Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [342]
And Gerard had guessed rightly, or nearly so—his mother sent a courier to the City within moments of our arrival at the Dome of the Lady. I felt better knowing that Phèdre and Joscelin wouldn't be kept in suspense a heartbeat longer than necessary.
I dined that night with Roxanne, Gerard, and Jeanne, the Lady's daughter. She was younger than her brother, with the same black hair and smoky grey eyes. As her mother's heir, she would one day bear the title Lady of Marsilikos. Eisheth's city was ruled by a woman, always. We flirted gently with one another. I liked her, too. I liked them all.
"We studied in Tiberium, too," Jeanne said to me. "Gerard and I."
"What did you study?" I asked.
"Wineshops." Gerard laughed. His sister smiled.
"Medicine," she said. "I wanted to see how it differed from what we're taught in Eisande. I'm a chirurgeon."
"Truly?" I asked, surprised.
"It's in our blood." Jeanne stretched out her hands, regarding them. "Eisheth's line."
"Medicine or music," Gerard added. "Or storytelling. What did you study?"
I told them about Master Piero, chasing the pigeons in the Forum, about how he taught us natural philosophy. They laughed, but they listened, too. We talked about what it had been like in Tiberium then, and what it was like now. In some ways, nothing had changed; in others, it was different. There had been more D'Angelines studying there in their day, far more.
"Times change," Gerard remarked. "Right, Mother?"
"They do." Roxanne de Mereliot smiled at her grown son. "And I have lived to see it. The Queen has wed her Cruarch, the Straits are opened, and Terre d'Ange occupies a new place in the world. New ties are forged, old ones are neglected."
I turned my winecup in my hands, thinking about the Unseen Guild. They'd lost a greater prize than they reckoned when Anafiel Delaunay walked away from their offer. How it must have terrified them years later when Terre d'Ange and Alba united to triumph over the Skaldi, when Ysandre wed Drustan! Alba was a vast unknown, rich in resources, isolated for centuries. The Guild had no foothold there, and they'd lost the best one they might have gained in Terre d'Ange.
Small wonder they'd wanted me. For all I knew, my mother was the least of it.
"Imriel?" Jeanne was looking at me. Caught up in my own thoughts, I'd lost the thread of conversation. "If you're willing to speak of Lucca, we'd like to hear it. There was a siege?"
"Yes." A siege, a dead madman, a terrified bride. A broken mask. Trees growing from the walls. An abyss of black water, the dark mirror of the bright. I was tired, too tired. "There was a siege," I said slowly. "And I survived it."
"Enough." The Lady of Marsilikos rose from her chair. She came around behind me, laying her hands on my shoulders. She had a gentle touch. "I think we should let Prince Imriel sleep," she said. "And not plague him for stories."
Prince Imriel.
I remembered lying on a lumpy pallet beneath a threadbare blanket in a cheap travellers' inn in Marsilikos, within sight of the Dome of the Lady, and explaining to an irritated Gilot that we weren't calling upon her grace Roxanne de Mereliot because I'd been raised a goatherding peasant in the Sanctuary of Elua.
I wondered if Prince Imriel would ever sound right to my ear.
Now I was led to a guest-chamber beneath that very dome, splendid and spacious. Gilot would have reveled in it. The windows, shuttered against the autumn chill, looked out toward the harbor. There was no fireplace, but a charcoal brazier glowed merrily. The bed was piled high with eiderdown quilts.
I lay on it and stared at the ceiling.
A thousand thoughts crowded my brain. I thought about my mother and the Guild and the Skaldi invasion. She had known. She had been complicit in it. Had they? Elua, it would have been a coup! A horrible, marvelous coup. How long had my mother been a part of the Guild? And how?
She had known Anafiel Delaunay for a long time.
They'd been lovers, once.
I shied away from the thought, and thought instead about what Jeanne