Kushiels Dart

Page 3

 

  In the morning, the adept Suriah came for me. Tall and fair, she had been the one who had taken my hand that first day at Cereus House, and I fancied she harbored some little fondness for me. She brought me to the baths and unbraided my hair, sitting patient and watchful as I splashed about in the deep marble pools.

  "Suriah," I said, presenting myself for inspection, "who is Anafiel Delaunay and why might he want me?"

  "You've the odor of the common stews in your hair. " She turned me gently, pouring soap with a sweet, elusive scent atop my head. "Messire Delaunay is known at the royal court. " Her slim fingers coaxed a lather from the soap, marvelously soothing on my scalp. "And he is a poet. That is all I know. "

  "What sort of poetry?" Obedient to her gesture, I submerged myself, shaking my head underwater to dispel the soap. Her hands gathered my hair expertly as I rose, gently twisting the excess water from my locks.

  "The kind that would make an adept of Eglantine House blush. "

  I smile now, to remember my outrage. Delaunay laughed aloud when I told him. "He writes bawdy lyrics? You mean I'm getting dressed out like a Carnival goose to be sold to some seed-stained scribbler with one hand in the inkwell and the other in his breeches?"

  "Hush. " Suriah gathered me in a towel, chafing my skin dry. "Where do you learn such language? No, truly, they say he is a great poet, or was. But he offended a lord, perhaps even a member of the House Royal, and now he no longer writes and his poems are banned. It is a bargain he made, Phedre, and I do not know the story of it. It is whispered that once he was the paramour of someone very powerful, and his name is known at court still and there are those who fear him and that is enough. Will you behave?"

  "Yes. " I peered over her shoulder. Her gown was cut low enough in back that I could see her marque, intricate patterns of pale green vines and night-blue flowers twining up her spine, etched into her fair skin by the marquist's needle. It was nearly done. In another patron-gift or two, she would be able to complete it. With a last blossom to shape the finial at the nape of her neck, Suriah would have made her marque. After that, her debt to Naamah and the Dowayne alike was reckoned paid and she was free to leave Cereus House, if she willed it, or remain and tithe a portion of her fees to the House. She was nineteen, my mother's age. "Suriah, what's a Tsingano?"

  "One of the travellers, the Tsingani. " Drawing a comb through my wet curls, she made a moue of distaste, the frown that leaves no unpleasant lines. "What have you to do with them?"

  "Nothing. " I fell silent, submitting to her care. If the Dowayne's guards had said nothing, neither would I, for the keeping of secrets from adults is oft the only power a child may hope to possess.

  In due course, I was groomed and made ready to meet Delaunay. As a child, of course, I was not painted, but my clean skin was lightly powdered and my shining, fresh-washed hair dressed with ribbons. Jareth Moran himself, the Dowayne's Second, came to fetch me to the audience. Awed, I clutched his hand and trotted beside him. He smiled down at me, once or twice.

  We met not in the courtyard, but in the Dowayne's receiving room, an inner chamber with gracious appointments, designed for conversation and comfort alike.

  There was a kneeling cushion set before the two chairs. Jareth released my hand as we entered, moving smoothly to stand at his post behind the Dowayne's chair. I scarce had time to glance at the two figures before I took my position, kneeling abeyante before them. The Dowayne, I knew; of Anafiel Delaunay, I had only an impression of lean height and russet hues before I knelt with bowed head and clasped hands.

  For a long moment, there was only silence. I sat on my heels, hands clasped before me, itching in every particle of my being to look up and not daring to do so.

  "She is a comely child," I heard at length spoken in a bored voice; a man's rich tenor, cultivated, but with the lack of modulation that only nobles can afford to display. I know this now, because Delaunay taught me to listen for such things. Then, I thought merely that he disliked me. "And the incident you describe intrigues. But I see nothing to intrigue me overmuch, Miriam. I've a pupil in hand these two years past; I'm not looking for another. "

  "Phedre. "

  My head jerked up at the command in the old Dowayne's tone and I stared at her wide-eyed. She was looking at Delaunay and smiling faintly, so I transferred my gaze to him.

