Kushiel's Chosen

All of this, I learned, and more. Outraged at L'Envers' inquiry, Paragon, Duc de Shahrizai, the patriarch of House Shahrizai himself, had left his estates for the first time in fifteen years, riding toward the City of Elua the moment he'd heard word of it, with a large retinue. And if that were not trouble enough, Quincel de Morhban, the sovereign Duc of Kusheth, had gotten wind of the matter, and elected to lead a delegation of his own.

It all converged at once, and Ysandre de la Courcel, Queen of Terre d'Ange, was furious.

"What," she said succinctly, pacing the floor of her chambers and fetching up before Barquiel, "were you thinking?" Her eyes flashed violet with anger. "If this is a matter of state-and I have heard no evidence that it is so-you should have informed me, uncle! And if it is not, then it is most certainly not in your purview!"

To his credit, Barquiel L'Envers never flinched; and Ysandre's was scarce the only fury cast his way. In the center of the room, surrounded by the Palace Guard, stood Marmion, glowering and shackled. Clustered to his right were the representatives of House Shahrizai, their Duc Faragon at the forefront. A black-and-gold brocade coat masked a barrel chest, but his face had that unmistakable beauty, like something carved of ancient ivory. His hair fell like rippled silver, caught below the nape in a gold clasp, and despite wrinkled lids, his eyes were the deep blue of sapphires. A half-dozen Shahrizai faces, male and female, were sprinkled among the retainers massed behind him.

No less menacing was Quincel de Morhban, a lean wolf of a man with a watchful look in his grey eyes. Despite the machinations of House Shahrizai, he retained sovereignty over Kusheth, and was no one to be toyed with lightly- and Barquiel L'Envers had done just that, with his investigation. De Morhban's men stood at ease, as watchful as their lord.

In the face of all this, Barquiel L'Envers gave a lazy smile. "My apologies for the irregularity of my methods. But it is a matter of state, Ysandre, and your Lord Marmion Shahrizai is involved in it up to his eyeballs. He's been concealing knowledge of Melisande' s escape and whereabouts, which you ..." he bowed ironically to her, "... chose not to believe. Since I cannot prove that, I have proven instead that he was complicit in his sister's death, which matter neither his House nor his sovereign Duc thought worthy of pursuing."

There were murmurs all around at that; a couple of the Shahrizai surged forward. Duc Paragon raised one hand, and they subsided. Quincel de Morhban narrowed his eyes. For my part, I stood unobtrusive as I could behind Nicola. How Ysandre had learned it, I do not know-never underestimate a ruler's network of informants within their own demesne- but when I arrived at Nicola's quarters in the Palace, there was already a curt order awaiting that I attend the hearing with her.

"I've done nothing!" Marmion declared angrily, shifting so his chains rattled. "You've proof of nothing, for there's nothing to prove!"

Barquiel L'Envers raised his eyebrows, and gave a cool nod to one of the Palace Guardsmen. Opening the door to Ysandre's private hearing room, the guard ushered in the first in a long line of witnesses.

There must have been over a dozen of them, all told; the guardsmen my chevaliers had questioned were among them. But too, there were maidservants and kitchen staff, stewards, hostlers, and most telling, a daring poacher's boy who'd espied two figures fleeing the burning manor-house and riding west on horses they'd concealed in the wood. It had taken him two days, but he'd tracked them to Lord Marmion's estate. If it had been aught but an internecine affair, he'd have sought an award for the information, but he feared to come forward among quarreling Shahrizai, who were as like to string him up for poaching as reward him. How Barquiel had found him, I'd no idea.

Ysandre sat formally to hear the testimony, and her face turned unreadable as it wore on. Two Cassiline Brothers flanked her, upright and motionless, hands on daggers, nearly identical in their ash-grey mandilion coats and clubbed hair. They were fixtures, part of the trappings of royalty, as much as the gilded sconces and the elegant tapestries. Small wonder, I thought, Bernard could not describe them individually; I was hard put to do it myself.

I could consider such things, because it had grown evident, long before the testimony ended, that Marmion Shahrizai was guilty. After the poacher's boy, his shoulders slumped, chains hanging slack from his wrists. I glanced at the Duc de Shahrizai, and saw an implacable sentence writ in his gaze.

