Kushiel's Mercy

garden, I felt so strongly for him. For you.” She was silent a moment. “It’s so very peculiar the way the events in our lives cast reflections.”
    “I know,” I said. “I’ve thought it since Cythera. Phèdre and Joscelin went on a quest to find the Name of God and bind an angel. You and I seek to free a demon with a word.”
    “And if we succeed, Terre d’Ange will be indebted to Melisande Shahrizai,” Sidonie added. “It feels as though we’ve been on a long, strange journey to bring the circle around to a full close.”
    “My mother persuaded Ptolemy Solon to aid me for her own reasons,” I reminded her. “It doesn’t erase the past.”
    “No, but it changes the future,” Sidonie said. “If we do come out this whole, I don’t think anyone will ever ever dare question your integrity again.” Her voice softened. “And our horde won’t have to grow up knowing their father was responsible for having his own mother executed. Elua help me, but I’m glad of that.”
    I thought about my last glimpse of Melisande: standing at Ptolemy Solon’s side on the docks of Paphos as she watched me sail away into danger, believing myself to be Leander Maignard. About her parting words. Be safe. Just be safe . Almost the same words Alais had spoken. There had been genuine love in them. Whatever else was true of her, I didn’t doubt that my mother loved me.
    “So am I,” I murmured.
    Sidonie cocked her head. “I’d like to meet her someday.”
    I tried to envision it and couldn’t. My cool, regal beloved with her startling streak of hidden fire; my damnable mother and the deep, ineffable spell she cast. “I suppose anything is possible.”
    The doubt in my voice made her laugh. “We’ll see.”
    At night we made camp in isolated areas as we’d done on the journey to Turnone. We talked strategy with Kratos, explaining the situation in the City of Elua to him in detail.
    Kratos listened and nodded sagely.
    “So all in the City believe you mad, my lord?” he asked.
    I stared at the campfire. “Yes.”
    Until we’d caught sight of the shores of Terre d’Ange, I’d avoided thinking about it; but the nearer we drew to the City, the more it preyed on my mind. I still bore traces of scarring on my wrists and ankles where I’d chafed my flesh raw against my restraints, screaming horrible threats at those I loved and plotting their deaths. Scars. An echo of the bindings I’d once worn to protect me against Morwen’s talisman, an echo of the increasingly painful bindings that protected Sidonie against Bodeshmun’s spell. And that in itself was an echo of the ropes I’d knotted around Sidonie’s willing wrists more than once, the memory of pleasure that helped her endure the pain.
    The bright mirror and the dark.
    The things I’d said in my madness . . . ah, Elua!
    “Kratos.” Sidonie touched his thick forearm. “No one in the City knows you. ’Tis my thought to tell them that you were my lord Astegal’s most loyal bodyguard, the cherished comrade of his boyhood. That he trusted you with my safety, and that you have repaid it a thousandfold. That I now trust you with my poor deluded kinsman’s care. Are you up to the task of playing this role?”
    Kratos bent his head toward her. The firelight danced over his blunt features, his bristling hair. “I will arise to any challenge her highness sets me.”
    “We don’t deserve you, Kratos,” I murmured.
    He turned his hard, shrewd gaze on me. “Don’t say that, my lord. I was plucked from a slave-market by a foppish young D’Angeline to serve as his bearer. I saw something in him worthy of serving. When I spoke, he listened. You listened.”
    “Leander listened,” I said. “By the time I knew myself, I’d already seen the measure of your worth.”
    “Ah, well.” Kratos glanced back at Sidonie. “I suspect there was a fair bit of you in there all along, my lord.”
    On the third day, we reached the outskirts of Yvens, an unassuming little village on the Aviline known for its olives. As before, Sidonie and I waited while Marc Faucon and a couple of his men rode ahead to secure the way.
    It was a lovely spring day, clear and almost balmy. We waited alongside an olive grove.
    They were venerable old trees with gnarled trunks. The afternoon sun slanted through their leaves, through the clusters of delicate white flowers blooming on their branches.
    Sidonie and I walked in the grove while Kratos and Faucon’s men kept watch.
    “It seems