  Anafiel Delaunay sat at his ease, canted languidly, elbow propped on the arm of the chair, contemplating me with his chin on his hand. He had very fine D'Angeline features, long and mobile, with long-lashed grey eyes flecked with topaz. His hair was a pleasing shade of ginger, and he wore a velvet doublet of deep brown. His only adornment was a fine chain of chased gold-work. His sleeves were russet, a hint of topaz silk gleaming in the slashes. He stretched his well-turned legs out lazily, clad in rich brown, the heel of one highly polished boot propped on the toe of the other.

  And as he studied me, his booted heel dropped to the floor with a thud.

  "Elua's Balls!" He gave a bark of laughter that startled me. I saw Jareth and the Dowayne exchange a quick glance. Delaunay unfolded himself from the chair in one smooth, elegant motion, lowering himself to one knee before me. He took my face in both hands. "Do you know what mark you bear, little Phedre?"

  His voice had turned caressing and his thumbs stroked my cheekbones, perilously close to my eyes. I quivered between his hands like a rabbit in a trap, longing. . . longing for him to do something, something terrible, fearful that he would, rigid with suppressing it.

  "No," I breathed.

  He took his hands away, touching my cheek briefly in reassurance, and stood. "Kushiel's Dart," he said, and laughed. "You've an anguissette on your hands, Miriam; a true anguissette. Look at the way she trembles, even now, caught between fear and desire. "

  "Kushiel's Dart. " There was an echo of uncertainty in Jareth's voice. The Dowayne sat unmoving, her expression shrewd. Anafiel Delaunay crossed to the side table and poured himself a glass of cordial uninvited.

  "You should keep better archives," he said, amused, then spoke in a deeper voice. " 'Mighty Kushiel, of rod and weal/Late of the brazen portals/With blood-tipp'd dart a wound unhealed/Pricks the eyen of chosen mortals. ' " His voice returned to its conversational tone. "From the marginalia of the Leucenaux version of the Eluine Cycle, of course. "

  "Of course," the Dowayne murmured, composed. "Thank you so much, Anafiel. Jean-Baptiste Marais at Valerian House will be gratified to learn it. "

  Delaunay raised one eyebrow. "I do not say that the adepts of Valerian House are unskilled in the arts of algolagnia, Miriam, but how long has it been since they've had a true anguissette under their roof?"

  "Too long. "

  Her tone was honey-sweet, but butter wouldn't melt in the old woman's mouth. I watched, fascinated and forgotten. I wanted desperately for Anafiel Delaunay to prevail. He had laid his poet's hands on me and changed my very nature, transformed the prick of my unworth to a pearl of great price. Only Melisande Shahrizai ever named what I was so surely and swiftly; but that was later, and a different matter. As I watched, Delaunay shrugged eloquently.

  "Do it, and she'll go to waste; another whipping-toy for the ham-fisted sons of merchants. I can make of her such a rare instrument that princes and queens will be moved to play exquisite music upon her. "

  "Except, of course, that you already have a pupil. "

  "Indeed. " He drank off his cordial at one draught, set down the glass and leaned against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, smiling. "I am willing, for the sake of Kushiel's Dart, to consider a second. Have you set a bond-price?"

  The Dowayne licked her lips, and I rejoiced to see her tremble at bargaining with him, even as my mother had trembled before her. This time, when she named a price, there was no surety in her voice.

  It was high, higher than any bond-price set in my years at Cereus House. I heard Jareth draw in his breath softly.

  "
Done," Anafiel Delaunay said promptly, straightening with a negligent air. "I'll have my steward draw up the papers in the morning. She'll foster here until the age of ten as customary, yes?"

  "As you wish, Anafiel. " The Dowayne bowed her head to him. I could see, from my kneeling perspective, how she bit her cheek in ire at having set the bond-price so low he didn't even deign to barter. "We shall send for you upon the tenth anniversary of her birth. "

  And with that, my future was decided.

  FOUR

  Life within the Night Court was ever a closed society, and I would have left it with Anafiel Delaunay the moment the bargain was struck, had he allowed it; but he did not want me, not yet. I was too young.

  Since I was to go into the service of a friend of the royal court, I must reflect well upon Cereus House, and the Dowayne gave orders to ensure I received proper instruction. Reading and elocution were added to my curriculum, and in my eighth year I began to learn the rudiments of the Caerdicci tongue, the language of scholars.

