She had.
She had ducked beneath the immense fern fronds and kissed me; and she had stayed when I begged her to stay, winding my arms around her neck. She had stayed, and she had loved me. And she had known, all along, that I would not stay, could not stay. She had not asked, nor had she held any part of herself back from me.
And King Daniel… he had known her. Known and loved Jehanne in a way few folk could understand, even in Terre d’Ange where love was reckoned an art. Raphael de Mereliot was her storm; Daniel de la Courcel was her anchor.
“My lady?” The steward stood with his hand poised on the door to the Salon of Eisheth’s Harp.
I nodded. “Aye.”
Inclining his head, he opened the door. Music spilled into the hallway. I took one step beyond the threshold. A bow screeched across the strings of a violoncello, and the music went silent. In the arranged chairs, heads turned.
A tall figure rose.
“Moirin.” Daniel de la Courcel, King of Terre d’Ange, said my name quietly. Our gazes locked.
Ah, gods! There was a world of sorrow in his, as much as I had feared and more. Lines of grief etched his handsome face.
A terrible memory surfaced behind his dark blue eyes, and I saw. I saw Jehanne on her death-bed, her fair skin deathly white from loss of blood—white as lilies, white as paper. I saw her pale lips move, shaping a word.
Desirée, her daughter’s name.
Somewhere in the King’s memory, Raphael was still trying, still plying his physician’s arts, still trying to stanch the endless flow of blood that spilled from her and sopped the bed-linens with crimson, still raging, still exhorting Jehanne to stay with him, to be strong and live.
But Daniel had known it was already too late.
I saw the light in her sparkling eyes, her eyes like stars, flicker and die. I saw them stare blindly, her head going slack on her pillow, her perfect lips parted.
“I’m sorry!” I fell to my knees in the aisle, borne down by the weight of his grief; tear-blinded, limp as a cut-string puppet. I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, my lord! I’m so very, very sorry. I should have been there.”
“No.” His hands descended onto my shoulders, and his deep voice was firm. “Moirin, no.”
I peered up at him between my fingers.
“You could not have known,” Daniel said. “You loved her. It was enough.”
“But it wasn’t,” I whispered. “It wasn’t.”
Gently, inexorably, he raised me to my feet. “It was.” The King’s arms enfolded me, and I clung to him. “Against all odds, you were one of the better things in her life. It was enough.”
His words, and the tenderness with which he held me, broke open a dam of grief and guilt inside me. Only the King, who had loved Jehanne more than anyone, had the right to absolve me. I accepted it and wept unabashedly, my tears dampening the front of his velvet doublet.
When at last Daniel released me, there were tears on his cheeks, too. A soft sigh ran through the salon, and I could feel the mood of the D’Angeline people shift toward me. In one compassionate stroke, the King’s absolution had changed me from a figure of suspicion to one of tragic romance.
A discreet attendant handed Daniel a silk kerchief. He blotted his tears, summoning the ghost of a weary smile. “A poor greeting, I fear. Come, cousin, introduce me to this husband you have brought from afar.”
Stepping beside me, Bao bowed deeply in the Ch’in manner. “We have met, your majesty,” he said. “Years ago. I served as Master Lo Feng’s apprentice.”
“Ah, yes.” The King nodded. “A very wise man, your master. Does he prosper?” His tired smile turned wistful. “Did the Camaeline snowdrop bulbs I gave him survive the long journey?”
Bao hesitated. “I fear Master Lo is no longer with us.”
King Daniel’s faint smile vanished, the weight of grief returning to his features. “I am sorry to hear it.”
“Your gift survived the journey, my lord,” I said softly. “I kept them alive. And on the slope of White Jade Mountain, where no mortal foot had trod before, I planted three snowdrop bulbs. It is a sacred place. There, I have been promised that the snowdrops will thrive, until mayhap one day they will play a role in someone else’s story.”
The King’s deep gaze settled on me. “Then you found the destiny your gods ordained for you?”
I nodded. “I did.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Was it worth the cost?”
