Kushiel's Mercy

What do you expect?” His voice softened. “Go tell Sidonie you’re sorry and make it up with her. You’re lousy company when you’re brooding.”
    I stood. “You’re right.”
    He grinned. “Good man.”
    Halfway to Sidonie’s quarters, I was met by Alfonse, who had been sent to fetch me.
    “Sidonie,” I said when I entered the salon. “I came to say—”
    “Imriel, I’m sorry,” she said at the same moment.
    “—came to say I’m sorry,” I finished. Both of us laughed. I reached out my hand. “Come here.”
    “You’re right.” Sidonie twined her fingers in mine. “Somewhat about this sits wrong, and Mother agrees. She wouldn’t have Ghislain and the entire army here if she didn’t. But I asked, and there’s simply no cause to cancel without reason.”
    “I know,” I said. “Mavros said the same thing. He also thinks it’s odd that we never quarrel.”
    She smiled wryly. “I’m sure we will when we can afford the luxury. Right now, we’ve got the entire realm doing our quarrelling for us.”
    I slid my hands around her waist, drawing her against me. “What shall we quarrel about when that blessed day arrives?”
    “Oh, I don’t know.” Sidonie looped her arms around my neck, gazing up at me. “I’m sure we’ll find something. Everyone does.”
    I kissed her, long and deep. “We’re not everyone.”
    “No,” she murmured. “We’re not.” Her arms tightened around my neck. “Imriel, will you take me to bed? No games tonight, just us.”
    I scooped her into my arms. “Love, I will do anything you wish.”
    We made love for a long time that night, until the almost-full moon stood high above the balcony outside her bedchamber, silver light spilling through the open doors and drenching our bed. Afterward, we lay for a time watching it, both of us wondering.
    Wondering what lay in the spaces between the stars. Wondering what the morrow would bring, and wondering what would follow.
    At length, Sidonie rolled over to face me. “I love you,” she said. Her shadowed eyes were wide and grave, and the moonlight behind her pinned a silvery halo on her love-tangled hair. “Very, very much.”
    Elua, she made my heart ache.
    I wound a lock of her hair around my fingers, feeling it catch on my knotted gold ring; a living echo of the gilded cord that bound us together. “Always,” I said. “Always and always.”
    Despite my misgivings, I slept soundly that night.
    I woke with a vague memory of my dreams, of beseeching Hyacinthe to fill the night sky with clouds that they might blot out the moon and ruin the Carthaginian horologists’
    spectacle. For the space of a few heartbeats, between sleeping and waking, I thought it was true, and my heart grew lighter. But then I opened my eyes to find the bedchamber filled with sunlight, and Sidonie, fully dressed, standing at the end of the bed and regarding me with amusement.
    “Lazy boy,” she said with affection.
    I smiled at her and patted the bed. “Come back and join me?”
    “I can’t,” Sidonie said ruefully, shaking her head. Gold shivered and glinted. Her hair was coiled in a coronet and she was wearing the earrings I’d given her for—Elua!—her seventeenth birthday, it had been. Golden suns, miniatures of the pendant she’d worn on the Longest Night the time I’d first kissed her. “I’m to attend a meeting between General Astegal and the Euskerri delegation.”
    I yawned and stretched. “Are the Euskerri intriguing with Carthage now?”
    “Trying.” She eyed me. “You needn’t look so tempting.”
    “This scarred thing?” I asked flippantly, gesturing at my body.
    “Mm-hmm.” Sidonie’s lips curved. “That very one.” She stooped to kiss me, her lips lingering on mine. “I’ll see you later.”
    It was a strange day and it passed slowly. I felt caught between warring moods, my apprehension at odds with last night’s tenderness, and all of it overshadowed by the vast change looming on the horizon.
    I dined that afternoon at Phèdre’s townhouse. I didn’t tell the whole story of how I’d coerced Gillimas, but I reported what I’d learned from him. In turn, I learned from Phèdre that the Governor of Cythera was one Ptolemy Solon, a kinsman of the Pharaoh of Menekhet, although he ruled under the auspices of Khebbel-im-Akkad.
    And I learned from Ti-Philippe, when he joined us a bit later, that there were rumors among the sailors about the Governor’s mistress.
    “The same story?” I asked.