Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [178]
I shuddered. "How can you know such a thing?"
"I don't, not for certain," she said patiently. "I was only a child at the time. But surely the Guild knew in advance, and there were steps that might have been taken. Your Anafiel de Montrève would have been alerted. He would have had the right to ask the Guild's assistance. They could have diverted Waldemar Selig's interest. Offers of trade too sweet to ignore, perhaps a marital alliance. As I recall, Selig sought that route, once. Even if it failed, they could have rallied the Caerdicci city-states to come to the defense of Terre d'Ange."
"I don't believe you," I said. "Any of it."
"What would you have me do?" Claudia asked.
"Prove it." I resumed pacing, thinking. There was no way to prove the course of history might have been different, and Anafiel Delaunay was dead, unable to refute her claims. At this point, the only thing Claudia had done that remotely confirmed the existence of a vast web of covertcy was identify me, and that was no great trick. Master Piero had known me, too. Anyone with a passing interest in the doings of Terre d'Ange might have done the same. "Tell me something," I said. "Something I know to be true, and most of the world does not. Something you could not possibly have known if not for the Guild's existence."
Claudia made a face. "It's not that easy, Imriel. There are gaping holes in your history that not even the Guild can fathom."
"Oh, suddenly they're not all-knowing and all-powerful?" I asked sardonically.
"I never said they were." She sighed. "And I had a short time to memorize what is known about you. I'm only a journeyman, you know. Give me a moment."
I waited, watching her face. Thoughts flitted behind her eyes, sifted and discarded; her lips moved as though reading an invisible scroll. If she was dissembling, she did a good job of it.
"Tizrav," she said at length. "Tizrav, son of Tizmaht. That was the name of the Persian guide who led the Comtesse de Montrève and her consort into Drujan."
My knees gave way. I caught the bedpost with one hand and sat down hard on the bed beside her. "How do you know that?" I whispered.
"It's in the Guild's archive," Claudia said.
I sat, dazed, and listened while she told me more. What the Unseen Guild had known; what they had not known. Little of my vanishing, nothing of my whereabouts. No, their interest had been in the Drujani bone-priests, a mysterious, spreading presence that had even the Guild powerless and anxious. They had picked up Phèdre and Joscelin's trail in Menekhet, when they began asking questions about Drujan, and followed it as far as Khebbel-im-Akkad.
"After that…" Claudia spread her hands. "What did happen there, anyway? All the Guild knows is that a D'Angeline courtesan and a lone swordsman crossed a border the entire Akkadian army feared and emerged with a handful of freed slaves and the kingdom in utter chaos. How did they manage to stage a coup?"
"You don't want to know," I said, thinking about the Mahrkagir's festal hall drenched in blood. "Claudia, why are you telling me this?"
"The Guild is interested in you," she said simply.
"As a spy," I said with contempt.
"As a member willing to exchange knowledge, yes. As a prince of the royal house of Terre d'Ange, you would be uniquely valuable and well-situated. More so even than Anafiel de Montrève would have been." She rinsed her kerchief in the basin and dabbed her lip, then examined it for blood. "I wish you hadn't done that, Imriel."
"Well, I wish you hadn't drawn a knife on me!" I said. "Why on earth did you, anyway?"
Claudia shot me an irritable glance. "I was trying to impress the seriousness of the matter on you. This is no jest, you know. You've got to stop running around, asking questions. Someone could end up hurt."
"Master Strozzi?" I felt a stab of guilt and alarm. "He was lying,