Kushiel's Chosen

demesnes of House Shahrizai. I am willing to give Lord Marmion over unto your custody, do you wish it."
    Silver-grey hair rippled as the patriarch of House Shahrizai shook his head, never glancing at Marmion. "From this day forth, he is no scion of my House," Paragon de Shahrizai said in a deep voice. "Pass sentence as you deem fit, cousin."
    "Very well." Quincel de Morhban took a breath, and in a formal tone, gave his judgement. "Marmion of Kusheth, for the crime of arson leading to death, you are herewith stripped of your title and estates. Your possessions shall be sold, and the proceeds distributed among the survivors of your actions and the families of the deceased." Pausing, he continued in a different voice. "Whether or not you sent your men to fire the manor, I cannot say. I don't suppose you can produce them to testify on your behalf?"
    A distant look in his eyes, Marmion shook his head. "I dismissed them from my service and told them I never wanted to see them again."
    "Then I shall do the same." Quincel de Morhban pronounced his final sentence. "Exile."
    At a nod from Ysandre, her Captain of the Guard produced a key and struck Marmion's shackles. No one spoke. He stood alone in the center of the room, rubbing his chafed wrists. The guards formed a double line leading to the door, giving him a cue to exit. After a moment, Marmion gave a soft, despairing laugh, and I thought I had never seen a man more alone in the midst of a throng. He turned to Ysandre, and bowed. She inclined her head once, briefly, and Marmion turned, walking away. A pair of guards fell in behind him. They would see him, I knew, to the gates of the City.
    Beyond that, he was on his own. I gazed at Barquiel L'Envers, lounging against a column; at the keen hatred on the Shahrizai faces scattered here and there. I did not think Marmion Shahrizai would live long.
    Ysandre turned her expressionless gaze on Barquiel L'Envers. "I am still wroth with you," she said, although she abandoned the royal pronoun for the personal. "And you." The violet eyes turned my way. "I want to talk to you, Phèdre."

TWENTY-THREE
    1 was some time cooling my heels, waiting on the Queen's indulgence, imagining all the while the most dreadful things - foremost among them that Ysandre had taken Marmion Shahrizai' s accusations to heart. Indeed, Ysandre may well have intended it, bidding me to wait in an antechamber without so much as a foot-servant for company. A nervous silence loosens tongues; I knew that much from Delaunay's teaching.
    When one of her Cassilines came to fetch me, it was not to one of her receiving rooms that he escorted me, but a room in the Palace I'd never seen before; the Hall of Portraits, it is called. The scions of House Courcel were prominently displayed. I walked past a long line of them, to find Ysandre gazing at a small portrait hung in an out-of-the-way niche, near to the images of Prince Rolande and Princess Isabel, her parents.
    "Pretty, wasn't she?" Ysandre asked by way of absent greeting, ignoring my curtsy.
    "Yes, your majesty." Unsettled, I glanced at the portrait; a young woman with kind brown eyes and a gentle smile, rich brown hair coiled at the nape of her neck in a pearl-studded mesh caul. "Who was she?"
    "Edmée de Rocaille. She was to have married my father." Ysandre touched a brass plaque at the base of the frame that gave Edmée's name. "Imagine," she mused, "how different matters would have fallen out, if she had. I would not have been born, and Anafiel Delaunay would have stood at my father's left hand as his sanctioned Consort. You and I would not be standing here having this conversation, Phèdre."
    "Your father," I said, "would still have been killed in the Battle of Three Princes. And Skaldia would still have given birth to Waldemar Selig, uniting for the first time under a leader who thought."
    "Mayhap." Ysandre looked directly at me. "My mother was responsible for her death, you know."
    "I know." I glanced involuntarily at the portrait of Isabel L'Envers de la Courcel, a fair, blonde beauty with her daughter's violet eyes and a cunning mouth like her brother Barquiel's. A cut girth-strap, a riding accident. Ysandre resembled her a great deal more than her father.
    "And now I have allowed Marmion Shahrizai to be sent to his death," Ysandre murmured, "Or at least, I'd not give a fig for his chances. Would you, near-cousin?" She glanced at me, and I shook my head slowly. She sighed. "If he dies, and I learn the cause