, bone-weary and frozen and ready to die, it was the