Kushiel's Mercy

thread out of my flesh. Sidonie stood at my side. When Montague had finished, he remained on his knees, gazing up at us like a supplicant.
    “We’ve tried,” he said simply. “All of us who follow Eisheth’s teaching. Tried and tried to find a cure for this madness. Tried and failed. Is it true you bring hope?”
    “A very slender thread of it,” Sidonie said.
    He kissed both our hands, then rose. “I will pray.”
    I glanced at Sidonie when he’d left. Her shoulders had slumped under the burden of so many folks’ hope, but when she saw me looking at her, they straightened. She lifted her chin. The warm lamplight illuminated her fair skin, the mark of Astegal’s sword healing but visible on her bare throat.
    “I’m not giving up,” she said. “No matter what happens.”
    “Good.” I kissed her. “Nor am I.”

Seventy
    I was right; we talked until dawn.
    Sidonie and I told our story first. If anything happened to us, it was important that the truth be known. And I don’t think I’d ever seen Barquiel L’Envers astonished, but he was astonished that night. Alais gasped aloud when Sidonie told of bidding me to cut the mark of the House of Sarkal out of her flesh.
    “And you did it?” she asked me in horror.
    “I had to,” I said.
    Alais looked at her sister. “May I see?”
    It was an odd request, but I understood it. It was such an outrageous tale, I didn’t blame Alais for needing to see the physical truth of it. Sidonie must have understood it too, for she didn’t answer, only turned her back to me. I unlaced her stays carefully, parting the back of her gown. Her hair was coiled in a loose chignon. The slender line of her back was bare, the disk-shaped scar showing like a brand between her shoulder blades, fresh and pink.
    “Gods!” Alais breathed. Barquiel L’Envers hissed through his teeth.
    I laced Sidonie’s stays and we told the rest of the tale. Bodeshmun’s death, finding the talisman. Our flight from New Carthage, our desperate entrance into Amílcar and our violent escape from it. The Euskerri and their insistence on an act of good faith. That part, they had learned from Nuno Agirre.
    “I nearly throttled him,” L’Envers said shortly.
    “It wasn’t his fault,” Sidonie murmured. “And the Euskerri paid an awful price in the end.”
    The war.
    Astegal’s death.
    I told that portion of our story while Sidonie was silent. I left out Astegal’s goading comments, but I told them of Sidonie’s role in Astegal’s death. That was the part that had Barquiel L’Envers staring in astonishment at his eldest grandniece. Sidonie returned his gaze with equanimity. Alais wasn’t surprised. She knew her sister far better than most people did.
    And then it was our turn to listen.
    Some of it we’d already heard from Henri Voisin, but I listened carefully lest there be some further clue in the details. There wasn’t. What there was instead was a palpable sense of how awful it had been when Ysandre had turned on them in a rage, accusing them of sedition and betrayal.
    “She’s not herself, Sidonie,” Alais whispered. “She’s just . . . not .”
    “And Father?” Sidonie asked.
    Alais shook her head. “He’d left before I arrived and she’d expelled us before he returned.
    Our paths didn’t cross. I never saw him in the grip of it.” She shivered. “I’m just as glad.”
    I swallowed. “Did you see Phèdre and Joscelin?”
    “Yes.” Alais looked at me with sympathy. “They’re not . . . I don’t think it’s taken them as hard as some. Phèdre wasn’t angry or harsh. She’s heartbroken at your disappearance.
    She just kept pleading with us to see reason and seemed hurt and confused when we wouldn’t.” She looked at her uncle. “And Joscelin was just . . . Joscelin. Only worse.”
    “I gave them your letter,” L’Envers said dryly. “Apparently it wasn’t convincing—or at least I was an unconvincing messenger. Messire Verreuil thinks I’ve disposed of you in some dreadful fashion.”
    I raised my brows. “Do you blame him?”
    To his credit, he answered with candor. “No.”
    Sidonie sighed. “Well, we’re going to have to face them all. Because if we stand any chance of averting this conflict, Imriel and I have to go to the City and find this damnable demon-stone before the full moon.”
    “What if it’s not there?” L’Envers asked. “What if it doesn’t even exist?”
    She glanced unerringly toward the east. “There’s somewhat