  No one expected to make a scholar of me, of course, but it was rumored that Delaunay had attended the University of Tiberium in his youth, and he had a name as an educated man. He must not find embarrassment in a child fostered at Cereus House.

  Much to the surprise of my tutors, I enjoyed my studies, and would even spend spare hours in the archives, puzzling out the riddles of Caerdicci poetry. I was much taken by the works of Felice Dolophilus, who joyfully unmanned himself for love of his mistress, but when Jareth found me reading them, he made me stop. Delaunay, it seemed, had given orders that I was to be rendered unto him in as pure and untainted a state as it was possible to maintain for a child raised in the Night Court.

  If he wished me ignorant, it was, of a surety, too late. By the time I was seven, there was little I did not know—in theory—of the ways of Naamah. Adepts gossiped; we listened. I knew of the royal jeweler whose work adorned the necks of the fairest ladies at court; for himself, he preferred only the prettiest of youths decked in naught but nature's array. I knew of the judiciary who was renowned for the sagacity of his advice, whose private vow was to pleasure more women in one night than Blessed Elua. I knew of one noblewoman who professed to be a Yeshuite and required a particularly handsome and virile bodyguard to attend her for fear of persecution, and I knew what other duties he performed at length; I knew of another noblewoman renowned far and wide as a gracious hostess, who contracted maidservants skilled in the arts of flower arranging and languisement.

  These things I knew, and reckoned myself wise in the knowing, little dreaming how small the sum of my knowledge. Events turned outside the Night Court, wheels within wheels, politics shifting, while inside we spoke only of this patron's tastes or that, petty rivalries among the Houses. I was too young to remember when the Dauphin had been killed, slain in a battle on the Skaldic border, but I remember the passing of his widowed bride. A day of mourning was declared; we wore black ribbons and closed the gates of Cereus House.

  Even this I might not recall, except that I grieved for the little princess, the Dauphine. She was my age and alone now, unparented, save only for her solemn old grandfather the King. One day, I thought, a handsome Due would ride to her rescue, as one day—soon—Anafiel Delaunay would come to mine.

  Such drivel was the nature of my thoughts, for no one spoke in terms of gain and loss and political position, the possibility of poison and whether or not the royal cupbearer had mysteriously disappeared or the steward wore a new silver chain and a secret smile. These things, like so much else, I learned from Delaunay. This knowledge was not meant for the Servants of Naamah to bear. We were Night-Blooming Flowers that wilt beneath the weight of the sun, let alone politics.

  So the adepts held; if the Dowaynes of the Thirteen Houses thought otherwise, they kept this knowledge to themselves and used it for what gain they might. Nothing spoils idle pleasure like too much awareness, and the Night Court was built upon idle pleasure.

  What little knowledge I gained—beyond such gleanings as the fact that there are twenty-seven places on a man's body and forty-five on a woman's that provoke intense desire when appropriately stimulated—I learned from the lower echelons; the cooks, the scullions, the livery-servants and the stable-boys. Bond-sold or not, I had no status at Cereus House, and they tolerated me on the edges of their society.

  And I had my one true friend: Hyacinthe.

  For you may be sure, having tasted the sweetness of freedom and capture once, I sought it again.

  Once, at least, in a season—and more often in the warm ones—I would find my way over the wall, unchaperoned, unnoticed. From the high demesnes of the Night Court, I would make my way to the tawdry apron of the City spread at the base of Mont Nuit, and there I could usually find Hyacinthe.

  Along with filching goods from the market-sellers, which he did mainly out of high spirits and mischief, he did a good trade as a messenger-boy. There was always some intrigue brewing in Night's Doorstep (so they called their quarter); some lover's quarrel or poet's duel. For a copper centime, Hyacinthe would carry a message; for more, he would keep his eyes and ears open, and report back.

  Despite the good-natured curses directed his way, he was considered lucky, for he had spoken truly, and his mother was the lone Tsingano fortuneteller in Night's Doorstep. As dark as her son and more so, eyes sunk in weary hollows, she wore gold, always; coins dangling from her ears, and a chain jingling with gold ducats about her neck. Hyacinthe told me it was the way of the Tsingani, to carry their wealth so.

