Valor turned to poisoned folly.
Heroes turned to destroyers.
Traitors turned to allies.
I pushed the thoughts away and concentrated on my search. Ti-Philippe and Hugues didn’t make much of a pretense of searching, chatting instead of the war to come. The retainers of House Montrève would be staying to defend those left behind in the City of Elua. Both were envious of those who would be serving under Drustan and Ghislain’s command.
“I’m sorry you’re not able to serve, Imri,” Hugues said kindly to me. “That must hurt inside.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “It hurts.”
We finished our winding circuit and retraced our steps. Circles. I thought about training with Joscelin, telling the hours on my own. Riding in an endless circle around the besieged city of Lucca on night patrol with Eamonn. The chambered nautilus shell on Master Piero’s desk. Elua, that seemed like a long time ago. A golden ring, a coiled knot. Shackles of love, shackles of madness, shackles of protection, shackles of punishment.
My mind wandered in circles.
It was an hour or so shy of dawn when we arrived back at Elua’s Square. No emerald flash, no gem. I dismounted and knelt in the loose dirt, bowing my head and praying to Blessed Elua.
“This is your city,” I whispered. “The city you founded, the city that bears your name. These are your people whom you have always loved dearly. I pray, if there be any way to save them, show me. Use me as you will.”
And then I prayed to his Companions: to Naamah to spread her grace on true lovers, to Eisheth for the balm of healing, to Azza to avenge the pride of a nation deceived, to Shemhazai for the wits to avert this tragedy, to Anael to restore the sense of care and husbandry that war destroyed, to Camael to stay his martial hand in favor of compassion.
And although it was a thing seldom done, I prayed to Cassiel, the Perfect Companion. “I know you do not like to be beseeched in prayer,” I whispered, “but you will lose your greatest servant if we cannot turn aside this fate. If you hold any influence, I pray you wield it.”
Last I prayed to Kushiel, echoing the prayer I’d offered the night I’d entered the City.
“Grant them mercy,” I pleaded. “Grant us all mercy.”
The moon was paling in the sky by the time I rose stiffly. Another perfect circle. I gazed at it while Hugues and Ti-Philippe waited with ill-concealed impatience. They had indulged my madness. They were weary of it.
“Imri,” Ti-Philippe said at last. “We’re due at the Palace in a little over an hour.”
“Yes, all right.” I swung astride the saddle and took up the reins. “I’m finished. Let’s go.”
Eighty
At the townhouse, I scoured my face in the washbasin, pressing a cool cloth to my burning eyes. I changed into fresh clothing: more black mourning attire, this time commissioned by Phèdre. I was lightheaded with grief and lack of sleep—and like as not, hunger. I’d been eating as poorly as I slept. I summoned Clory and sent her to bring me bread and honey.
While I waited, I fetched Bodeshmun’s leather talisman from my purse. The lacquer had crackled and the ink was fading with wear. I studied the image, the faint inscription in Punic. A whirlwind sprouting horns and fangs, a word to bind or free it.
More circles, a mad gyre of circles.
“I killed you too quickly, Bodeshmun,” I murmured. “If you were alive, I’d wind your entrails on a stick until you told me where that goddamned gem was.”
Somewhere, in whatever passed for hell among Carthaginians, I imagined Bodeshmun was smiling his dour smile.
Clory returned and I hid the talisman back in my purse. I drizzled honey on Eugènie’s fine, crusty bread, watching the amber-gold coils melt into themselves. I thought about the bee-skeps I’d ordered built in Clunderry. Coils of golden straw. Dorelei’s laughter and the round, rising circle of her belly.
Honey and gall.
I thought about Sidonie and the first time I’d awoken in her bed. Tousled locks of golden hair spread across the pillow. Her face, smiling at me in the sunlight, still soft with sleep.
Love.
You will find it and lose it, again and again.
I’d been fourteen years old when a Priest of Elua had said those words to me, and if I’d had any idea how much it would hurt, I might have killed myself to spare the pain. But I wasn’t the damaged, brooding boy I’d been. I’d failed Dorelei, and I’d very nearly failed her a second time in Vralia. While my heart yet beat, I didn’t mean to accept failure again.
