Kushiel's Chosen

It was hard, Elua knows, harder than many things I have done, to turn away from that fight and gaze out over the Temple. Several hundred people with less invested in that battle could not do it.



I knew who could.



With their strength united under Cesare Stregazza's command, the Serenissiman contingent had surrounded Benedicte's retinue. Most of those had surrendered by now, vastly outnumbered, and I saw a gathered knot around Prince Benedicte himself, fallen and bleeding from many wounds, his chest rising and falling slowly as he labored for breath. I saw the mercenaries who had attacked Ysandre's party slinking backward along the Temple walls, making for the exit. I heard the shouts and curses of the Serenissiman Guard outside the doors, now trying in earnest to keep out the pressing citizenry and tradesfolk. I heard a rising murmur from the Temple and had to look back.



On the floor, David de Rocaille mounted a furious defense, regaining ground, transforming his despair into wild energy, going on the attack; he was smiling, now, with clenched teeth, the way a man will smile facing his death. Step by step, he forced Joscelin backward....



This, I saw, and all of La Serenissima watching it. It hurt to look away again, but I did.



And I saw Melisande Shahrizai in her blue gown and shimmering veil, calmly walking toward the antechamber, and no one at all watching her do it.



Whatever happened, she would walk away free.



On the floor, Joscelin retreated warily, alert and aware, the glinting line of his blade deflecting de Rocaille's blows out and away, away from his body. He moved with care, placing his feet with precision, his body coiled and waiting as David de Rocaille spent his last, furious strength. He would live; he had to live. He had love at stake. I watched him with my heart in my throat. Surely, surely, that was victory writ in his gaze, biding and watchful.



I closed my eyes and chose.



"There is a thing I must do," I murmured unsteadily to Ti-Philippe, who had joined me in the balcony when Joscelin went after de Rocaille. "For Fortun, for Remy ... for all of us. Will you come with me?"



He nodded once, grim as death, my merry chevalier. "My lady, I have sworn it."



"Then come."



Trailing him in my wake, I hurried down the staircase, past Stajeo and Tormos, who had fought side by side at last, past Oltukh, who asked in a startled voice where I went, and plunged into the crowd, threading my way through the throng. There is an art to it, as inmany things; 'tis one of the first things we are taught, in the Night Court, wending our way amid patrons at the grand fetes. I took an indirect route, following the openings between tight-pressed bodies, ignoring exclamations as I passed. Once, I stumbled over something, and glancing down, saw 'twas Joscelin's fallen dagger, kicked and forgotten by the spectators. Under cover of the sound of clashing steel, I stooped quickly and snatched it up, hurrying onward.



I had lost Ti-Philippe somewhere in the crowd, though I could hear him, by the fervid curses and explanations as the Serenissimans sought to detain him. If Melisande had taken a less leisurely pace, the Dogal Guard might have taken notice, and stopped her... or she might have reached the antechamber before me. She did not.



I got there first.



Alone save for a cluster of bewildered acolytes, I put my back to the Temple doors and set myself in Melisande's path, raising Joscelin's dagger between us, low and pointed upward as I had seen him do. Outside the door stood the Serenissiman Guard, keeping back the crowds of the Campo Grande. They would let her through, I thought; like as not, they had orders to do so.



Melisande stopped and regarded me through her veil.



"My lady Melisande," I said, trying to keep my voice level. It seemed impossible that I had spoken with a goddess' echoing tones only minutes ago. "You will not leave this place."



"Phèdre." There was a world of meaning in that one simple word, my name, the entire battle in all its complex knots of enmity and love, hatred and desire, that lay between us, invested with the faint amusement that only Melisande could give it, cutting to the marrow of my soul and dismissing aught else as incidental. "Will you do violence by your own hand to stop me?"



I shut my eyes, not wanting to see how her beauty shone like a torch behind the veil, and then opened them again, not trusting her out of my sight. I could hear, beyond the crowd, a shift in the deadly music of swordplay. Now it was the offensive strokes that rang measured and true, a steady, patient stalking, counterbalanced with desperate, clashing parries. "If I must."



"Then do it," she said simply, and took a step forward.