I thought of the future I had glimpsed on the battlefield where the bronze cannons of the Divine Thunder boomed, a future written in blood and fire, where there were no bear-witches or dragons. I thought of the thousands upon thousands more men who would have died had the dragon not called the rain and lightning, drowning the dreadful cannons.
I thought of Jehanne, too.
“How can one measure such a thing, my lord?” I asked. “All I can tell you is that if I had to make the choice over, knowing what would come to pass, in sorrow and grief, I would choose as I did.”
Wordlessly, the King bent to kiss my brow, then straightened. “Would it please you to meet her?” he asked. “Jehanne’s daughter?”
“Aye, my lord. Very much so.”
The King’s gaze drifted onto the distance. “I do not see her as often as I ought,” he murmured, half to himself. “I should. But it is… painful.” I waited in silence, not knowing what to say, until his gaze returned, and he beckoned to the royal steward. “Messire Lambert will escort you to the nursery. It is what Jehanne would have wished. Later, mayhap, we will talk.”
I curtsied in the D’Angeline manner. “My thanks, my lord.”
“Moirin.” After I thought myself dismissed and had turned to follow the steward, the King’s deep voice called me back. With considerable effort, he summoned another weary smile. “I am glad you are here.”
My eyes stung, and my diadh-anam gave an unexpected flicker of agreement hinting at the presence of destiny’s call. “So am I.”
SIX
What do you suppose it means?” Bao asked as we followed Messire Lambert, the royal steward.
I didn’t have to ask what he meant; Bao had felt the spark of our shared diadh-anam quicken as surely as I had. “I don’t know.”
“Do you ever?” he asked.
“Seldom precisely.” I smiled ruefully. “The Maghuin Dhonn Herself may guide us in certain directions, but She leaves us to make our own choices. Especially the difficult ones.”
“I don’t see a choice here,” Bao remarked. “Difficult or otherwise.”
“Not yet,” I agreed.
We climbed the wide, winding staircase to the second floor and followed the steward down the hall. Outside the door of a corner chamber, Messire Lambert hesitated. Beyond the door came the sound of women’s voices raised in frantic pleading.
“Wait here, please,” the steward said to us before knocking.
The door opened a crack, and a woman with a pretty, harried face peered out, her eyes widening at the sight of the steward in the livery of House Courcel. “Oh, messire! Tell me his majesty’s not sent for her!”
“No, no,” he assured her. “But his majesty sends visitors. Lady Moirin mac Fainche, and Messire… Bao.”
Her eyes widened further, showing the whites. “Jehanne’s witch?”
The steward cleared his throat. “As I said, Lady Moirin and her husband.”
The young woman shuddered. “Elua have mercy! All right, all right, messire. Give us a moment.”
She closed the door behind her. Sounds of a heated argument interspersed with urgent pleas ensued. Bao raised his brows at me. I shrugged in reply. The royal steward looked profoundly uncomfortable.
“Oh, let them in!” a second woman’s voice said in frustration, loud enough to be heard clearly through the door. “If the Queen’s witch can lay a spell on the child before she breaks her stubborn neck, so much the better!”
“Fine!”
The door was flung open wide. The young woman dropped a curtsy, her face flushed. “Welcome, my lady, my lord.” She made a sweeping gesture. “Forgive us. Her young highness is as you find her.”
I entered the nursery chamber, and caught my breath.
It was a pleasant, sunlit chamber with a canopied bed set into the near wall. Against the far wall stood an array of ornately painted cubes filled with cunningly made toys and dolls. Atop a dangerous perch on the highest cube sat a girl of some three years of age, kicking her heels and giggling.
Jehanne’s daughter.
Belatedly, it struck me that that was what King Daniel had called her—Jehanne’s daughter, as though she were not his own, too.
Gazing at her, I understood why. Desirée de la Courcel was her mother in miniature, a picture of gossamer beauty. A thin white shift adorned her small figure, leaving her arms and legs bare, skin so fair the pale blue tracery of her veins showed through it. Her pink lips formed a perfect bow. Her white-blonde hair curled in soft ringlets, haloing her head. Her eyes were Jehanne’s eyes, an ethereal blue-grey.
