Kushiel's Mercy

shame.”
    We debated whether or not that was a good thing, whether or not it would be disrespectful to the memories of the Tsingani who had died. We met with members of Naamah’s priesthood and wrote to the Lady Bérèngere, who was the head of the order.
    And we went to Night’s Doorstep and met with Emile at the Cockerel and spoke with many of the Tsingani who frequented the inn and lived in the quarter. It made me smile to see Sidonie among them, listening gravely to their concerns. In the end, everyone seemed pleased by the idea, and we proceeded to consult with various architects.
    The academy would be an infinitely larger and more challenging project. If it were to happen, it truly would be our legacy. For now we merely talked about it, debating where it might be, debating its nature. Would it be an institution of pure academic study or would we seek practitioners of arcane arts to teach the actual practice? Should there be a philosophical component? What rules should govern the practice of magic? To whom should the practitioners be accountable? Where to even begin?
    They were questions to be settled over the course of a lifetime, like as not questions that would outlive us.
    That was all right.
    We had a lifetime.
    And we had the nights—a hundred thousand nights that Blessed Elua in his mercy had granted us. Neither of us ever forgot that each night we spent together was a blessing, and long as the winter nights were, they passed swiftly.
    The Longest Night came and went, celebrated with somber joy. The nights grew shorter and fled ever more quickly.
    Spring came.
    The trees greened and flowers blossomed. Workers began clearing the burnt debris from the site where Naamah’s new temple would be built. Pledges to attend our wedding began flooding in from far afield.
    Some of them surprised me. My Serenissiman cousin Severio Stregazza and his wife planned to come. I’d met him only once, long ago. Some surprised and delighted me. I’d sent word to Lucius Tadius da Lucca, having kept up an intermittent correspondence with him all these years. Lucius was coming. Some of them honored me. Hyacinthe would be attending, the Master of the Straits and his family. And some, like Eamonn and Brigitta, simply delighted me.
    “You’ve touched a good many lives, Imriel,” Sidonie observed.
    “A good many lives have touched mine,” I said in reply.
    I thought in those days about the ones who wouldn’t be attending. Women killed in the Mahrkagir’s zenana; and those who had survived. If I could have chosen one soul among the living, it would have been Kaneka, the strong-willed Jebean woman whose courage had been an inspiration to us all. On that long, grueling voyage with Phèdre and Joscelin to find the Name of God, Kaneka’s home village had been the first place I’d remembered what it meant to be happy.
    I hoped she was there with a love and children of her own, dandling them on her knee and telling them stories. Telling them of dire magics and unlikely heroes.
    And I thought of Dorelei.
    Often.
    Sidonie came upon me unexpectedly one day in our quarters, sitting cross-legged on the balcony and playing the wooden flute that Hugues had given me. I’d never played it for her. I didn’t know she was there until I stopped and felt her presence.
    “That’s a pretty tune,” she said softly behind me.
    I lowered the flute. “It’s a silly song. I learned it as a child.”
    “I thought it might be.” Sidonie rested her hands lightly on my shoulders. I’d told her things she remembered. How I used to make Dorelei laugh by playing a child’s goatherding song. “Will you play it again?”
    I did.
    She bent down to kiss me. “Dorelei wanted you to be happy.”
    “I know,” I murmured. “That’s what hurts.”
    “I know,” Sidonie said.
    Private griefs, private shames. There were some we could never share with one another, not wholly. But that was all right, too. We knew one another. We bore our scars and carried our memories as best we could. We watched the pale green leaves darken and broaden, spring hurtling toward summer. We watched Ysandre stew and fret over the preparations for our wedding, silk tents blossoming on the greensward of the royal gardens. We made our plans, made love, whispered words of solace and passion to each other.
    Elua knows, there was passion.
    Less than a week before our wedding, I caught Sidonie conspiring with Amarante in our quarters.
    “—don’t want to risk