Kushiel's Mercy

horse-thief.
    They were nothing to the scars Berlik’s claws had left on me, but they were emblems of a wound that had cut as deep as Dorelei’s death. In Tiberium, a Priest of Asclepius had told me to learn to bear them with pride. Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight, he’d said.
    I’d found mine.
    And I didn’t want to leave her.
    Word came from the Master of the Straits. He had completed a search of Alba and found no trace of my mother. He pledged to spend the winter searching every inch of Terre d’Ange for her, gazing into his sea-mirror, and promised a report in the spring. It was a slow process, he wrote, easy to locate someone when one knew where to look, but tedious and exacting when one didn’t. We made certain this bit of gossip was disseminated.
    I discussed the matter at length with Phèdre, who knew Melisande Shahrizai better than anyone else. When spring came, unless by some miracle Hyacinthe actually found my mother, I would be bound to act.
    “You know,” Phèdre said with some asperity, “ I wanted to go after her when she first vanished.” She gave Joscelin a sidelong glance. “You refused to allow it. Now her trail’s seven years’ cold.”
    “If you’d found her then, how would Imriel prove himself now?” he asked reasonably.
    “Mayhap this happened for a reason.”
    “I refused, too,” I reminded her. “I didn’t want her past dictating our lives anymore. And I certainly wasn’t planning on falling in love with Sidonie.”
    “That still puzzles me a little,” Joscelin mused.
    I laughed. “You’re one to talk.”
    “True,” he agreed.
    “Well, we could start in La Serenissima,” Phèdre said thoughtfully, ignoring our comments. “They kept her secrets well at the Temple of Asherat, but of a surety, someone there knows. Mayhap they’d be willing to talk after so long.”
    “We?” I said.
    She gave me one of her deep looks. “You didn’t suppose we’d let you go alone.”
    I glanced at Joscelin, uncertain.
    “This time she’s right,” he said. “You came too damnably close to dying in Alba while we were half a world away. I’ll not run that risk again.”
    It made me feel immeasurably better. “So it’s a start. What else?”
    “Follow the tale,” Phèdre said simply. “It’s not much, but it’s somewhat.”
    “The Bella Donna,” I murmured.
    Joscelin rolled his eyes.
    My mother had spent almost fourteen years claiming sanctuary in the Temple of Asherat in La Serenissima. In Tiberium, I’d learned that an odd cult of faith had sprung up around her presence there: the Bella Donna, the beautiful woman wrongfully accused, mourning her lost son. It was said that the goddess Asherat-of-the-Sea, herself a grieving mother, had taken pity on her, dissolving the walls of her sanctuary-prison, so that the Bella Donna could go in search of her missing son.
    What the tale failed to take into account was that I had in fact been found for some years before my mother vanished. And it wasn’t Melisande who had found me and brought me out of darkness, but Phèdre.
    My mother had sent her, though. That much was true.
    “Stories feed on kernels of truth,” Phèdre said pragmatically. “There have to have been sightings. And then there’s Menekhet.”
    “Menekhet?” I echoed.
    She nodded. “She counted Ptolemy Dikaios an ally. I’ll warrant he knows somewhat.”
    Her brows furrowed. “I’ll warrant he’s a member of your Unseen Guild, too. If ever there was a candidate ripe for covertcy and intrigue, it would be Pharaoh of Menekhet.”
    “It’s not my Guild,” I said automatically
    “What about your senator’s wife?” Joscelin asked. “Claudia Fulvia.”
    I shook my head. “Claudia didn’t know anything beyond what she told me. I do believe that much. I daresay her masters didn’t trust her with more than she needed to know.” I grinned at the memory. “Claudia had her skills, but discretion wasn’t among them. I’d reckon the Ephesian ambassador a better wager.”
    “Diokles Agallon,” Phèdre said aloud, remembering.
    I shrugged. “He offered a trade of favors. When I refused, he bade me remember his name. He implied that few within the Guild would be willing to make such a trade. And Canis did have an Ephesian accent.” I frowned. “Or somewhat close to it, at any rate.”
    “I’d sooner hunt across Caerdicca Unitas than chance your owing favors to the Unseen Guild,” Joscelin observed. “From what I’ve heard of them, it