I was already trembling before she did; I have killed one person only in my life, in my own defense, and he was not Melisande. She reached out one hand, caressing the naked steel of Joscelin's dagger, fingers sliding up to cover mine where I clutched the hilt.



"Will you?" she asked again, glorious eyes grave behind the veil as she twisted the dagger in my grip, turning my strength against me, my knees weakening at the touch of her hand. My breath came in white flashes and I felt my heart beating overhard and cursed my own ill-starred birth that shaped me to give in to the will of Kushiel's most splendid scion. "Will you truly?"



Somewhere, on the Temple floor, Joscelin was pressing his attack. I knew it, knew the sound of his blade-strokes, quickening toward victory. But it was very far away and my world had dwindled to the scant inches that separated me from Melisande Shahrizaí. His dagger rose between us, her hand guiding mine, the dagger no longer pointed at Melisande. My limbs did not answer to my wishes, surrendering to hers with a languor against which I struggled in vain. Gently, inexorably, the dagger rose, gripped hard in our linked hands, until its point rested beneath my chin, pricking the tender skin.



"Yes," I breathed, somewhere, distantly, appalled at my own response. Her scent surrounded me, rousing my desire, the warmth of her body devastatingly near. I raised my eyes to hers, feeling the dagger's prick, promise of the final consummation between us. I thought of Anafiel Delaunay, lying in his own gore; of Alcuin, raised as a brother to me. I thought of Fortun and Remy, Phèdre's Boys, slain for their loyalty. And though their shades cried out for vengeance, I could not strike. Not her, not Melisande. In the end, I was what I was, Kushiel's Chosen. Strength was not my weapon; only surrender. Was Melisande's freedom worth Kushiel's torment to her? I tightened my grip on the dagger beneath her hand, raising my other hand to cover hers, forcing the sharp tip hard beneath my chin, willing to complete the terminus begun so long ago on the fields of Troyes-le-Mont. "Will you?"



It only took a moment's hesitation.



Melisande hesitated.



"Immortali!" The name of the nobleman's club rang like a battle cry, and I knew the voice that uttered it; Severio Stregazza, bursting through the gathered ranks of Serenissimans to enter the antechamber with a grinning Ti-Philippe and several of his fellows in tow, swords drawn. "Drop the dagger," Severio said grimly, "and step away from her, Principessa! You have dealt enough poison to my family to last a lifetime; sully it no further."



At the same moment, a wild-eyed Ricciardo Stregazza convinced the Serenissiman Guard to admit him through the Temple doors, backed by an army of tradesmen....



... and somewhere, at the rear of the Temple, a great cry arose as Joscelin Verreuil's sword entered David de Rocaille's flesh, making an end to a battle I have always regretted missing.



With a gesture of infinite grace, Melisande loosed her grip on the dagger and took a single step backward.



It left me, terribly obviously, holding a dagger beneath my own chin. I cast it down hastily. Mercenaries and rioters fled, an assassin thwarted, allies rallying, Benedicte defeated and Marco turned. I drew a long, shuddering breath. "Thank you," I said to Severio. "I am in your debt, my lord."



"Credit your fast-talking chevalier," he said shortly, and then nodded to Ricciardo. "Hello, Uncle. Aren't you supposed to be under house arrest?"



Ricciardo was breathing hard; I learned later that he'd fought a pitched battle to win past the guards at his estate. "The riot in the Campo Grande is contained," he said, ignoring the question. "And the instigators in custody. Severio, I'm sorry, but they willswear to your father's part in it."



After a pause, Severio nodded curtly. "You tried to warn me. Thank you." He turned to his fellow Immortali. "Escort my maternal grandfather's wife to his side," he said with loathing. "Let her offer comfort in his agony, since she has brought him to this impasse."



Melisande said naught to him. I remembered well his bitterness at Benedicte de la Courcel's regard for his half-breed children and grandchildren; 'twas that cruel regard that Melisande had turned, drop by drop, into the poison of treason. She would find no sympathy here. Without a second glance, she went of her own accord.



Ti-Philippe bent to retrieve Joscelin's dagger, thrusting it in his belt. "My lady," he said to me. "I think it is time we saw our Queen."



Whatever else was true of him, Cesare Stregazza had the stuff of command in him. By the time we made our way to the center of the Temple, he had established the semblance of order. Marco and Marie-Celeste knelt at his feet, pleading clemency for their part in the conspiracy, claiming they had been deceived by Benedicte and his treacherous wife.



