Kushiel's Mercy

including Solon’s mistress.”
    “What mistress?” I said lightly.
    “I am not jesting.” Bodeshmun’s face hardened. “I don’t care what tale you conceive that places you in Ptolemy Solon’s service without mention of Melisande Shahrizai, but you will do it.” He bent over me and took my chin in his hand. “Listen well, Leander Maignard. If you fail in any of these things, I will have your eyes put out and that flippant tongue torn from your head. Do you understand?”
    My shudder was unfeigned. “Yes, my lord. I do.”
    “Good.” He released me. “Remember it.”
    I left the audience shaken, which was probably a good thing. Sunjata was right; this was a dangerous business. I was going to have to tread very, very carefully with Princess Sidonie. I had to find a way to reach her, but if Bodeshmun suspected what I was about, I didn’t have any doubt that he’d carry out his threat.
    I was on my own here.
    And if I failed . . . if I failed, Ptolemy Solon would be placed in a very difficult situation, forced to explain my actions to an angry Carthage. But me, I’d just be blind and tongueless.
    Not a pleasant thought.

Thirty
    The next day, I received official word from Sidonie de la Courcel, Dauphine of Terre d’Ange and princess of the House of Sarkal, that my request for an audience had been granted and that I might call on her on the morrow. It was written on thick vellum in a neat, tidy hand, the letter sealed with the hawk crest of the House of Sarkal.
    I wondered if she’d written it herself.
    I had one of the chambermaids polish the chess set with its ivory and onyx pieces until their jeweled eyes gleamed. I summoned Ghanim and one of the Carthaginian brothers— I had a bad habit of forgetting which was which—to translate and asked about the Amazigh who guarded the princess.
    Ghanim spat on the floor.
    “No friends of his, I take it?” I asked the Carthaginian brother.
    There was a long exchange in Punic.
    “No,” he said eventually. “They are men who betrayed their brothers for gold and promises. They are men who sold their honor cheaply. Ghanim was betrayed, too. His brother stole his wife and accused him falsely of murder. That is how he became a slave.
    He means to seek revenge once you free him.”
    Well and so, there wasn’t much to be learned here. Ghanim stared fixedly at me, his eyes glittering. I felt an odd sense of kinship with him. After all, in a strange way, I was seeking to avenge another wronged man.
    “Soon,” I promised. “I don’t mean to stay here forever.”
    The day passed slowly. Patience, patience. I willed myself to be calm. The ledge I walked was high and narrow. On one side was Bodeshmun’s threat. I could still feel his strong fingers gripping my chin. And on the other side . . .
    Sidonie.
    I kept seeing her face in my thoughts, that dark, perplexed gaze. I wanted . . . gods, I wanted. I didn’t even know what. I wanted to hear what her voice sounded like. I wanted to know if Bodeshmun was right, if she had no inkling of what had been done to her. I couldn’t imagine it was true. Surely there must be bits of awareness in there. A haunting shadow, a sense that something was wrong.
    Or perhaps not.
    I took especial care with my appearance on the day of my audience with her. I brushed my hair until it gleamed, applied a pomade I’d discovered among the villa’s owners’
    toiletries, plaited it in careful braids. The weather was growing a bit cooler, and I rummaged through my trunks, selecting a sleeved tunic of deep crimson silk and a pair of loose striped breeches. I decided the latter was too gaudy and abandoned them for a dark, more somber pair. Then I reconsidered, and put the striped breeches back on.
    “Leander,” I muttered to myself in the mirror. “What ails you?”
    My mirrored face gazed back at me without comment.
    I blew myself a kiss. “Charming and harmless. For now, that’s the course.”
    Sunjata paid a call on me before I departed. He regarded me with quiet hilarity, his nostrils flaring. “Did you bathe in a vat of perfume?”
    “It’s a pomade I found,” I said. “Mine ran out. Too much?”
    “That would be putting it kindly,” he observed. “And I fear it’s a woman’s scent, not a man’s.”
    There wasn’t enough time to wash it out. I sighed and scrubbed at my hair with a clean linen towel, trying to remove the worst of the scent. It helped, but it rendered my careful braids frazzled. I unplaited them,