He nodded. "I understand."

After that, Gerard was all tactful efficiency; ordering his men to assist with Gilot's casket, presenting Captain Oppius with a purse of coin to be distributed among his men as a token of the Lady's thanks.

I was grateful for it. As glad as I was to be safe on D'Angeline soil, it was a bittersweet gladness. It was impossible to retrace the steps of my journey without feeling Gilot's absence; impossible to rejoice at the prospect of being reunited with the people I loved best in the world without feeling a shadow of sorrow and guilt hanging over me.

Try not to brood so damnably much…

He knew me too well, Eamonn did. I wished he was here and not headed to an unknown fate in Skaldia, giving me one more damn thing to brood over. The thought made me smile a little. I gave the Bastard into Romuald's uneasy care and went to bid farewell to Oppius, who was also a difficult man around whom to remain brooding.

"Oppius, my friend," I said to him. "My thanks to you."

I'd caught him squirting the contents of a wineskin into his wide-open mouth. He lowered it with a grin, wiping his lips. "The pleasure was mine, friend Imriel. If you ever have need of a ship, send for the Aeolia."

"That I will," I said.

"Ready?" Gerard called.

He was waiting; they were all waiting. I reclaimed the Bastard from Romuald and mounted. In the distance, the Dome of the Lady glittered. Beyond the borders of Marsilikos lay the road home. Taking a deep breath, I turned my back on the harbor, on Captain Oppius and the Aeolia, on the last vestiges of my Tiberian adventure.

"I'm ready," I said. "Let's go."

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Roxanne de Mereliot, the Lady of Marsilikos, was a gracious hostess.

I'd met her before and liked her. When Ysandre had been a young Queen thrust into an unsteady perch on the throne, faced with treason and invasion, the Duchese de Mereliot was one of the few nobles she had dared trust. Phèdre held her in high regard and a great deal of fondness.

I'd behaved badly the last time I saw her, though. Until we arrived at the Dome of the Lady, I'd forgotten. It had been at a fate in her honor that I'd danced with Sidonie and we'd quarreled. I'd left rudely and without word, trailing loyal, worried Gilot in my wake. That was the night I'd gone to Mavros, and Valerian House.

It felt strange to remember.

If Roxanne de Mereliot remembered it—and I daresay she didn't—she'd long since forgiven me the slight.

"Ah, child!" she said simply. "I'm so glad you're here."

There were tears in her eyes as she embraced me. She was rising seventy, and the coal-black hair her son had inherited was mostly grey, but she had fine dark eyes, filled with compassion and warmth. I returned her embrace, thinking to myself, No more tears.

"Thank you, my lady," I said to her. "So am I."

We passed the night there. I'd had it in mind to set out immediately for the City of Elua, accompanied by Lady Denise's guards, but the truth was, we were all weary after the long, storm-tossed night. Even the Bastard was off his feed, which was a rarity. A night's respite would do us all good. Like as not, we'd travel more swiftly for it.

And Gerard had guessed rightly, or nearly so—his mother sent a courier to the City within moments of our arrival at the Dome of the Lady. I felt better knowing that Phèdre and Joscelin wouldn't be kept in suspense a heartbeat longer than necessary.

I dined that night with Roxanne, Gerard, and Jeanne, the Lady's daughter. She was younger than her brother, with the same black hair and smoky grey eyes. As her mother's heir, she would one day bear the title Lady of Marsilikos. Eisheth's city was ruled by a woman, always. We flirted gently with one another. I liked her, too. I liked them all.

"We studied in Tiberium, too," Jeanne said to me. "Gerard and I."

"What did you study?" I asked.

"Wineshops." Gerard laughed. His sister smiled.

"Medicine," she said. "I wanted to see how it differed from what we're taught in Eisande. I'm a chirurgeon."

"Truly?" I asked, surprised.

"It's in our blood." Jeanne stretched out her hands, regarding them. "Eisheth's line."

"Medicine or music," Gerard added. "Or storytelling. What did you study?"

I told them about Master Piero, chasing the pigeons in the Forum, about how he taught us natural philosophy. They laughed, but they listened, too. We talked about what it had been like in Tiberium then, and what it was like now. In some ways, nothing had changed; in others, it was different. There had been more D'Angelines studying there in their day, far more.

