Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [64]
“Thank you for your concern,” Daniel de la Courcel said with gentle firmness. “You are dismissed.”
We could not ignore a royal command, could do nothing but watch as he climbed into the carriage and gave the order to depart.
I stole a glance at Duc Rogier. He was standing with one hand on his son Tristan’s shoulder. I thought the look of sorrow on his face was genuine, but behind it, calculating wheels were turning. It struck me that Desirée had just become the heir to the throne of Terre d’Ange in earnest.
Beneath the bright spring sunshine, I shivered.
Obeying the King’s order, Bao and I saw the young Dauphine returned to the nursery, where she wept herself into a state of profound exhaustion. Not even Sister Gemma’s most soothing cradle-songs could comfort her for the loss of her absent brother. I wondered if she sensed the burden that had settled on her shoulders that day. At last, wrung as limp as a dishrag, Desirée fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth. I stroked her damp hair, plastered to her cheeks. Her tear-spiked lashes were like fans.
“You should go,” Sister Gemma said wearily. “She’ll sleep for hours now.”
“I know.”
Our eyes met. “It was a bad day,” the priestess said. “A very bad day.”
I nodded. “One of the worst.”
Bao leaned over the bed, coaxing Desirée’s thumb out of her mouth and crooning to her in the Ch’in dialect of his youth. “Tomorrow will be better,” he said with a confidence none of us felt. “It will, won’t it?”
My eyes stung. “Gods, I hope so!”
It wasn’t.
Worn out by my own grief, I slept hard that night. I woke from a dream of a great bell tolling for all the world’s sorrows to find Bao shaking me, and every bell in the City of Elua tolling loudly.
“What is it?” I asked sleepily.
“I don’t know.” Bao’s expression was alert and grim. “But I think we ought to find out.”
Outside, we found commonfolk roaming the streets of the City, and rumor running wild. We followed the course of the rumors to a promenade along the banks of the Aviline River, close to the Palace, where guardsmen in the livery of House Courcel raced frantically back and forth, torches streaking the night with flame, firelight glinting off the waters of the river. All the while, the bells continued their urgent summons.
“Here, here!”
“No, here!”
“There he is!” one shouted, pointing at the river. “There, there!”
I covered my mouth with one hand. “Oh, gods! No!”
Guards plunged into the river.
Bao put his arm over my shoulders, pressed his lips to my hair. “Moirin, don’t look.”
But I did, because I had to. I looked. I watched as members of the Royal Guard swam and gasped in the benighted waters of the Aviline River, sodden in their livery, towing their burden ashore.
King Daniel.
For once, he looked at peace. His pale, grave face was at peace with death, his dark hair strewn about him in wet tendrils.
There was more shouting.
There were physicians—to no avail. They breathed into his mouth, but he did not respond. His body lay still and lifeless. Daniel de la Courcel, the King of Terre d’Ange, was dead.
Later, we would learn that the King had begged his Captain of the Guard for solitude, and a chance to walk alone along the banks of the river. That his guards had trailed him at a respectful distance, leaving him to his grief. In the darkness, they’d lost sight of him from time to time.
No one knew when he’d slipped over the embankment and waded into the river. All they knew was that he’d done it a-purpose, for he hadn’t made a sound and there were stones in his pockets, weighting him down.
I wept.
Bao held me.
Everything had changed.
Everything.
TWENTY-FOUR
Terre d’Ange mourned.
Everywhere in the City of Elua, swags of black crepe were draped over doorways. The trunk of Elua’s Oak was swathed in it. Folk gathered in taverns and wineshops, in each other’s homes, offering comfort to one another. No one wanted to be alone.
Bao and I spent a great deal of time with Desirée. If the news of her brother’s death had sent her into paroxysms of grief,