Kushiel's Mercy

built had warmed the hut until it was almost cozy and they both looked so peaceful: the Dauphine of Terre d’Ange and the nineteen-year-old soldier-lad with a good sense of direction on whom our lives currently depended. But the horses were rested, the day was fleeting, and we had nearly a hundred leagues to cover before we reached Roncal.
    “Time to go,” I said.
    A short time later, we were on our way.

Fifty-Nine

    We pushed the horses as hard as we dared on that journey. It was far from the worst trek I’d known in my life, but it wasn’t pleasant. The little villages that clung to the sides of the hills were few and far between, and those we encountered offered nothing in the way of comfortable lodgings.
    In the villages, we were greeted with a mix of suspicion and awe. I was apprehensive each time we entered one, remembering the hostility in New Carthage and the attempt on Sidonie’s life. Here in the north, it was better. They hadn’t felt the sting of defeat yet. But neither were they willing to wholeheartedly believe a wild tale from the lips of two D’Angelines and a lone half-Euskerri guide riding out of the hills. And even if I’d been inclined, I couldn’t play out my transformation from Leander Maignard’s semblance. I had abandoned the last of his tattered, scorched attire in Amílcar, and I didn’t trust a pair of eardrops and a couple of gaudy rings to sustain Ptolemy Solon’s spell for any length of time. I’d pushed my luck far enough.
    So Paskal and I continued to sleep in shifts, in villages or out of them. There were several nights when we were forced to make camp in the open, sleeping on the cold, hard ground.
    I didn’t mind on my behalf and Paskal seemed a hardy sort, but I knew Sidonie was uncomfortable. She wasn’t accustomed to this sort of hardship. Still, she bore it without complaining.
    On one such night, she came to join me while I kept watch during my shift, wrapped in my cloak.
    “Unable to sleep?” I asked.
    Sidonie nodded. “It’s perishing cold without you to warm me.”
    “You could huddle with Paskal,” I suggested.
    She smiled. “I’d rather sit with you.”
    I opened my cloak. “Come here, then.” We sat together in companionable silence until I could feel her growing warmer and relaxing beneath my arm. “I wish I had my flute,” I said. “I could charm you to sleep.”
    “Do you still remember the tune?” she asked.
    I tried to hum the charmed melody with which Morwen had haunted my dreams in Alba, the song that had won my freedom in Vralia, sending my gaolers to sleep. But the notes and the cadence were gone, slipping from my memory. My voice faltered and at last I shook my head. “I’m afraid it’s gone.”
    “Too bad,” Sidonie said. “It might have been useful.”
    “Mayhap D’Angelines weren’t meant to meddle with magic,” I said.
    “Mayhap,” she mused. “Or mayhap we never bothered, content with the magic that lay within ourselves and the arts Elua and his Companions taught us. If we’d known more, if we’d been wiser in the ways of the arcane arts, we might not have succumbed to Bodeshmun’s spell.”
    “Or I might have been able to protect myself from Morwen’s charm instead of having to rely on the ollamhs ,” I agreed.
    Sidonie stirred. “We could found an academy to study it. That could be our legacy, you and I.”
    “Oh?” I smiled into the night. “I thought our legacy was going to be ensuring the enduring survival of House Courcel by providing it with a multitude of heirs.”
    “I see.” She laughed. “How many?”
    “Hordes,” I said promptly. “Hordes and hordes of brooding boys and haughty girls who will grow up and surprise everyone, including themselves.”
    “Well, I don’t see why we can’t do both,” Sidonie observed. “After we finish saving the realm.”
    I squeezed her shoulders. “There is that.”
    Another silence settled between us. I was beginning to think mayhap she’d drifted into sleep when she broke it, her voice low. “Do you often think about the son you lost?”
    “Yes.” I swallowed. My unborn son, the child who would have grown into a tyrant. “Not so much as I did in the first year, but yes. Of course.” I tried to make out her face in the dim light. “Does it frighten you to think on it?”
    “No.” Sidonie gazed at me with that expression of utter trust that nearly split my heart in two. “You asked me that once before, and my answer is the same. No.