"Times change," Gerard remarked. "Right, Mother?"

"They do." Roxanne de Mereliot smiled at her grown son. "And I have lived to see it. The Queen has wed her Cruarch, the Straits are opened, and Terre d'Ange occupies a new place in the world. New ties are forged, old ones are neglected."

I turned my winecup in my hands, thinking about the Unseen Guild. They'd lost a greater prize than they reckoned when Anafiel Delaunay walked away from their offer. How it must have terrified them years later when Terre d'Ange and Alba united to triumph over the Skaldi, when Ysandre wed Drustan! Alba was a vast unknown, rich in resources, isolated for centuries. The Guild had no foothold there, and they'd lost the best one they might have gained in Terre d'Ange.

Small wonder they'd wanted me. For all I knew, my mother was the least of it.

"Imriel?" Jeanne was looking at me. Caught up in my own thoughts, I'd lost the thread of conversation. "If you're willing to speak of Lucca, we'd like to hear it. There was a siege?"

"Yes." A siege, a dead madman, a terrified bride. A broken mask. Trees growing from the walls. An abyss of black water, the dark mirror of the bright. I was tired, too tired. "There was a siege," I said slowly. "And I survived it."

"Enough." The Lady of Marsilikos rose from her chair. She came around behind me, laying her hands on my shoulders. She had a gentle touch. "I think we should let Prince Imriel sleep," she said. "And not plague him for stories."

Prince Imriel.

I remembered lying on a lumpy pallet beneath a threadbare blanket in a cheap travellers' inn in Marsilikos, within sight of the Dome of the Lady, and explaining to an irritated Gilot that we weren't calling upon her grace Roxanne de Mereliot because I'd been raised a goatherding peasant in the Sanctuary of Elua.

I wondered if Prince Imriel would ever sound right to my ear.

Now I was led to a guest-chamber beneath that very dome, splendid and spacious. Gilot would have reveled in it. The windows, shuttered against the autumn chill, looked out toward the harbor. There was no fireplace, but a charcoal brazier glowed merrily. The bed was piled high with eiderdown quilts.

I lay on it and stared at the ceiling.

A thousand thoughts crowded my brain. I thought about my mother and the Guild and the Skaldi invasion. She had known. She had been complicit in it. Had they? Elua, it would have been a coup! A horrible, marvelous coup. How long had my mother been a part of the Guild? And how?

She had known Anafiel Delaunay for a long time.

They'd been lovers, once.

I shied away from the thought, and thought instead about what Jeanne had said at dinner about Eisheth's line. What a marvelous thing that must be, to have music and story and healing in one's blood! A far nicer legacy than mine. Kushiel's stern mercy had its place—I would never forget the way Gallus Tadius had glanced up at me as he stood in the bell-tower, the broken mask in his hands, and prepared to die a second death—but it wasn't a pleasant one.

Except when it was.

Dark pleasures, violent pleasures. Remembering Valerian House, I felt a flush of heat rising to my skin, the awful tug of desire. It hadn't gone away. I supposed it never would. After all, I was my mother's son.

True and not true.

All at once, it seemed too hot in the room. I threw off the heavy quilts and lay naked atop the bed. When a soft knock came at the door, I went to answer it unthinking, pausing only to grab my sword-belt.

It was Jeanne, the Lady's daughter. Amusement lightened her dark grey eyes. "Did I disturb you? I thought you might be awake."

"No, and I was." I laughed. "How did you know?"

"Because I'm healer who ought to know better than to ask pressing questions of a battle-weary soul." She touched my bare chest with her chirurgeon's fingers. "And so I came to offer…"

"Healing?" I asked.

"Respite." Jeanne smiled at me. "Ease. Eisheth's mercy, if you want it."

"Yes." Taking her hand, I drew her into the room. "Oh, yes."

This, too, is sacred.

It was, all of it. And there was healing in it, and ease and mercy. She opened all of the shuttered windows to let the night breeze blow through the chamber, tasting of salt from the ocean. I could feel the chill on my skin, and yet I was hot, too. The embers in the brazier blazed in answer, bright shadows moving in their burning hearts.

No brooding.

