Kushiel's Mercy

like to address them.”
    “Give me time to speak to Ramiro and Serafin,” Nicola said to her. “Let them take Liberio’s measure, and we’ll proceed from there. Prince Imriel is right; you’re not to leave your bed today.”
    “You’ll tell me as soon as you know anything?” Sidonie pressed.
    “Yes, your highness.” Nicola smiled at her. “You have my word.”
    Sidonie nodded, the gravity of her expression almost sufficient to offset the distracting display of cleavage. “And you my thanks. Terre d’Ange is fortunate to have someone with your presence and wits here in Amílcar.”
    “Rest.” Nicola rose. “Terre d’Ange is also fortunate to have an heir of such singular will and determination, and I suspect they’d wish to keep it that way. Of a surety, I have no wish to inform Ysandre that her valiant daughter succumbed to an injury from a paring knife.”
    I laughed and Sidonie smiled reluctantly. I escorted Nicola to the door, pausing there in the corridor.
    “My lady,” I said. “I’ve behaved very rudely to you in the past, and I wish to apologize.
    All I can say is that I was young, and there was a great deal about love that I didn’t understand.”
    “There’s no need,” Nicola said quietly. “I knew what you’d suffered. I understood.”
    It was true. Nicola L’Envers y Aragon was the one person in whom Phèdre had confided, the one who knew the worst details of what she’d endured in Daršanga.
    “Nonetheless,” I said. “I do apologize.”
    “Then I thank you for it.” She touched my cheek. A garnet seal dangled from a gold bracelet on her wrist, bearing an incised dart. Kushiel’s Dart—the only lover’s token Phèdre had ever bestowed on a patron. “We will see this undone, Imriel. Carthage will not prevail. Not here, not in Terre d’Ange.”
    I took her hand and kissed it. “Blessed Elua grant it will be so.”
    Nicola took her leave, and I returned to tend to my restless beloved, pouring a cup of water from a jug beside the bed.
    “Here.” I handed it to her. “The chirurgeon Rachel said you should drink a good deal of water to help flush the poisons.”
    Sidonie drank obediently. “Imriel, if I promise to behave and lie abed, will you go to the infirmary to see how Kratos and the others are? I’m worried.”
    “You already promised,” I reminded her. She gave me a look. “Yes, of course. I’m worried, too.” I stroked her hair. “Sidonie, if it helps to think on it, when I was in Bryn Gorrydum, after Dorelei was killed, I had to lie abed a long time and obey the chirurgeon’s orders. I did everything he said, thinking that the sooner I was mended, the sooner I’d be free to seek vengeance.”
    “I know,” she murmured. “But you were nearly disemboweled by a bear, not nicked by a paring knife. And in the end, it was more than vengeance.”
    “True.” I glanced at the poultice on her back. “And that was no nick, love. But at the time, it helped. That’s all I’m saying.”
    She sighed. “Will you find me a book to pass the time?”
    I was leaving to do just that when Sidonie called me back.
    “Imriel.”
    I paused in the doorway. “Yes?”
    She gazed at me with those dark, dark eyes. “I meant it. I want to kill Astegal myself. I want to feel him die.”
    I bowed. “Sun Princess, if it lies within my power, I will grant it.”
    I found the palace’s modest library and selected a tome for Sidonie: an Aragonian history that appeared to contain detailed and violent descriptions of various battles. I thought it might suit her mood.
    Fierce.
    Alais had said that once. It was during that terrible time when I was recuperating from the injuries Berlik had dealt me, the day I’d let myself grieve for the first time: for Dorelei’s death, for the death of our unborn son. I’d wept savagely, racked by sobs and regret. And afterward, for the first time, Alais had spoken openly of Sidonie and me. I think she must love you very much , she’d said. She’s very fierce, even though it doesn’t show .
    Alais knew her sister well.
    Gods, poor Alais.
    Thinking on it, I nearly wished I believed myself Leander Maignard still, blithely unconcerned about the fate of Terre d’Ange. It would have been a good deal easier than knowing myself Imriel and thinking with wretched horror of the stalemate Nicola had described, with the lives of those I loved hanging in the balance. Phèdre and Joscelin, loyal to the Queen and ensorceled. Alais, the sister of my