Kushiel's Avatar

Drucilla’s warning, but even that could not dampen the exhilaration. All too soon, someone gave a sharp whistle-Uru-Azag, I daresay-and it filled us with urgent terror, setting off a scrambling race to return to the zenana . I made myself wait, going last. No one objected. For a moment, I feared that they would seal the boards and leave me-but no, there was Rushad on the inside, his eyes wide with fear as he extended a hand to help me through. Uru-Azag, his face oily with sweat, shoved the boards in place.
    That evening, before the Mahrkagir’s summons, Imriel came to my chamber.
    He hovered inside the beaded doorway, uncertain and frowning in the light of my single oil lamp. I sat cross-legged on my bed, waiting. I lack Joscelin’s gift with children, but this one, this child, I understood.
    “Why did you say my mother sent you?” he asked.
    “Because it is true,” I replied. “She asked me to find you.”
    “No.” Imriel shook his head, eyeing me suspiciously. “My mother is dead, and my father, too. They died of an ague aboard a Serenissiman ship and asked Brother Selbert to take care of me. I know, he told me so. Why would Brother Selbert lie? How do you know him?”
    “Your father is dead, that much is true. But when you were eight,” I said, ignoring his questions, “Brother Selbert took you to La Serenissima. And you met a lady there.”
    “No.” A look of alarm crossed his face, and his mouth formed a hard line. “Never.”
    I remembered what he had been told; that the lady was his patron, and that she would be in grave danger if he revealed it. “It was partly true, Imriel, and the lie only to protect you. Brother Selbert believed his actions in accordance with the precept of Blessed Elua.”
    “Elua!” The word was an agonized curse in his mouth. “Elua is a lie !”
    For that, I had no words; none that I could speak to this boy. Mayhap a priest or a priestess could have done, I do not know. I know none who have endured Daršanga. “She is your mother, Imriel,” I said instead. “The Lady Melisande.”
    “ Why ?
    One word; a single demand. It is the question children ask most, I am told. It was a question of immense proportion, coming from Imriel de la Courcel’s lips, and most of what it encompassed, I could not answer. I do not know the will of the gods. If Blessed Elua had willed Imriel’s presence here, I could not say why. But Melisande Shahrizai, I knew, and it was to that I spoke. I had thought long and hard how I would answer this question without revealing the tale in all its horror. “Your mother did somewhat foolish, once, Imri,” I said gently. “It is why she cannot leave La Serenissima, and it is why she has enemies. Because she loves you, she did not wish her enemies to become yours. And that is why she and Brother Selbert sought to protect you with a lie.”
    He looked away and I could see the shimmer in his twilight eyes, but his jaw clenched and no tears fell. I remembered the girl Beryl at the Sanctuary of Elua, composed beyond her years, speaking of Imri. He was afraid of anyone seeing him cry . My heart ached for the boy. “I don’t believe you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t believe you! Even if it were true, why would my mother send you ?” His voice made his loathing plain. “Death’s Whore!”
    “Mayhap,” I said, unflinching. “All the same, I found you.”
    And then Nariman came to summon me, and we spoke no more that evening.
    It was a beginning.

Fifty-One
    the skotophagotis knew.
    I was not sure, not until the night he urged the Mahrkagir to share me among his men. If I have not made it clear, I may say so now; Gashtaham was clever. Sometimes the Mahrkagir listened to him, and sometimes he did not. The priest had a knack of knowing when he was able to exert his will over the ruler of Drujan, and plying it expertly.
    It was at one such time that he convinced the Mahrkagir to share me.
    I could not hear what he said, not all of it. The priest murmured low into his lord’s ear. I caught a word here and there, enough to gather the gist of it. I had grown haughty, over-proud, confident in the Mahrkagir’s favoritism; I ruled the zenana like a queen, threatening to invoke my lord’s displeasure on any who opposed me.
    It was a lie, of course. Nothing had changed in the zenana except that I was viewed by some with wary skepticism instead of outright despite. The spirit of conspiracy that had opened the garden had not died, but