Kushiel's Chosen

thinking. It had been different, before. There is a certain calmness in despair. Now even that luxury had been torn away from me.
    I had to think.
    Joscelin and TiPhilippe, alive! They were in the Yeshuite quarter, I was sure of it. It was the one place neither Benedicte nor the Stregazza would think to look; it was the first place Joscelin would have gone. And if Ti-Philìppe had escaped, if he was clever and able enough, it was where he would look. I gave thanks to Elua, now, that my chevaliers had been suspicious enough to follow Joscelin during his disappearances.
    They knew enough, the two of them, to lay charges against Percy de Sotnerville-although they had no proof". It was what they didn't know that could kill them. Prince Benedicte ... Benedicte and Melisande. Still, I thought, TiPhilippe was smart enough to run, when he saw Benedicte's guards.
    Percy de Somerville's guards, whom we all thought Prince Benedicte took into his service all unwitting.
    He knew Remy, Fortun and I left for the Little Court, never to be seen again.
    But he would not know why, and a great many "accidents" could have befallen us between home and palace. I mulled the problem over and over in my mind, and came inevitably to the same conclusion. The scope of it was simply too vast, too hard to encompass. Neither TiPhilippe nor Joscelin would guess Benedicte's treason.
    What you seek you will find in the last place you look...
    I hadn't thought it; nor would they. The best I could hope for was that my disappearance and the traitorous guardsmen would make them wary, wary enough to avoid the Little Court and go straight to Ysandre.
    If they lived. If TiPhilippe wasn't lying on a cot somewhere sweating out his last ounce of life with some dreadful canal-bred pestilence. If Joscelin wasn't halfway to the northern steppes, chasing some arcane Yeshuite prophecy.
    And if they could reach the Queen, which Melisande, who brooked few illusions, believed impossible.
    If, if, if.
    It is a dire thing, to hope against hope.
    I did not doubt the veracity of Melisande's claims. It is a truism; history is written by the victors. With the solid support of Duc Percy de Somerville and Prince Benedicte de la Courcel behind her, her reputation would be restored, nearly spotless. There would be protest from a few, silenced swiftly. A few might rebel; not many, I thought. I had not forgotten the murmurs among the nobility when Drustan mab Necthana rode into the City of Elua.
    Many, too many, would be glad to be shed of a Pictish Prince-Consort, whose bloodline would taint the heirs of House Courcel. None of that for Benedicte, still Ysandre's heir. No, his Serenissiman-born children would inherit here.
    For Terre d'Ange, a true-born son, gotten on his D'Angeline wife.
    Melisande's son.
    And as for Ysandre de la Courcel, I thought, she would become a tragic footnote in D'Angeline history. Slain, no doubt, during some Serenissiman intrigue gone deadly awry. What Melisande had planned, I did not know, but I could guess well enough that no trace of it led back to her, nor to Benedicte.
    Who would stand against her, then, with Benedicte at her side?
    There was Quintilius Rousse-and him, I could not guess. Would he swallow it or no? He would never believe me a traitor, 1 thought, nor Melisande innocent. And yet, he knew Benedicte of old, and Percy de Somerville, too. What could the Royal Admiral do, if the army held the land? Little enough, it might be; especially if the Serenissiman navy stood in support of Benedicte's claim. And if Marco Stregazza were elected Doge, I'd no doubt that would follow. Quintìlius Rousse was canny and a survivor. He might back Benedicte's claim, if he felt he had no other choice.
    There was Barquiel L'Envers.
    And he, I thought ruefully, was the key. The Duc L'Envers, whom I had thought my enemy. He was the reason Benedicte dared not act without the support of the Royal Army. As Ysandre's maternal uncle, he stood the nearest challenger to the throne, with ties by marriage to Aragonia, to Alba, to Khebbel-im-Akkad. All of whom might rally to L'Envers' cause if there was a whiff of suspicion concerning Ysandre's death. Drustan would, I was sure of it; nor had I forgotten the company of Aragonian spearmen which had fought beside us against the Skaldi, and the deadly Akkadian cavalry.
    They would need to act quickly, Benedicte, Melisande and de Somerville, to secure the throne and dispose of Barquiel L'Envers.
    1 am a fool, I thought, to