And when it didn’t . . . well.
As Kratos had said, it would be a noble death.
So I forced myself to eat, although Eugènie’s good bread tasted like ashes and the sweet honey was bitter in my mouth. When it was done, I felt a trifle less lightheaded. I heard Phèdre’s voice calling for me downstairs. I buckled my sword-belt around my waist, the old rhinoceros-hide belt that Ras Lijasu had given me many years ago in distant Meroë, a talisman in its own right.
A reminder of heroes.
“Are you ready?” Phèdre asked as I descended the stair. “We’re nearly late.”
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
We rode by carriage to the Palace. The mood in the City had shifted yet again. It had turned proud and somber. Folk saluted as we passed. Our outriders returned their salutes. War. We teetered on the precipice of war.
And the gods remained silent.
Once again, folk made way for us in the Hall of Audience. A heavy silence hung over the hall. The eternal susurrus of gossip and speculation had been stilled. I never thought I’d miss it. Instead, there were only the sounds of people breathing, the rustle of fabric, the creak of armor. An ocean of armor, bright with the crests of dozens of the Great Houses of Terre d’Ange. Almost the entire Parliament had been present the night Bodeshmun wrought his magic, many of them attended by their own men-at-arms. All of their forces would be serving.
We took our places at the head of the crowd. The thrones had been removed from the hall. Only the dais remained, the dais and that cursed gem-painting. Ysandre, Drustan, and Sidonie stood on the dais, still as a tableau. Drustan wore full armor. His breastplate was worked with the twin insignias of the Black Boar of the Cullach Gorrym and the Silver Swan of House Courcel. Sidonie didn’t so much as glance in my direction.
The crowd waited.“My lords and ladies,” Ysandre said in a grave voice, “I took the throne at a young age, facing what I believed would be the most dire threat of my lifetime. I was wrong. We have been betrayed. Betrayed by a terrible, cunning cabal. Betrayed by ambition and greed. Betrayed by forces we may never fathom.”
The gods alone knew how horribly true that was, I thought.
Ysandre’s voice rose. “But if those who poise themselves to strike at the very heart of Terre d’Ange think to bring us to our knees, they are mistaken! Today, this day, in the presence of all here assembled, I declare war on Alais de la Courcel, Barquiel L’Envers, their rebel army, and all who support them!”
The silence broke, cheers crashing like waves. I closed my eyes, feeling the blood pound in my ears.
When the noise dimmed, Drustan spoke. “Terre d’Ange is not the country of my birth, but I have come to love her. I have shed my blood for her before. I go forth willingly today to do so once more.” He paused. “Whether we succeed or fail is in the hands of the gods, yours and mine. I go forth in the hope that they grant our prayers, that the resistance will collapse and I will return to stand before you and call upon you to send the valiant army of Terre d’Ange to Alba to unseat my usurping nephew. And I go forth in perfect faith that if we fail, the effort will not have been in vain. History will remember this day. History will remember all of us as heroes.”
The cheers rose again, loud and deafening. The clamor echoed inside my aching head. My skin felt tight.
Ghislain nó Trevalion stepped forward and bowed toward the dais, then drew his sword in a crisp salute. Drustan drew his own sword and returned the salute.
“Make way!” Ysandre cried. “Make way for Drustan mab Necthana, the Cruarch of Alba, and Ghislain nó Trevalion, the Royal Commander of Terre d’Ange! They shall lead us now to Elua’s Square, where we will repeat this declaration for all the City to hear. And thence onward, onward to war!”
The crowd began to part, cheering. The sound battered me. The sunlight slanting from the high windows glittered on a sea of armor. I should have slept more, eaten more. I was swept along with the throng, shoved to the side, dizzy and . . .
No.
The clamor was inside me, filling me, all of me. The silent gods were speaking, speaking to me, speaking through me. I listened. A sharp stab of joy went through me . . . and, ah, Elua! Everything changed. I’d begged Blessed Elua to use me as he willed. He had answered. They had all answered. Hope and desire and tenderness and pride and ferocity and compassion, all filling me, lifting my heart. Emotions I couldn’t name, glorious and wondrous. The brightness was inside me.
I was a chalice filled with light.
