Kushiel's Chosen

shimmering veil, calmly walking toward the antechamber, and no one at all watching her do it.
    Whatever happened, she would walk away free.
    On the floor, Joscelin retreated warily, alert and aware, the glinting line of his blade deflecting de Rocaille's blows out and away, away from his body. He moved with care, placing his feet with precision, his body coiled and waiting as David de Rocaille spent his last, furious strength. He would live; he had to live. He had love at stake. I watched him with my heart in my throat. Surely, surely, that was victory writ in his gaze, biding and watchful.
    I closed my eyes and chose.
    "There is a thing I must do," I murmured unsteadily to Ti-Philippe, who had joined me in the balcony when Joscelin went after de Rocaille. "For Fortun, for Remy ... for all of us. Will you come with me?"
    He nodded once, grim as death, my merry chevalier. "My lady, I have sworn it."
    "Then come."
    Trailing him in my wake, I hurried down the staircase, past Stajeo and Tormos, who had fought side by side at last, past Oltukh, who asked in a startled voice where I went, and plunged into the crowd, threading my way through the throng. There is an art to it, as in many things; 'tis one of the first things we are taught, in the Night Court, wending our way amid patrons at the grand fetes. I took an indirect route, following the openings between tight-pressed bodies, ignoring exclamations as I passed. Once, I stumbled over something, and glancing down, saw 'twas Joscelin's fallen dagger, kicked and forgotten by the spectators. Under cover of the sound of clashing steel, I stooped quickly and snatched it up, hurrying onward.
    I had lost Ti-Philippe somewhere in the crowd, though I could hear him, by the fervid curses and explanations as the Serenissimans sought to detain him. If Melisande had taken a less leisurely pace, the Dogal Guard might have taken notice, and stopped her... or she might have reached the antechamber before me. She did not.
    I got there first.
    Alone save for a cluster of bewildered acolytes, I put my back to the Temple doors and set myself in Melisande's path, raising Joscelin's dagger between us, low and pointed upward as I had seen him do. Outside the door stood the Serenissiman Guard, keeping back the crowds of the Campo Grande. They would let her through, I thought; like as not, they had orders to do so.
    Melisande stopped and regarded me through her veil.
    "My lady Melisande," I said, trying to keep my voice level. It seemed impossible that I had spoken with a goddess' echoing tones only minutes ago. "You will not leave this place."
    "Phèdre." There was a world of meaning in that one simple word, my name, the entire battle in all its complex knots of enmity and love, hatred and desire, that lay between us, invested with the faint amusement that only Melisande could give it, cutting to the marrow of my soul and dismissing aught else as incidental. "Will you do violence by your own hand to stop me?"
    I shut my eyes, not wanting to see how her beauty shone like a torch behind the veil, and then opened them again, not trusting her out of my sight. I could hear, beyond the crowd, a shift in the deadly music of swordplay. Now it was the offensive strokes that rang measured and true, a steady, patient stalking, counterbalanced with desperate, clashing parries. "If I must."
    "Then do it," she said simply, and took a step forward.
    I was already trembling before she did; I have killed one person only in my life, in my own defense, and he was not Melisande. She reached out one hand, caressing the naked steel of Joscelin's dagger, fingers sliding up to cover mine where I clutched the hilt.
    "Will you?" she asked again, glorious eyes grave behind the veil as she twisted the dagger in my grip, turning my strength against me, my knees weakening at the touch of her hand. My breath came in white flashes and I felt my heart beating overhard and cursed my own ill-starred birth that shaped me to give in to the will of Kushiel's most splendid scion. "Will you truly?"
    Somewhere, on the Temple floor, Joscelin was pressing his attack. I knew it, knew the sound of his blade-strokes, quickening toward victory. But it was very far away and my world had dwindled to the scant inches that separated me from Melisande Shahrizaí. His dagger rose between us, her hand guiding mine, the dagger no longer pointed at Melisande. My limbs did not answer to my wishes, surrendering to hers with a languor against which I