Kushiel's Chosen

he said thoughtfully.
    "What about his wife?" I remembered Allegra Stregazza, seated at her desk in the charming library overlooking their estates, writing out a letter of introduction for me. It had gotten me into the Little Court, where I had walked in the Queen's Garden with Madame Felicity d'Arbos and admired the charming sight of Prince Benedicte's veiled wife and her babe on the balcony. "She has a name for being eccentric, a woman of letters in La Serenissima. Would it arouse suspicion if a young Yeshuite scholar delivered her a scroll?"
    "Probably not," Joscelin admitted, grinning involuntarily. "Your mind still turns out ideas like a Siovalese windmill churns grain."
    "It works better when I'm with you," I said. "Do you have pen and paper on this forsaken isle?"
    "We might." He rose. "Teppo's scholar enough to have brought it... oh, wait, I have something that will serve for paper, at any rate." Disappearing into one of the tents, he reemerged with a packet wrapped in oilskin. "After Ti-Philippe turned up with his tale, I went to Mafeo Bardoni, your factor's man here. I thought if there was any chance you'd left word with him, I should get to him before anyone else did. You'd gotten a letter from home," he said, handing it over. "Eugenie sent it in care of your factor's man, since you'd never written with another address. I looked," he added as I began to open it. "But 'twas naught to do with your disappearance.”
    It was, in fact, a letter from Micheline de Parnasse, the Royal Archivist, who had at last heard a reply from the Prefect of the Cassiline Brotherhood; one Lord Calval, who had inherited the post when Lord Rinforte passed away at the end of a long illness. In accordance with her long-ago promise, she enclosed a list of those Cassiline Brothers who had attended House de la Courcel, the information excised from the ledger in the Royal Archives. "You saw what this is?" I asked Joscelin. He nodded. "You learned as much from Thelesis de Mor-nay's inquiries," he said, shrugging and adding laconically, "I wrote too, you know. Lord Calval never bothered to answer me."
    "The Cassiline Brotherhood has not declared the Royal Archivist anathema," I said absently. "You, they have. Joscelin, this list isn't the same as the one Thelesis gathered." "No?" He crouched to peer over my shoulder. "What's different?"
    My lord Delaunay used to challenge Alcuin and me to exert our powers of observance and memory, quizzing us at unexpected intervals about the most seemingly innocuous of things. It is a habit that has stuck with me all my life. I daresay I would not have scanned the entire list, had it not been for that. But I did, and I came across a name that made my blood run cold with foreboding, my hand rising of its own volition to cover it.
    Your Queen, does she not already have such guards in her service?
    "Thelesis' list only had the adoptive names of those taken into Lord Rinforte's household, the names such as the Cassiline Brothers themselves offered to her," I whispered. "This comes direct from the Prefect's archives, and gives their names in full. The ledger in the Royal Archives, the one that was desecrated, must have done the same. Oh, Joscelin! I think I know how they're planning to kill Ysandre." He knew what I was reading. He looked sick. "Let me see.”
    I moved my hand to reveal a name: David de Rocaille no Rinforte.
    "De Rocaille," Joscelin said aloud, and swallowed. "David de Rocaille."
    "You're Siovalese, and a Cassiline," I said softly. "Joscelin, Ysandre's mother Isabel was responsible for the death of Edmée de Rocaille. I ought to know; it's what began Delaunay's feud with her. Did Edmée de Rocaille have a brother who joined the Brethren?"
    "I don't know." He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I never followed the genealogies of the Great Houses of Siovale; I knew I was bound for Cassiel's service. And if he was among the Cassilines ... I don't know. He would have left, by the time I began training. Ah, Elua!" He dropped his hands, looking at me with anguish. "That soldier, among the Unforgiven ... he said he saw it, didn't he? A Cassiline Brother, escorting the woman he thought was Persia Shahrizai."
    "Svariel of L'Agnace said it," I murmured. "Fortun had it written in his notes."
    "Why would he do it?" Joscelin demanded, slightly wild-eyed. "Why now, after so long? Why take revenge on someone for the crimes of her mother? Even if it's true, if he's been attendant on Ysandre, he