And ah, gods! How they sparkled.
It wasn’t just the resemblance; it was Jehanne’s mercurial spirit that shone forth from her, delighting so shamelessly in her own misbehavior that one could not help but be charmed by it. At least, I couldn’t.
My heart contracted sharply. Beside me, Bao chuckled.
Desirée stopped giggling and contemplated us.
I bowed to her in the Bhodistani fashion, my palms pressed together. “Well met, young highness.”
“Who are you?” Her childish voice was high and clear.
I shifted my hands into a calming mudra that Amrita had taught me, steepling my middle fingers. “Come down and find out.”
“No.” Considering it, she shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“Well, then, you will have to wonder,” I said.
Behind us, the nursemaids whispered while the steward questioned them in a frantic hiss, wondering how the child had gotten up there in the first place. It seemed she had climbed the staggered blocks one by one, and refused to come down.
“She’s uncommonly agile for her age!” the older nursemaid said in an aggrieved tone. “And uncommonly precocious!”
I ignored them.
Bao whistled through his teeth, inspecting the toys stored in the hollow cubes. “Look at this, Moirin,” he said cheerfully, showing me a miniature carriage. “The doors open, and the wheels turn.”
“That’s mine!” Desirée said with a flash of temper.
He glanced up at her. “But you’re not playing with it.”
“It’s mine!” Her perfect pink lips formed a pout. Bao shrugged and put the toy back.
“Your mother used to pout when she didn’t get her way,” I informed her. “But even she admitted that it was tiresome.”
Her fair brows knit. “You knew my mother?”
I nodded. “Very well.”
“I’m coming down,” Desirée announced, beginning a precarious descent.
Both nursemaids rushed forward to aid her.
“Don’t,” I murmured under my breath. “She’s Jehanne’s daughter; she thrives on drama of her own creation. Don’t encourage her. It’s all right. Bao will catch her if she falls.”
She didn’t.
Once she reached the floor safely, her nursemaids descended on her, chastising her, hastening to get her clothed in a miniature satin gown stiff with elaborate beadwork. Desirée bore it with surprising patience, all the while keeping her eye on Bao and me.
“I am being good now,” she said when her nursemaids had finished with her. “Now you have to tell me.”
“Moirin.” I knelt to sit on my heels opposite her. “That is my name, young highness.”
She tilted her head. “And him?”
Bao threw a standing somersault, drawing startled squeals from the nursemaids, landing and settling to sit cross-legged in one fluid movement. “Bao.”
“Bao?” Desirée mimicked his inflection exactly, capturing the rising and falling tone with a child’s careless ease.
He grinned. “Uh-huh.”
She studied him. “Why do your eyes look so funny?”
“Mine?” Bao touched the outer corners of his almond-shaped eyes. “I am from Ch’in, young highness. This is how we look. There, you would be funny-looking.” Dragging down his underlids, he widened his eyes. “Round eyes!” Making a beak with forefinger and thumb, he touched his nose. “A big nose, like a bird.” Stretching out one arm, he compared his tawny-brown skin to hers. “And so pale! In Ch’in they would ask, what happened? Did someone leave you in the bath too long, so all your color faded away?”
Desirée giggled. “That’s silly!”
“I suppose it is,” he agreed gravely.
I could sense the royal steward hovering behind us, and turned to him. “Please, do not wait on us, Messire Lambert. I know my way around the Palace. Tell his majesty I am at his disposal whenever he pleases. We’ll be some while making her young highness’ acquaintance. If that’s all right?” I added with an inquiring glance at her nursemaids.
The younger glanced at the older, who shrugged. “After you coaxed her down from yon perch? Take all the time you like, my lady! I don’t care if it is magic.”
I smiled. “No magic. She’s got her mother’s temperament. I knew it well, once.”
The royal steward departed with a relieved bow, and the younger nursemaid left to bid the princess’ tutor to delay the morning’s lesson.
