Kushiel's Chosen

him. How Barquiel had found him, I'd no idea.
    Ysandre sat formally to hear the testimony, and her face turned unreadable as it wore on. Two Cassiline Brothers flanked her, upright and motionless, hands on daggers, nearly identical in their ash-grey mandilion coats and clubbed hair. They were fixtures, part of the trappings of royalty, as much as the gilded sconces and the elegant tapestries. Small wonder, I thought, Bernard could not describe them individually; I was hard put to do it myself.
    I could consider such things, because it had grown evident, long before the testimony ended, that Marmion Shahrizai was guilty. After the poacher's boy, his shoulders slumped, chains hanging slack from his wrists. I glanced at the Duc de Shahrizai, and saw an implacable sentence writ in his gaze.
    When it was done, Ysandre spoke, her voice cool and measured. If ever she had cared for him, no one would know it to hear her. "What do you say, my lord Marmion?"
    His answer, by contrast, was strained. "I didn't intend it." He gave her an agonized look. "I sent them, but only to search the manor! When yon steward summoned the guard, they panicked and fled, throwing down their torches." Marmion Shahrizai turned out his elegant hands, shackles clanking. "I never intended a fire," he whispered.
    One by one, beginning with Duc Paragon, the members of House Shahrizai turned their backs upon him. I pitied Marmion his fear, a little.
    Ysandre's expression never changed. "And why, my lord, should we believe you, when you have done nothing but lie to us? It is far easier to credit that you set fire to your sister's manor to silence her, lest she reveal your complicity in the matter of Melisande's escape. Of a surety, she is not alive now to gainsay you."
    "No!" The word burst from Marmion's lips. Staring around the room, he gave a wild laugh. "Who is it? One of you here? You, your grace?" He indicated Barquiel L'Envers with a jerk of his chin. "You've done for me, sure as death! Or you, my lord." He laughed despairingly as Quincel de Morhban raised an eyebrow. "I trusted you! I betrayed my own cousin into your hands, for the promise of the rewards my loyalty would bring. Did you and Persia use me as your stalking-horse? Was it naught but a plot within a plot all the while?"
    It could not have been de Morhban, I thought. He delivered Melisande as a pledge of his loyalty, but he hadn't fought on the battlefield. Ysandre never trusted him wholly, nor would the garrison of Troyes-le-Mont. The guard at the postern gate would have challenged Quincel de Morhban, Duc or no.
    So I was thinking, when I realized Marmion's stare had picked me out of the gathering. "Or you," he said softly. "How high you have risen, little Comtesse! To think, so short a time ago, you were but a runaway bondservant convicted of murdering her lord. Now, commoners bow in the streets, nobles vie for your favors and you conspire openly with a scion of the Stregazza. But I, I have not forgotten you were Melisande's creature."
    "Enough." Ysandre did not raise her voice, but the tone of command silenced him like a hammer. "Then is it your claim, my lord Marmion, that your sister Persia conspired with an unknown ally to achieve Melisande Shahrizai's escape from Troyes-le-Mont?"
    "It is," he said grimly. "She told me as much, and that it was worth my life to breathe word of it within ten leagues of the throne."
    "And you sought proof of this from her manor-house?"
    Marmion licked his lips. "A courier had come from the east. Unmarked livery, but there was... there was a stable-lad, who brought me information in exchange for silver. He saw the insignia of the Stregazza on the courier's bags. I thought if I could learn somewhat..." He gave that laugh that was no laugh, tears standing in his eyes, and raised his shackled arms. "I thought," he gasped, "I might not end like this, Ysandre!"
    She looked at him without remorse, without pity. "You should have told us, Lord Marmion. We would have protected you."
    "Would you?" he whispered. "From whom?"
    Having no answer, Ysandre gave him none. "Your grace," she said crisply to Quincel de Morhban. "I am satisfied with Lord Marmion's confession in the matter of withholding evidence in an affair of state. As for the crime of arson leading to death, that is a matter for Kusheline justice, and I remand him unto your jurisdiction."
    "Your majesty." Quincel de Morhban bowed, and turned to Duc Paragon. "Your grase, these crimes fall within the