Kushiel's Mercy

pass the night here?”
    There was a yearning hunger in the question, and fear, too. I found myself wanting to assuage both. I was in her debt. It would be easy, so easy, to offer the simple balm of my presence. And yet in the back of my mind there were black armbands and down-turned thumbs. There was a blood-soaked battlefield. Waldemar Selig had begun to skin Phèdre alive there.
    “I can’t,” I said.
    Melisande inclined her head. “I understand.”
    And so I left to await word from Ptolemy Solon. The stable-lad that Leander had made blush brought the Bastard around. My mother escorted me to the courtyard herself. In the twilight, her beauty deepened. I thought about her likeness hanging in the Hall of Portraits at the Palace. In her youth, she’d had a beauty as keen and as deadly as a blade.
    Now, oddly, it cut deeper. Sorrow became her.
    “I’ll see you on the morrow,” I said awkwardly. “No doubt you’ll wish to be a part of this intrigue.”
    A wry edge returned to her voice. “No doubt.”
    I hesitated, holding the Bastard’s reins. He was unusually compliant, still out of sorts from the lengthy sea voyage. “Mother . . . why did you name me Imriel? I’ve always wondered.”
    “Eloquence of God.” A smile touched her lips. Melisande Shahrizai tilted her head, regarding me in the twilight. “Because when you were born, for the first time, I understood it. Love as thou wilt, ” she said, musing. “I have always adhered to the precept of Blessed Elua in my own way. And yet, until you were born, I didn’t truly know what it was to love another living soul. Beyond thought, beyond reason. And I thought, for once, that the gods were speaking clearly to me.”
    I swallowed hard. “I see.”
    She didn’t answer, only laid a hand on the back of my head. I bent toward her and felt the touch of her lips on my brow. “Tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow,” I echoed.
    I rode away in the gathering dusk, my thoughts in turmoil. Unlike Carthage, unlike Alba or even Drujan, there were no arcane arts practiced in Terre d’Ange. And yet, in the space of a single day, I had nearly fallen under my mother’s spell, born of nothing but her own singular presence.
    It had been a pleasant day.
    I wrenched my thoughts away, turning them westward. Toward Carthage, toward Sidonie.
    I wondered what the nuptial ceremony had been like. I tortured myself with thoughts of Sidonie, willing and eager in Astegal’s bed. I felt the spell of my mother’s presence dissipate, hard resolve settling in its place.
    Still, her kiss lingered.
    As I drifted into sleep in the widow Nuray’s house, I found myself wondering if I would ever see my mother again once I left Cythera. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted the answer to be.
    On the morrow, I rose to find a summons from Solon awaiting, bright and early. I wasted no time, breaking my fast with a couple of ripe apricots, then riding over to the palace.
    Ptolemy Solon was awaiting me in his library, which was one of the largest I’d ever seen.
    The main chamber was vast, with a high ceiling, tall windows at one end, doors at the other, and twin facing walls lined with bookshelves, ladders propped against each wall.
    There were alcoves with cubbyholes for scrolls, and smaller, locked chambers.
    In the center of the main chamber, there were long tables suitable for study. Solon was seated at the head of one such table, a book of blank parchment and a pen and inkwell before him. My mother was seated at its opposite end. The vast space dwarfed him, while it seemed to suit her. Nonetheless, it was Solon who glanced up and bade me enter, brown eyes bright in his wizened face.
    “Good morning, my lord,” I said, hesitating. “Mother.”
    “Come.” Solon patted the table. “Sit. Between Sunjata’s tales of a great mirror being forged and the coming occlusion of the moon, I knew enough to guess at what Carthage intended. Not enough to be certain how it was done. I will need to hear everything you can remember about Carthage’s visit. Everything .”
    I approached and took a seat. “I am most grateful for your aid, my lord.”
    “I’m sure you are.” He shot an inscrutable look at my mother, who smiled and raised one brow. Solon gestured at a tray on the table containing a pitcher of water and an array of pastries. “Eat. Drink. Tell me everything.”
    I helped myself to a cup of water, flavored with lemon and honey.
    And I began to talk.
    I told them everything, commencing with my