Read Online Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey - Free Book Online

untried heir were shortly disillusioned.
    For my part, I did my best to take on the mantle of responsibility I’d long avoided. I was a peer of the realm, and I had estates I’d neglected all my life. I was a member of Parliament, capable of influencing decisions that had bearing on the whole of Terre d’Ange. I spent a great deal of time simply trying to inform myself. It seemed for every person reluctant to speak with me, there were two others eager to bend my ears in different directions.
    Claude de Monluc kept his word, and much to my amused delight, Duc Barquiel L’Envers dispatched the Akkadian-trained captain of his own guard to teach the Dauphine’s Guard how to fight in the saddle. Since he didn’t know me by sight, I was free to take part, posing as a nameless guard among guards. I spent many hours on the drilling-grounds, learning the niceties of cavalry warfare: how to shoot a short bow from the back of a horse at full gallop, how ’twas better to slash and cut on a forward charge than risk lodging one’s blade, how to use one’s mount’s momentum to best advantage and avoid engagement, when to trust blindly to a rearward thrust.
    The Bastard loved it. He had the makings of a good warhorse.
    And I was good at it. I daresay I had been for a while; as I’d told Claude, I’d spent half my life being taught by Joscelin. Still, it would always be Joscelin against whom I measured myself, and there was no contest. He was better than me. He always would be.
    Once I might have cared. I didn’t, not anymore.
    Heroism be damned. I wanted only to be sure Sidonie was safe.
    Later, at Claude’s request, I asked Joscelin to teach the Dauphine’s Guard a few rudiments of the Cassiline discipline. Not all of it, of course. True Cassiline Brothers begin their training at the age of ten, and for ten years, they do nothing else. Claude’s men were skilled swordsmen in the traditional style, and it would have made no sense for them to unlearn everything they already knew to commit to a discipline that would take ten years to master. Still, there were some useful maneuvers that they could add to their repertoire, like the overhead parries for defending against a mounted enemy while on foot.
    It was . . . fun.
    With the sense of an extended truce in what Sidonie called the Battle of Imriel settling over the Court, a spirit of revelry returned. Drustan mab Necthana arrived later than was his wont. Sidonie and I attended his reception together. After that, daring young nobles began to throw private fêtes, inviting us to attend together. Julien Trente was the first, although I happened to know it was Mavros who put him up to it, reckoning it wouldn’t have been seemly for House Shahrizai to be the first to celebrate. But after Julien came Lisette de Blays, who was one of Sidonie’s ladies-in-waiting, a pretty young Namarrese noblewoman with an impudent sense of humor.
    After that there were others. It became somewhat of a fashion. Sidonie and I weighed the invitations with care, seeking to accept only those that were sincere and genuine, begging off on those who merely sought to create spectacle. In public we were circumspect, even in the midst of frivolity and license.
    Betimes it wasn’t easy. Whatever the nature of the fire Blessed Elua had lit between us, it continued to burn unabated. It had survived time, distance, enchantment, and grief, and it survived familiarity, too. There was an invisible cord binding us together. In the midst of a crowded room, I always knew where she was. If I closed my eyes and listened hard, I could almost feel her heart beating, drawing mine as inexorably as a lodestone draws iron.
    I could make it quicken with a single whispered word in her ear and watch the pulse beat faster in the hollow of her throat. And all it took was one laden glance under her lashes, and my blood ran hot with desire. Still, we never acted on it in the presence of others.
    Alone, it was different.
    The nights