I walked forward into the corridor, my hands unbuckling my sword-belt without a conscious thought. Before the dais, I let it fall. Behind me, I could hear the familiar murmurs rising. I wanted to laugh for joy.
I gazed at their faces. At Drustan, calm and steady and courageous. At Ysandre, proud and noble-hearted. And, ah, gods, Sidonie! She gazed back at me, a perplexed frown creasing her brow, as though she were trying to remember a dream she’d forgotten. My girl, still struggling deep inside against the spell that had ensnared her. I loved her so much.
I loved them all.
I forgave them all. None of this was their fault, none of it. And the gods were merciful after all.
I spread my arms wide, feeling as though light must be streaming from my fingertips. “Your majesties.” My voice seemed to come from very far away and it was filled with gentleness. “You must not do this thing. The gods themselves forbid it.”
My words hung shimmering in the air.
Ysandre looked past me and nodded.
And my world went black.
Eighty-One
You didn’t have to stay.”
Joscelin’s voice was the first thing I recognized as I swam slowly back to my senses. Kratos’ was the second, low and rumbling, speaking faltering D’Angeline with a pronounced Hellene accent.
“I don’t mind. Her highness cares for him in her way.”
My head hurt with a splitting pain. I was . . . where? Their voices had an echoing quality. A vast space, empty. There was cool, hard marble beneath my cheek. My eyelids were too heavy to lift. I lay still and listened.
“He wasn’t always like this,” Joscelin said with deep regret. “He suffered a terrible ordeal as a child.”
Behind my closed eyelids, I could envision Kratos’ broad shoulders lifting in a shrug. “As you say.”
Echoing.
The Hall of Audience. I was still there; but all of the wondrous brightness that had filled me was gone. All gone. Blessed Elua and his Companions were silent. I had failed. I was a flawed vessel. My stomach lurched. I swallowed bile and cracked open my heavy eyelids.
I was lying on my side on the dais. Before the easel that held the painting—that goddamned, thrice-cursed gem painting. It loomed over me. And this time, from my unlikely vantage point, I saw it. “Oh, gods!” I sat up fast. Too fast. My head swam and my nausea surged. “Kratos. Kratos! It’s in the tree. It’s inside the damned tree.”
“Imri?” Joscelin asked cautiously.
I ignored him, reaching for my purse and finding my belt gone. “My belt,” I said to Kratos. He looked blankly at me. “My sword-belt. Where is it?”
“Don’t—” Joscelin began.
Kratos handed me my sword-belt. I ignored the blade, wrenched open my purse. I pulled out Bodeshmun’s faded talisman and turned it sideways, holding it up before the painting. “Look.”
The image was subtle, but it was there. Whorls in the bark. Circles. Circles within circles. I’d taken it to be a bole on the oak tree. It wasn’t. It was the image of the demon itself; the ghafrid, the elemental, turned on its side. Hidden in the design.
“I see it,” Kratos said slowly. “But wasn’t the tree searched?”
“All over the outside, yes.” I touched the image. It was nestled just below a fork in the trunk. “But there must be a niche, a hidden aperture. Somewhat that was missed, somewhat cleverly disguised. If there’s a spell that can make me look like Leander Maignard, surely there’s one that can hide a hole in a tree.” I levered myself onto my feet, waiting for another surge of nausea to pass. “How long was I unconscious?”
“A quarter of an hour or so,” Kratos said. “Not too long.”
I began buckling my sword-belt around my waist. “Then there’s time. The army won’t have departed yet. Ysandre may not even have begun to address the City. It takes time to muster an event on that scale.”
“Imriel.” Joscelin’s tone was flat. “You’re talking nonsense. And you’re indulging him,” he added to Kratos. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Joscelin, look.” I held out Bodeshmun’s talisman sideways again to show him the match . . . and remembered. My heart sank. Sidonie and I had omitted that part of the tale, reckoning it was too difficult to explain what a horned, fanged whirlwind had to do with protecting the City. “It’s a symbol,” I said. “It’s a sign that the demon—” I bit the inside of my cheek, willing the dizziness that addled my wits to be dispelled. “That the gem’s hidden in Elua’s Oak.”