When it was done, Ysandre spoke, her voice cool and measured. If ever she had cared for him, no one would know it to hear her. "What do you say, my lord Marmion?"

His answer, by contrast, was strained. "I didn't intend it." He gave her an agonized look. "I sent them, but only to search the manor! When yon steward summoned the guard, they panicked and fled, throwing down their torches." Marmion Shahrizai turned out his elegant hands, shackles clanking. "I never intended a fire," he whispered.

One by one, beginning with Duc Paragon, the members of House Shahrizai turned their backs upon him. I pitied Marmion his fear, a little.

Ysandre's expression never changed. "And why, my lord, should we believe you, when you have done nothing but lie to us? It is far easier to credit that you set fire to your sister's manor to silence her, lest she reveal your complicity in the matter of Melisande's escape. Of a surety, she is not alive now to gainsay you."

"No!" The word burst from Marmion's lips. Staring around the room, he gave a wild laugh. "Who is it? One of you here? You, your grace?" He indicated Barquiel L'Envers with a jerk of his chin. "You've done for me, sure as death! Or you, my lord." He laughed despairingly as Quincel de Morhban raised an eyebrow. "I trusted you! I betrayed my own cousin into your hands, for the promise of the rewards my loyalty would bring. Did you and Persia use me as your stalking-horse? Was it naught but a plot within a plot all the while?"

It could not have been de Morhban, I thought. He delivered Melisande as a pledge of his loyalty, but he hadn't fought on the battlefield. Ysandre never trusted him wholly, nor would the garrison of Troyes-le-Mont. The guard at the postern gate would have challenged Quincel de Morhban, Duc or no.

So I was thinking, when I realized Marmion's stare had picked me out of the gathering. "Or you," he said softly. "How high you have risen, little Comtesse! To think, so short a time ago, you were but a runaway bondservant convicted of murdering her lord. Now, commoners bow in the streets, nobles vie for your favors and you conspire openly with a scion of the Stregazza. But I, I have not forgotten you were Melisande's creature."

"Enough." Ysandre did not raise her voice, but the tone of command silenced him like a hammer. "Then is it your claim, my lord Marmion, that your sister Persia conspired with an unknown ally to achieve Melisande Shahrizai's escape from Troyes-le-Mont?"

"It is," he said grimly. "She told me as much, and that it was worth my life to breathe word of it within ten leagues of the throne."

"And you sought proof of this from her manor-house?"

Marmion licked his lips. "A courier had come from the east. Unmarked livery, but there was... there was a stable-lad, who brought me information in exchange for silver. He saw the insignia of the Stregazza on the courier's bags. I thought if I could learn somewhat..." He gave that laugh that was no laugh, tears standing in his eyes, and raised his shackled arms. "I thought," he gasped, "I might not end like this, Ysandre!"

She looked at him without remorse, without pity. "You should have told us, Lord Marmion. We would have protected you."

"Would you?" he whispered. "From whom?"

Having no answer, Ysandre gave him none. "Your grace," she said crisply to Quincel de Morhban. "I am satisfied with Lord Marmion's confession in the matter of withholding evidence in an affair of state. As for the crime of arson leading to death, that is a matter for Kusheline justice, and I remand him unto your jurisdiction."

"Your majesty." Quincel de Morhban bowed, and turned to Duc Paragon. "Your grase, these crimes fall within the demesnes of House Shahrizai. I am willing to give Lord Marmion over unto your custody, do you wish it."

Silver-grey hair rippled as the patriarch of House Shahrizai shook his head, never glancing at Marmion. "From this day forth, he is no scion of my House," Paragon de Shahrizai said in a deep voice. "Pass sentence as you deem fit, cousin."

"Very well." Quincel de Morhban took a breath, and in a formal tone, gave his judgement. "Marmion of Kusheth, for the crime of arson leading to death, you are herewith stripped of your title and estates. Your possessions shall be sold, and the proceeds distributed among the survivors of your actions and the families of the deceased." Pausing, he continued in a different voice. "Whether or not you sent your men to fire the manor, I cannot say. I don't suppose you can produce them to testify on your behalf?"

A distant look in his eyes, Marmion shook his head. "I dismissed them from my service and told them I never wanted to see them again."

"Then I shall do the same." Quincel de Morhban pronounced his final sentence. "Exile."

