Kushiel's Avatar

clean and fresh-minted. They’d arched in showers from the slings of Amaury Trente’s men, fallen like silver rain. I remembered the soldiers’ perplexed faces, staring, glancing from the unprecedented bounty grasped in sword-calloused hand to the woman who parted their ranks, her face in calm profile, riding inexorably toward the walls of the City of Elua. “Yes,” I said softly. “We threw coins.”
    Melisande nodded, as though I’d said somewhat more. “And that was you, too.”
    No one else had drawn that line, made that connection. It was not a part of the stories, to credit me with the idea. I gazed at her. “In Illyria,” I said, “it is unlawful for a coin to be cast bearing the Ban’s image. I remembered. I have you to thank for my time as a hostage there, my lady.”
    “I thought as much. Kushiel uses his conscience hard.” Melisande’s regard was unchanged. “You are bound for Iskandria. The Menekhetans are subtle, and Lord Amaury Trente is not. You have a gift for knowledge, and are skilled in the arts of discretion. Whether or not you bear me hatred, my son is innocent of it. If you are bound to see me rot in this gilded cage, then I charge you with his welfare.”
    To impart suffering without compassion ...
    “You cannot.” My voice was shaking . “I have done all I might. The debt between us is cleared.”
    “No.” Melisande shook her head with terrible gentleness. “It will never be cleared, Phèdre nó Delaunay. We are bound together. Have you not realized as much?”
    I looked away, remembering my dream, the boy who cried out with Hyacinthe’s voice, Imriel’s face, remembering the children in Amílcar, feral and half-blinded by torchlight. “What I may do for your son, I will, my lady. I would do as much for any child. Beyond that, I make no promises. The matter is out of my hands.”
    “And in the Queen’s,” Melisande murmured. She laughed. It was an awful sound, like glass breaking. “Who shall claim him in the end, my Imriel, and teach him to blame the mother who doomed him to such a fate. It is a bitter piece of irony that it is no fault of my own.”
    “I know,” I said, holding her gaze. What else could I say? I did.
    “Let him live to hate me, then; only let him live.” The fear was back, naked and vulnerable. “I gave you a patron-gift to secure your marque. Will you not swear that much?”
    To impart suffering without compassion…
    “You cannot.” My voice was shaking. “I have done all I might. The debt between us is cleared.”
    “You are Kushiel’s Chosen,” she said abruptly. “This is his doing. Am I mistaken, Phèdre? You did not think so. Kushiel chooses to punish his scion. So it may be. But whatever I have done, my son is innocent. I ask only your aid in seeing him restored. You have a gift for such matters, as require the arts of covertcy. Is it so much to ask that you find it in your heart to ensure he does not suffer further for my sins?”
    “No,” I whispered.
    Melisande’s voice was quiet. “It is a small thing to ask.”
    And because I could summon no argument against her, because the pain of her loss was heavy within me, because I had seen the children we rescued in Amílcar, I swore it, like a fool, my heart filled with a swelling agony; though I still believed, then, that it was only a matter of overseeing the plans of Lord Amaury Trente, of ensuring that the boy Imriel was restored with Pharaoh’s compliance to his proper place in the annals of House Courcel. I gazed into Melisande’s deep-blue eyes and swore it. “So be it. In Blessed Elua’s name, I promise. I will do what I can.”
    “Thank you,” she said simply. “I will rest easier for it.” She paused; her voice changed. “I wish you luck, Phèdre, in your own quest. The Tsingano lad ...” Melisande shook her head. “He stumbled into an ancient curse. Even I could not have foreseen it.”
    “ He did,” I said, the words raw with emotion. It did not sit easy with me that she had exacted my promise when Hyacinthe’s fate hung in the balance. “Hyacinthe saw his end. And he went to it unflinching; for me, for all of us. You set us on that path, Melisande, whether you knew it or no, whether you intended it or no. And you would have used him, if you could. The scroll, the guide ...” I raised my hand, clutching the scrap of vellum. “You’ve had it all along.”
    “Not always.” There was a curious frankness to her words. “I have few weapons left to