Kushiel's Chosen

neck, kissing his cheek. He held me hard, and I saw tears in his eyes when he let me go.
    "We thought you were dead, my lady," he said softly. "Joscelin saw you fall from the cliff."
    "No." I smiled through my tears. "Not quite, not yet." I swallowed hard, adding, "Fortun and Remy ... Fortun and Remy are dead."
    "We guessed." Joscelin's voice was quiet. "Phèdre, who are these people?"
    He had taken a step back, crossed hands hovering over the hilts of his daggers. Wiping my eyes and gathering myself, I saw that Kazan and his men had come up to surround me, while the others, Joscelin's folk-Yeshuites, I saw, young men and one woman-had done the same on their side. I realized then that we had been speaking D'Angeline, and none of them knew what had transpired.
    "Friends, all of them," I said firmly in Caerdicci, and repeated it in Illyrian for the benefit of Kazan's men. "Friends." I looked at Joscelin, my heart breaking at the sight of his beloved face. "Joscelin Verreuil, this is Kazan Atrabiades. I owe him my life."
    They regarded each other; two men, much of a height, some ten years difference between them. What transpired in that silent exchange, I will never know. It was Kazan who broke it, grinning broadly.
    "As I owe her mine, I," he said. "I have heard of you, D'Angeline! You have a reputation to live up to, you."
    Joscelin bowed, his crossed vambraces flashing in the autumn sun. He smiled as he straightened, a wry, familiar smile, and my heart sang to see it. "Does Phèdre nó Delaunay owe you her life, my lord," he said, "then I owe you my reason for living. Let us be friends."
    Thus were we met, Illyrians and Yeshuites and D'Angeline alike, and the bond among us forged. From our meeting-place in the glade, we went to Joscelin's hidden encampment, a rough establishment of tents and shanties where we sat to confer.
    To recount all that was told at that conference would take nigh as long as it took to live it, although we spoke swiftly in turns, starting in the middle of the tale, voices tumbling over one another in a myriad of tongues. I told the bare bones of what had befallen me since I had plunged from the cliffs of La Dolorosa, leaving most of the details of our Kritian sojourn for another day, and Joscelin and Ti-Philippe told their end of it.
    With many interruptions, I pieced the story together bit by bit. When Benedicte's guardsmen broke into our rented home on the canal, Ti-Philippe had recognized two of them as the veterans of Troyes-le-Mont we had met only days earlier in the barracks of the Little Court. After Phanuel Buonard's murder, he didn't hesitate, plunging over the balcony into the canal below, making his way afterward, sodden and reeking and already shivering with ague, to the Yeshuite quarter, where he knew Joscelin had been training Yeshuites to arms. 'Twas a lucky thing after all that they had been concerned enough to spy him out at it. Marco Stregazza had nearly been right about the pestilence; he'd been sick for two weeks, although he hadn't died of it.
    "And I was nearly as sick at heart," Joscelin said grimly, "to think on what had happened. We didn't dare get near the Little Court, or the Palace either-there were guards searching everywhere-but Elua be thanked, they never thought to search the Yeshuite quarter."
    "How in the world did you find me?" I asked, bewildered.
    "We did," Micah offered in a quiet voice. "We scoured the city, serving as eyes and ears. It took a long time, because we dared not arouse suspicion. One or two of us followed the guardsmen who were looking for D'Angelines. Where they passed, people spoke of it, even to Yeshuites. It was a simple matter to invent a rumor that a D'Angeline noblewoman had been abducted by two of her countrymen, that people might speak of what they had seen.”
    "But no one in the city saw anything," I said. "How could they?"
    Micah smiled. "One did, though. He was hunting geese on the far side of the lagoon and hid himself when he saw a boat land, with D'Angeline soldiers and a woman, hooded and stumbling, a collar of pearls about her neck."
    I had forgotten the Doge's gift. It had been enough to convince Joscelin and Ti-Philippe. With the aid of Micah and three others, they had crossed the lagoon hidden in the bottom of a fishing boat and picked up my trail on the mainland. Benedicte's men had been cautious enough, but the guards of La Dolorosa had been less discreet; the beekeeper who sold honey to the garrison had heard rumor of