Kushiel's Chosen

questioned Fortun once, uncertain he had understood his D'Angeline-accented Caerdicci. Joscelin would never have let me do it in the first place, and Remy or TiPhilippe would have made a bawdy jest of it. Fortun merely persisted, for which I was grateful.
    Shaking his head, the boatman took us a little way down the Great Canal, then turned off into the lesser waterways. Gradually, the houses grew smaller and meaner, poor wooden constructions. If my sense of direction was any good, we were not far from where Magister Acco had lodged. Presently we glided beneath a rickety footbridge and came to a quarter where the doors of the houses were painted a bright red, and there were a good many moorings with gondoli and even a gilded bissone tied at dock.
    Women in cheaply dyed attire leaned languidly on the balconies above us, calling lewdly to Fortun, promising him such pleasures as his highborn lady-which I presumed was myself-would never deliver. Several of them, noting his D'Angeline features, offered to service him for free, and one of their number, teetering on high pattens along the muddy walk bordering the canal, leered and flipped her skirts up at him, exposing herself. From within the narrow houses, we heard the sounds of shouting, laughter and drunken revelry. I thought of the ordered elegance and pride of the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court, and could have wept.
    "Enough, my lady?" Fortun asked me; he looked rather ill himself. The Doge had guessed well when he guessed that the subornation of the Oracle of Asherat would perturb me. Little could he have known how much more blasphemous this spectacle would appear to D'Angeline eyes. I wondered that Prince Benedicte could have stood it as long as he did, and understood better why he secluded himself in the Little Court.
    "Enough," I said firmly. Rolling his eyes, the boatman stuck his long-handled oar into the waters of the canal and turned the gondola. Like the royal scions of Elua, I fled back to the sanctuary of the familiar.
    At our rented home, we found the grinning team of TiPhilippe and Remy, who had spent the day scouting out news of the errant Phanuel Buonard, the simple Namarrese soldier on whom, it seemed, an entire conspiracy devolved. Between my visit to the Doge and the courtesans' quarter, I wanted nothing more than to soak in a long bath, but curiosity compelled me to hear out their news.
    "We found him," TiPhilippe said with satisfaction. "Took a whole day fishing on the lagoon and bribing other fishermen to talk with cheap brandy, my lady, but we landed the bastard, begging your pardon! He's wed into the Pidari, a family of glassblowers-"
    "Who," Remy interrupted him, "have a cousin with no knack for the trade, that they reckoned better off casting nets than breaking bottle-necks. And when we told him we served a great lady who might be minded to commission an entire leaded-glass window for the Queen of Terre d'Ange herself if the Pidari were willing to show her their studios, why, he fell all over himself to make the introduction!"
    Their enthusiasm was contagious, and I could not but laugh. "Well," I said, when I'd regained control of myself. "Her majesty is going to be very surprised to learn what she's committed to today. Can he take us tomorrow?"
    Remy shook his head. "He's got to get their consent. Very tight, these glassblowers; trade secrets and all. But he'll take us first thing the day after."
    It was at that moment that Joscelin, a day and a half absent, chose to make his return. He stood blinking in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight of the salon, gazing around at the four of us, the maps still spread on the dining table. "What is it?" he asked, frowning. "Have you learned something?"
    "You might say that," I said.

THIRTY-NINE
    It took some time to explain the last two days' events to Joscelin, though he was quick to grasp their meaning, gazing thoughtfully at Fortun's maps and the markings thereon.
    When I was done, our eyes met in that old, familiar silence.
    "Percy de Somerville," he said softly.
    "He sent them all to La Serenissima." I twined a lock of my hair, still damp from my bath - I'd made him wait that long to hear the news, at least - about my fingers. "But why?"
    "L'Envers is clever enough to set him up," Joscelin said reluctantly. "If anyone is."
    "By pinning suspicion on himself?" I shook my head. "It's a long reach."
    "I know." Joscelin traced the path of a corridor on the map, not meeting my eyes. "And Ghislain? We