No thinking.

Only a woman, warm and kind. She touched me with her healer's hands, stroking my skin. It felt as though my scars melted under her touch; brand and lash, sword and spear. She took me into her, and we lay for a long time, barely moving. Propped on my arms, I gazed at her black hair spread on the pillow like sea-grass, the flickers of pleasure shifting in her grey eyes. At last, I closed my eyes and rocked slowly, a ship come home to safe harbor, until I felt her sigh into my ear and shudder beneath me and around me, long, slow ripples as inexorable as the tide. And then I sighed, too, and spent myself.

It was quiet and good.

Afterward, I was peaceful and sleepy. Jeanne laughed softly at me, sitting on the edge of the bed and twining her hair into a loose braid. When I made to get up and escort her to the door, she shook her head at me.

"Sleep." She bent down and kissed me, then regarded me for a long minute, a smile still hovering on her lips. "Eisheth had a fondness for beautiful sailor-boys, too."

I laughed.

Jeanne kissed me again, then rose and closed the shutters. The room felt pleasant now, neither too cold or too warm. I fell asleep listening to the rhythmic swish of her skirts. I never even heard the door close softly behind her as she left.

It was a gift that stayed with me. I rose in the morning, later than I'd meant. There was no guilt and no shame, only a lingering sense of tenderness. This was Terre d'Ange, and I was D'Angeline. I was home.

At the breakfast table, Jeanne and I caught one another's eye, and I couldn't help but smile. Gerard noticed it and grinned, raising his brows at his sister.

"Oh, so that's how it is, is it?" he teased her. "You didn't light a candle to Eisheth, did you? It's high time you thought about an heir of your own, you know."

"Of course not!" She rapped his knuckles with a serving spoon. "I've time. And I'd never do such a thing without asking."

"Women do," he observed.

"I don't." Her gaze rested briefly on me, filled with bright amusement and somewhat more. "Though you'd be a good choice if I did, Imriel."

I stared at Jeanne. "Me?"

"Well, of course," she said. "Why not?"

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it. She didn't mean it, not really. Already, their conversation had moved onward to other matters, brother and sister bantering in a long-familiar pattern of exchange. But she hadn't not meant it, either. I glanced at Roxanne de Mereliot, sure she must be appalled. But no, she was listening to her adult children's sibling banter with a mother's fond patience. She had no objection to the notion that her daughter found me worthy of fathering an heir. It didn't disturb her.

It was a strange thought.

I'd be expected to when I wed Dorelei. Although I'd not let myself think on it, I knew it was true. It was the whole purpose behind the betrothal, securing the succession of Alba in a manner that was acceptable to Terre d'Ange. But that was different. It was politics, nothing but politics. And Dorelei mab Breidaia, poor girl, couldn't be expected to know.

House Mereliot was different.

They knew who I was, what I was. A traitor's get on both sides. And they didn't care. Or if they did, they cared more that I was Phèdre nó Delaunay's foster-son. Or mayhap just myself. Me. Imriel. Not the what, but the who.

It surprised me, pleasantly so.

Let the wound heal, Asclepius had told me. Bear the scar with pride.

I shook my head in wonderment. I was glad, more than glad, that I'd chosen to tarry a night in Marsilikos. A respite, and more. Whether she knew it or not, Jeanne had spoken truly. Eisheth's mercy brushed me; a feather-touch of grace, kinder by far than Kushiel's.

"Forgive my quibbling offspring," Roxanne de Mereliot said to me. "You must be impatient to be off."

I thought for a moment that she'd misread my gesture, then I saw in her fine dark eyes that she had not. They were filled with understanding and wisdom gained through long years; as a ruler, as a mother. As a woman of Eisheth's line, who carried healing in her blood. I smiled at her, and knew it was true. "Yes, my lady. I am."

"Well, then." The Lady of Marsilikos clapped her hands. "Let's be about it!"

Another day, another journey.

She had insisted on providing an escort of twenty men under Gerard's command, and for once I had the sense not to argue. I left Eamonn's letter for his father in her keeping. She and Quintilius Rousse were friends of long standing, and whenever he put to port, she would be the first person he called upon. She promised to see it delivered, and I had no doubt it would be.