His withered eyelids flickered; he did not give an inch. "Is it true?" he demanded of Melisande, who stood tall and straight beside the bleeding form of her royal husband.



"Not in the least, your Grace," she replied calmly. "Your daughter-in-law herself bribed the Priestess of the Crown to ensure the false prophecy and see to it that the rioters were admitted to the Temple. Two votes in the Consiglio Maggiore, I believe was the price. I would not stoop to blasphemy."



Marie-Celeste Stregazza drew a hissing breath and made some sharp reply; I did not stay to hear it, for I had won through at last to Ysandre's retinue. And there ...



"Joscelin!" I flung my arms around him, assuring myself that he was alive and whole; and so he was, save for a few minor wounds about the arms. He laughed at my onslaught, holding me off only long enough to kiss me.



"You make a dramatic entrance, near-cousin," the Queen of Terre d'Ange said wryly.



"Oh, Phèdre, get up." There was a familiar impatience in Ysandre's voice; only a trace. "I'm sorry I doubted you. You were right, and more, and we will speak of it at length later. Come, you have earned the right to bear witness to this encounter."



I would rather not have gone, but one does not refuse an order from one's sovereign. The throng of Serenissiman nobles and guardsmen parted as Ysandre de la Courcel made her way to her kinsman's side, and even the Doge fell silent. My struggle lay with Melisande, always Melisande; I had nearly forgotten that Benedicte de la Courcel was Ysandre's great-uncle, her nearest living kin on her royal father's side.



She took his betrayal hard.



"Why?" Ysandre asked, disregarding Melisande to kneel beside him. "Why have you done this thing, Uncle?"



Benedicte's eyes rolled in his head; his lined features worked, a bloody froth appearing at the corners of his mouth. They had laid him on a cloak of cloth-of-gold, and he was not long for this world. His roving eye fell on Severio Stregazza, standing close at hand, and contempt suffused his face. "Barbarian ... blood ... tainting Elua's line," he spat. "Bad enough here ... there ... blue-painted barbarian Pícti in your bed ..."



It was enough; Ysandre straightened even as he seized convulsively, her face hardening. "Tend to him," she said sharply to the Eisandine chirurgeon who travelled with her. "If he lives, he will face our justice." Her gaze fell on Melisande, who had drawn back her veil at last. For a long moment, neither spoke. "Your life," Ysandre said at length, expressionless, "is already forfeit. As for your son ..." She paused. "As for your son, I will adopt him into my household, and raise him as a member of my own."



"Mayhap," Melisande said calmly.



I laughed; I couldn't help it, a short, choked laugh. And Melisande Shahrizai turned her glorious, unveiled gaze on me, raising her graceful eyebrows. "My lady," I said to her, filled with sorrow and impotent rage at the lives lost, the prices paid, echoing the words she had spoken to me in the throne room of the Little Court. "We played a game. You lost."



In the silence of the watching Temple, Melisande smiled coolly at me. With Ysandre confronting her, with all of La Serenissima watching, with Marco betraying her and Benedicte dying, Melisande Shahrizai made her reply with icy precision.



"I'm not finished."



That was when the bells began to ring.



SEVENTY-SIX



1 hings moved very swiftly.



I knew, of course; I had to know. 'Twas one of the few things Melisande had divulged to me in my dreadful cell on La Dolorosa. Four couriers on fast horses will depart La Serenissima the instant the bell tower in the Great Square tolls Ysandre's death . . .



To his credit, the Doge responded with shrewd celerity, ordering the bells silenced at once and dispatching the civil guard to the mainland to halt the couriers' flight. Though we learned it later I daresay all of us knew it was already too late. In truth, he could have done no more. Melisande laid her plans with skill. It had been too late when the first bell pealed.



Four couriers, with fresh horses on relay all the way to the City of Elua, bearing the spark of war. Ysandre heard my news unflinching; at that point, she was inured to shock.



"So Percy de Somerville will take the City," was all she said.



"Mayhap." I said, glancing at Melisande. "And mayhap not, my lady." I thought of my own countermove, my Kritian missive, yet to play out, and kept silence for now.