Kushiel's Mercy

half my life being taught by Joscelin Verreuil. Would you expect aught else?”
    “Apparently I did,” he said.
    I left the encounter feeling better. I didn’t expect to earn the loyalty and trust of Sidonie’s guard, at least not easily, but I’d settle for a measure of respect, and I thought mayhap I’d won it today from Claude de Monluc. It wasn’t his job to protect me and I didn’t expect that either, but it would be good to feel confident that if there was a dagger hurtling toward my back, a guard would shout a warning.
    And it least it hadn’t been a summons to speak with Queen Ysandre for failing to tell her about the Unseen Guild, although it made me uneasy that Sidonie hadn’t returned yet. I put the thought out of my head and sat down at her desk to complete my letter to the Master of the Straits.
    I was just finishing when she returned. I glanced up, trying to decipher her expression.
    “Was she angry?”
    “No.” Sidonie looked bemused. “She knew.”
    I blinked. “She knew ?”
    “Mm-hmm.” She sat on the couch. I dusted my letter to Hyacinthe with sand and went to join her. “Phèdre told her everything before she and Joscelin departed on their mysterious errand.” Sidonie glanced at me with a flicker of amusement. “The one we don’t want to know about.”
    “Do you ?” I asked.
    “Gods, no.” She rolled her shoulders. “We’ve got burdens enough, you and I.”
    I shifted to rub her neck and shoulders. “You were gone a long time.”
    “We had a good discussion.” Her voice was soft and low. “The first in a long time. I was angry. She should have trusted me with the knowledge.”
    I pressed my lips to the nape of her neck, inhaling her scent. “Why didn’t she?”
    “For many of the same reasons you didn’t, so she said.” Sidonie sighed. “Because it’s dangerous. And because there’s no proof and naught to be done about it without stirring the waters. Spies will be spies, she said. We have spies, too, you know.”
    I blew in her ear. “Oh, do we?”
    Sidonie wriggled. “Do you want to talk or . . . ?”
    “Both.” I let go of her and reclined on the couch, folding my arms behind my head, smiling at her.
    “Elua, you’re insufferable!” With an agile movement, Sidonie turned and stretched atop me, propping her elbows on my chest and resting her chin on folded hands. “Yes.” She gazed down at me. “We have spies, although not so extensive a consortium, and none successful enough to find your cursed mother. But you recall the situation in Carthage that Raul mentioned? Mother is concerned about it. Aragonia has been a loyal ally.”
    “Carthage,” I echoed, shifting my hips so that my phallus, erect and aching in my breeches, pressed against the warm cleft between her gown-clad thighs. “Where an ambitious young general threatens war.”
    “He’s not . . .” Sidonie writhed against me. “At this point, there’s no . . .” I unfolded my arms and reached down to grasp her buttocks, pulling hard. She shuddered and narrowed her eyes at me. “Why in the name of all the gods do you find it so perversely arousing to discuss politics while making love?”
    “I don’t know,” I murmured. “But you want me inside you, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” she whispered. “Gods, yes!”
    It had been this way between us since the beginning, and neither of us could say why.
    The desire between us was like an oil-soaked rag, ready to ignite at a single spark. And yet it was more than that, too. We reflected one another, the bright mirror and the dark.
    Sidonie sat back on her heels, undoing the laces of my breeches. I pushed her skirts up around her hips, tugged her underdrawers down. She took my throbbing phallus in hand, fit me to her slick opening. I pushed.
    We fit.
    She sank onto me, sighing. I filled her.
    “So it was a good talk,” I said.
    “Yes.” Sidonie rocked atop me, her eyelids flickering as I dug my fingernails into her buttocks. “I think . . . I think mayhap the truth of it is she was waiting to see if you would tell me on your own. About your mother and the Unseen Guild.”
    I jerked my hips upward. “And I did.”
    “You did,” she agreed. “Eventually.”
    “You were the one who didn’t want to face the cost of winning your mother’s blessing until we had to,” I reminded her.
    “True.” Her pace quickened. “I need to not talk for a moment.”
    A moment; many moments. I watched her face transformed with pleasure, alight and