At a nod from Ysandre, her Captain of the Guard produced a key and struck Marmion's shackles. No one spoke. He stood alone in the center of the room, rubbing his chafed wrists. The guards formed a double line leading to the door, giving him a cue to exit. After a moment, Marmion gave a soft, despairing laugh, and I thought I had never seen a man more alone in the midst of a throng. He turned to Ysandre, and bowed. She inclined her head once, briefly, and Marmion turned, walking away. A pair of guards fell in behind him. They would see him, I knew, to the gates of the City.

Beyond that, he was on his own. I gazed at Barquiel L'Envers, lounging against a column; at the keen hatred on the Shahrizai faces scattered here and there. I did not think Marmion Shahrizai would live long.

Ysandre turned her expressionless gaze on Barquiel L'Envers. "I am still wroth with you," she said, although she abandoned the royal pronoun for the personal. "And you." The violet eyes turned my way. "I want to talk to you, Phèdre."

TWENTY-THREE

1 was some time cooling my heels, waiting on the Queen's indulgence, imagining all the while the most dreadful things - foremost among them that Ysandre had taken Marmion Shahrizai' s accusations to heart. Indeed, Ysandre may well have intended it, bidding me to wait in an antechamber without so much as a foot-servant for company. A nervous silence loosens tongues; I knew that much from Delaunay's teaching.

When one of her Cassilines came to fetch me, it was not to one of her receiving rooms that he escorted me, but a room in the Palace I'd never seen before; the Hall of Portraits, it is called. The scions of House Courcel were prominently displayed. I walked past a long line of them, to find Ysandre gazing at a small portrait hung in an out-of-the-way niche, near to the images of Prince Rolande and Princess Isabel, her parents.

"Pretty, wasn't she?" Ysandre asked by way of absent greeting, ignoring my curtsy.

"Yes, your majesty." Unsettled, I glanced at the portrait; a young woman with kind brown eyes and a gentle smile, rich brown hair coiled at the nape of her neck in a pearl-studded mesh caul. "Who was she?"

"Edmée de Rocaille. She was to have married my father." Ysandre touched a brass plaque at the base of the frame that gave Edmée's name. "Imagine," she mused, "how different matters would have fallen out, if she had. I would not have been born, and Anafiel Delaunay would have stood at my father's left hand as his sanctioned Consort. You and I would not be standing here having this conversation, Phèdre."

"Your father," I said, "would still have been killed in the Battle of Three Princes. And Skaldia would still have given birth to Waldemar Selig, uniting for the first time under a leader who thought."

"Mayhap." Ysandre looked directly at me. "My mother was responsible for her death, you know."

"I know." I glanced involuntarily at the portrait of Isabel L'Envers de la Courcel, a fair, blonde beauty with her daughter's violet eyes and a cunning mouth like her brother Barquiel's. A cut girth-strap, a riding accident. Ysandre resembled her a great deal more than her father.

"And now I have allowed Marmion Shahrizai to be sent to his death," Ysandre murmured, "Or at least, I'd not give a fig for his chances. Would you, near-cousin?" She glanced at me, and I shook my head slowly. She sighed. "If he dies, and I learn the cause of it, I'll have to mete out justice, and there's another blood-feud in the making. It never ends. And the awful irony of it is, Marmion was loyal, after a fashion. 'Twas fear sealed his lips."

"He did what he did," I said automatically. "Loyalty does not make right of it, nor fear."

"I know that," Ysandre said impatiently. "Elua! Do you think I wanted to rule as I did? One has no choice, when the law is clear. But I think Marmion spoke the truth nonetheless. Phèdre. I am neither stupid nor blind. Did Persia Shahrizai aid in Melisande's escape?"

I nodded, slowly.

"Good." Her voice was hard. "Did she have an ally?"

I nodded again.

"Do you know who it was?"

I shook my head. "No," I whispered.

"Neither do I." Ysandre gave a short laugh and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "Marmion always suspected you, but he wasn't there, when you and that half-mad Cassiline staggered out of the wilds of Skaldia onto my doorstep, while my grandfather lay dying, to give me worse news than I could have dreamt in my darkest nightmares. I gambled everything on your bare word, Phèdre, and rewarded you by sending you into even direr circumstances. I want, very badly, to trust you. And yet I am afraid." ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">