Kushiel's Dart

small estate, but it's been in the family for six hundred years. Shemhazai's line, you know. We kept up the library, sent one son a generation to the Cassiline Brotherhood, and served the throne of Terre d'Ange as need required."
    "Is it just your father?" I asked in a low voice.
    Joscelin shook his head again. "No," he said quietly. "Luc would have gone with him."
    "Luc?"
    "My older brother." He sighed, resting his chin on his knees. "I've a younger, too, but they'd have made Mahieu stay. Mother's comfort, the youngest; Father's strength, the eldest. It's the one born in the middle goes to Cassiel. So they say, in Siovale. My sisters used to tease. Three of those, too, you know."
    And eleven years since he'd seen any of them; I remembered that, well. It must be twelve by now. Better than half my life, and near as much for Joscelin. I'd come to think of him as nigh as rootless as myself, but it wasn't true.
    I wanted to say something, but I'd no words. I took his arm instead, and he looked ruefully at me.
    "I thought I'd have a chance to see them," he said. "Before . . . well, before the end. At twenty-five, they let us visit home, in the Brotherhood, if we've served well . . ." He shivered. "Or . . . they would have. I'm anathema, now. Does my family know, do you think? Or do they know only that I'm a condemned murderer, convicted of killing Anafiel Delaunay?"
    "No one who knew you would believe it, Joscelin."
    "What do they know?" There was a hard note in his tone. "I was ten years old, Phedre! How do they know what I became?" He turned his forearms, starlight glinting on his steel vambraces. "I hardly even know myself, anymore," he whispered. "Ah, Elua! Did we come all this way for nothing more than this?"
    "I don't know," I murmured, gazing past the campfires, across the darkened land. I had known the number of the Skaldi, had seen them, but even so ... thirty thousand. Somewhere out there in the darkness, they camped around a fortress and made ready to rend the very fabric of all I held dear.
    Joscelin drew a long breath, gathering himself. "Whatever may come in the morning, we'll make ready to ride to Trevalion. It's well-garrisoned and Ghislain's promised his hospitality. Rousse will spare a guard for you, too. His men wouldn't let him do aught else."
    I looked at him and said nothing.
    "No." His jaw set stubbornly; even by starlight, I could see the white lines forming alongside his nose. "Oh, no. Don't even think it."
    "They came at my word."
    "They came at the Queen's word! You did but carry it!"
    "Ysandre de la Courcel did not play on the Twins' jealousy to spur the Dalriada to war," I said. "Or leave her oldest friend in the world bound to a lonely rock to win passage toward a doomed battle. I can't run from this, Joscelin."
    "What in Rousse's seven hells do you think you can do?" he shouted at me. "It's a war!"
    I shrugged. "Put a face on what they're fighting and dying for. That's what you told me, isn't it?"
    He had no answer for that. "And if they vote to retreat?" he asked, looking away.
    "I'll go to Caerdicca Unitas and offer my services to Prince Bene-dicte," I said. Joscelin glanced back at me, surprised. "What other course is there? Drustan will stay, no matter what. Mayhap if the Caerdicci hear of the Cruarch of Alba's sacrifice, it will sway some few of them."
    "The Caerdicci won't fight for Terre d'Ange," Joscelin said softly. "The city-states are more fractious than the Skaldi, and more jealous than the Twins. Not even Naamah's wiles can bind them together, Phedre."
    "I know," I said. "But it's better than waiting to fall into Selig's hands." Rising, I stooped and kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry about your family. I'll pray for them, Joscelin."
    "Pray for us all," he whispered.
    I did, too. It had been a long time since I'd truly offered prayer to Blessed Elua, and not just the desperate pleas one gasps out in terror. I prayed to Elua and all his Companions, not only those who had marked me, for wisdom, for guidance, for some glimmer of hope to hold against our despair. I prayed for the safety of Joscelin's father and brother, for Ysandre de la Courcel and all immured in Troyes-le-Mont, for Drustan and the Twins and all of their folk, Rousse, Phedre's Boys, Ghislain and Trevalion and all the Azzallese, and Hyacinthe, alone at sea. For the Night Court and all her Houses, for the poets and players of Night's Doorstep, for Thelesis de Mornay and Cecilie Laveau-Perrin, for the kind seneschal of