Kushiel's Mercy

Carthage’s spell was broken and the realm was at peace.
    In the streets, strangers embraced and wept.
    Poets in their chambers began to scribble notes.
    The Secretary of the Presence’s assistants began to transcribe copies of her record, preparing to send them throughout the realm.
    In the nearly empty hall, I sat on the edge of the dais and sighed. Sidonie stood beside me, resting one hand on my shoulder. Apart from the attendant guards standing at a discreet distance and the hovering chamberlain, almost everyone had left. Only those who loved us best remained.
    “So.” Ysandre broke the long, long silence. Her violet eyes were bemused. “Terre d’Ange owes its freedom to Melisande Shahrizai?”
    I nodded wearily. “In a sense.”
    Joscelin shook his head. “The humors of the gods are perverse.”
    “Yes.” Phèdre’s gaze rested on us, on Sidonie and me. “But in the end, they are merciful.”
    Mercy .
    Just the sound of the word felt like the touch of grace. I closed my eyes, feeling the tide of exhaustion returning to claim me, a spiraling weight dragging me downward. And then I forced them open so I could look at Sidonie. Her face was swimming in my vision and there was a sparkling darkness behind my eyes. I’d slept very little in the past few days.
    “What will you?” Drustan asked his daughter.
    “Food.” Sidonie’s fingers brushed over the lump on the back of my skull, feather-light.
    “And sleep.”
    “Sleep,” I echoed.
    And then the sparkling darkness took me.
    I roused briefly, long enough to allow myself to be assisted to a bed. I was vaguely aware of voices. I let them slip away and slid back into the darkness.
    I slept and dreamed. I dreamed of blood and war and fire. I dreamed of showers of rose petals falling. I dreamed of Sidonie’s black gaze staring at me through the falling petals, staring with stark fury before a mirror. A vast mirror reflecting the occluded moon. A paring knife. A slippery disk of flesh and blood, more blood. Bodeshmun’s chest heaving futilely, his heels drumming. Swords. Men dying, men crying. Astegal’s head on a stake, his mouth slack. A golden knot, whorls of bark. An emerald splintering. Whorls of dirt and sand, towering high above Elua’s Oak. A gaping maw, horns shiny as mica dipping.
    I blinked awake.
    Moonlight spilled through the bedchamber, a moon just past fullness.
    In the balcony door, Sidonie turned. “Imriel.”
    I propped myself on one arm. “Did I miss aught?”
    “No.” She came over and ran a lock of my hair through her fingers. “How’s your head?
    Lelahiah said it was best to let you sleep.”
    “Better,” I said. “I think it was mostly exhaustion. I felt like a candle that had been blown out.”
    “Can you eat?” she asked. “I’ll send someone to the kitchens.”
    “Later.” I folded back the bed-clothes. “Come here.”
    Sidonie shed her robe and slid into bed, slid into my arms, warm and naked. Her body pressed against mine. She shivered, a shiver that owed nothing to coldness. “I keep thinking about it. The demon. It bowed to us.”
    I tightened my arms around her. “I know. Mayhap even a demon may be grateful.”
    “Mayhap,” she murmured.
    There was nothing else to say.
    We slept.

Eighty-Six

    In the days that followed, Terre d’Ange slowly found its bearings.
    Sidonie and I met with Ghislain nó Trevalion and determined to dispatch five hundred soldiers throughout the realm, carrying copies of the transcript of our audience to be read in every city and village. She appointed Raul L’Envers y Aragon to head a delegation to Amílcar with a pledge of aid should it be needed. The Siovalese lord Tibault de Toluard volunteered to serve as an ambassador to the fledgling Euskerria, carrying a charter stamped with the royal seal confirming Terre d’Ange’s end of the bargain. Together we drafted letters to D’Angeline ambassadors scattered around the world, assuring them that Terre d’Ange had regained its wits.
    Drustan sent his honor guard to Alba carrying a message of peace and apology to his heir Talorcan.
    Those members of Parliament who had remained ensconced in the City gathered their retinues and departed for their own estates, in many cases reuniting families torn apart by Carthage’s spell.
    The priesthoods of Blessed Elua and his Companions announced that the month of Sidonie’s regency would be a time of contemplation for all. They bade their own members to meditate on the near-tragedy