Kushiel's Mercy

go just as mad if I don’t.”
    Leander studied me. “You know, once you’re convinced you’re me, you won’t give two figs for the girl.”
    “We’ll see,” I said.
    Melisande and I dined alone, and I couldn’t have said what we ate, although it was good.
    I was sufficiently on edge regarding the morrow’s prospects that I forgot to be uneasy in her company. She spent long moments watching me without speaking.
    “Is there nothing I can say to dissuade you?” she asked me at last, when the dinner plates had been cleared and cups of a strong Cytheran cordial served. “Leander is right. The risk is unnecessary.”
    I sipped my cordial. “I can reach Sidonie. He can’t.”
    “She won’t know you,” Melisande observed.
    “It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “We’ll find one another.” I gazed toward the west, where Carthage lay. “Alais told me once that she thought Sidonie would need me very badly one day. And Sidonie . . . when she met with the combined priesthood of Elua and his Companions, she told them that Blessed Elua doesn’t join hearts without a purpose. I believe it’s true.”
    “Will I ever see you again?” my mother asked.
    I looked back at her, at her grave, beautiful face illuminated by lamplight. A mortal goddess who carried her sins lightly, her sorrow heavily. What emotions I felt, I couldn’t name.
    “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “I’ll not make any false promises.”
    Melisande nodded. “If you find it in your heart to see me again one day, I would like it. I would like it very much.”
    Against all expectations, I slept soundly that night, beneath my mother’s roof in a pleasant guest-chamber on sheets of the finest Menekhetan linen. I slept without dreaming and woke feeling oddly lighthearted.
    Today I would surrender everything.
    Everything I had, everything I was. I would let go of all of it, placing myself and all my trust in the hands of my mother’s lover, the dangerously clever and unfathomable Wise Ape of Cythera. Laying it all on the altar of love. In the end, that was truly where my trust lay. Not in Ptolemy Solon’s spells and arcane knowledge, but in love. In the precept of Blessed Elua. In Sidonie’s pledge.
    Always and always.
    She was the one who had taught me to trust. To trust her. To trust myself.
    I did.
    The mood stayed with me as we rode to the palace after breaking our fast; Melisande, Leander, and I. His presence was necessary for the spell. I breathed deep of the warm, salt-tinged air, filling my lungs. Reveling in the knowledge of myself, soon to be relinquished. I patted the Bastard’s spotted neck with bittersweet affection.
    “You’ll have to stay here,” I said to him, watching his ears swivel. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you. I wasn’t thinking. But I can’t take you to Carthage. Bodeshmun’s seen you.”
    The Bastard snorted in disgust.
    “You’ll take care of him for me?” I asked Leander.
    He nodded, sunlight winking on his ruby eardrops. “Of course.”
    My mother said nothing.
    At the palace, Ptolemy Solon was awaiting us in the chamber overlooking the sea. All of Leander’s clothing was there, clean and pressed with a hot iron, neatly folded. Solon looked unspeakably weary, his eyes bloodshot.
    “This,” he said, “is a damnably difficult spell.” He flexed his cramped hands. “One thing must always be bound to another. I have been sewing all night, which is not an activity to which I am accustomed. You need not know the details, but suffice it to say that this enchantment has been bound into every fiber of these garments.”
    “I’m to wear Leander’s attire?” I asked.
    “Indeed.” Solon stifled a yawn. “For therein lies the spell, bound to it stitch by stitch. Do you expose yourself to anyone in your full nakedness, that person will see you for your true self, then and thereafter.”
    “What if he beholds himself thusly?” Melisande asked in a low voice.
    “He would see himself truly,” Solon admitted. “But only were he to regard himself naked in a mirror. I do not recommend it, Imriel. For you would perceive yourself to be Leander trapped in Imriel’s form, and it would tax your wits.”
    I shrugged. “I’m not given to looking in mirrors.”
    “I am,” Leander murmured.
    “Well, I recommend against it.” Solon gathered himself. “Strip and don his clothing.”
    I stripped.
    It felt odd. I heard my mother catch her breath as I tugged the shirt over my head,