  I learned much later what he did not tell me; that his mother was outcast from the Tsingani for having done homage to Naamah with a man not of her people—who do not, anyway, reverence Blessed Elua, although I have never understood fully what they do believe—and that Hyacinthe himself, far from being a prince of the Tsingani, was street-born and a cuckoo's child. Still, she kept the customs and I believe indeed she had the gift of dromonde, to part the veils of what-might-be. I watched once while a man, a painter coming into some fame, crossed her palm that she might read his. She told him he would die at his own hand, and he laughed; but the next time I escaped to Night's Doorstep, Hyacinthe told me that man had died of poisoning, from wetting the tip of his paintbrush with his tongue.

  Thus was my secret life, out from beneath the eye of Cereus House. The Dowayne's Guard, of course, knew where to find me; if Hyacinthe's trail of mischief was not easily traced, they merely did as I had come to do, and asked about of the brothel-keepers and at the wine-shops. Someone, inevitably, knew where to find us. It came to be something of a game, to see how long I might remain at my freedom, before I was caught up by a gauntleted hand and slung ignominiously over the pommel of a saddle to be returned to Cereus House.

  The Guard, I think, saw it as such, for life in the Night Court was dull for a swordsman. I at least offered a challenge, albeit a small one.

  The Dowayne was another matter.

  After my third such escapade, she was rightfully infuriated and ordered a chastening. Straight from the pommel, struggling and squirming, I was brought to the courtyard before her. I had never seen, before that, a whipping post used for its purpose.

  Other occasions blur before that vivid memory. The Dowayne sat in her chair, looking above my head. The guardsman who had brought me hither forced me to my knees, grasping my wrists together in one hand. In a trice, my wrists were bound above me to the iron ring atop the post. The Dowayne looked away. Someone behind me caught the nape of my gown and tore it open, all down the back.

  I remember the air was warm and scented with flowers, a touch moist from the fountains that played freely there. I felt it upon the bare skin of my back. The marble flagstones were hard beneath my knees.

  It was not a hard whipping, as such things go. Mindful of the fact that I was a child, the Dowayne's chastiser used a soft deerskin flogger and a delicate touch, pizzicato style. But child I was, and my skin was tender, and the lash fell
like a rain of fire between my naked shoulders.

  The first touch was the most exquisite, the fine thongs laying rivulets of pain coursing across my skin, awakening a fiery shudder at the base of my spine. Once, twice, thrice; I might have thrilled for days at the ecstatic pain, nursing the memory of it. But the chastiser kept on, and the rivulets swelled to streams, rivers, a flood of pain, overwhelming and drowning me.

  It was then that I began to beg.

  I cannot recall, now, such things as I said. I know that I writhed, bound hands extended in a rigid plea, and wept, and pledged my remorse and promised never to defy her again—and still the lash fell, over and over, inflaming my poor back until I thought the whole of it was afire. Adepts of the House stood by and watched, faces schooled not to show pity. The Dowayne herself never looked; that fine, ancient profile all she would give me. I wept and pleaded and the blows fell like rain, until a warm languor suffused my body and I sagged against the post, humiliated and beaten.

  Only then was I released and taken away, and my weals tended, whilst I felt fine and sore and drowsy in all of my parts, grievously punished.

  "It's a sickness in your blood," Hyacinthe told me knowledgeably when next I escaped to Night's Doorstep. We sat on the stoop of his building in Rue Coupole, sharing a bunch of stolen grapes between us and spitting out the pips into the street. "That's what my mother says. "

  "Do you think it's true?" I had come, ever since the painter's death, to share the quarter's solemn awe of Hyacinthe's mother's prophetic gift.

  "Maybe. " He spat a pip in a meditative fashion.

  "I don't feel sick. "

  "Not like that. " Although he was only a year older than me, Hyacinthe liked to act as if he had the wisdom of the ages. His mother was teaching him something of the dromonde, her art of fortunetelling. "It's like the falling-sickness. It means a god's laid his hand on you. "

  "Oh. " I was disappointed, for this was nothing more than Delaunay had said, only he had been more specific. I had hoped for something more distinctive from Hyacinthe's mother. "What does she say of my fortune?"

  "My mother is a princess of the Tsingani," Hyacinthe said in a lofty tone. "The dromonde is not for children. Do you think we've time to meddle in the affairs of a fledgling palace whore?"