Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [356]
"Not Ysandre?" I asked.
"No," Phèdre said slowly. "No, I don't think so."
Our eyes met. "Delaunay," I said.
"I know."
"Do you think…" I swallowed. "Do you think he told anyone?"
"Like your mother?" she asked gently. I nodded. "I don't know, love. He might have. They played a strange game with one another. Anafiel Delaunay was a complicated man, and Rolande's death had a profound impact on him. There are things about him I daresay I'll never understand."
"Like my mother," I murmured.
"Yes." Phèdre gave a wry smile. "Ah, well. Yes and no."
"Why did she save my life?" I asked. "Does she still think to use me?"
The words emerged, abrupt and bitter. I hadn't meant to ask it; and yet I had. Although I'd not given voice to it, it had been burning in the back of my thoughts ever since Canis died. Phèdre looked at me for a long moment. "Do you remember the promise I extracted from her in La Serenissima?" she asked. I nodded. As if I could forget. I keep my promises. "I bargained with her. I told her I'd adopt you only in exchange for her promise not to raise her hand against Ysandre or her daughters, nor to leave her sanctuary. She bargained me down to one promise, and made me choose. And after she agreed and swore an oath, she laughed and told me I was a dreadful liar." Her mouth quirked. "I didn't think I'd done that badly."
"Why did she do it, then?" I asked.
" 'One day—not soon, but one day—tell my son that this bargain I have made with you today is my gift to him, the only one he would accept from me,'" Phèdre recited from memory. "Those were her words. There wasn't a great deal Melisande did out of kindness," she said softly. "Although mayhap she sees it differently. But that, yes. It was a gift, pure and simple."
"Do you think…" I paused. "Mayhap she isn't all bad?"
"No one is, Imri." Her voice was gentle. "Nor all good, either."
There was a great deal more she could have said, although she didn't. When all was said and done, I think no one in the world knew my mother better than Phèdre. Not her own Shahrizai kin, not Anafiel Delaunay, not anyone. They were two sides of a coin; Kushiel's deadliest scion and Kushiel's Chosen. The dark mirror and the bright, and which was which depended on one's vantage point. They had reflected the best and worst of one another.
And I was both of their sons.
True and not true.
I took a deep breath and prepared to shoulder a burden I'd long avoided. "I'd like to read her letters, please."
Phèdre nodded as though she had been expecting me to ask. Like as not, she had. Without comment, she folded and sealed her letter to Roxanne de Mereliot and set it to one side. I remembered with a guilty start that I'd forgotten to ask Ysandre to send a courier to the Lady of the Dalriada with Eamonn's letter.
I would do it on the morrow.
There was time.
She got up and fetched the coffer from a shelf. It was made of polished wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Phèdre set it on her desk and unlocked it with a gold key that I hadn't seen since I was fourteen years old. She laid the key beside the coffer and stepped back.
"There you are, love."
I got up. Phèdre watched me. Her eyes were dark and luminous, filled with tenderness. The knowledge of the Name of God lay behind them, and the word it spelled was love. Every letter of the alphabet in which it was written, every stroke of every letter, was love. I sat down at her desk.
"Thank you," I whispered.
She didn't answer, only kissed my brow and left.
I sat for a long time, gazing at the coffer. At last I lifted the lid. A faint, spicy scent of sandalwood emerged. The letters lay there, seals cracked, neatly refolded. No one had touched them for four years. Not since Melisande Shahrizai had vanished from her sanctuary in the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea.
Melisande.
My mother.
I thought about Helena Correggio opening her hand in the streets of Lucca, and beads of blue glass falling onto the cobblestones. The Bella Donna's son. I'd forgotten to tell Phèdre that part.