Kushiel's Avatar (46 page)

The Mahrkagir groaned and stiffened, his entire body going rigid with the force of his climax. When it was done, he slumped over me a moment, laying his face against my back, my fair skin adorned with the work of a master marquist, striped by the weals of a crop.

“Phèdre,” he murmured, withdrawing from me. “Ah, Phèdre!”

Empty of him, Kushiel’s presence deserted me. I curled on my side, willing the last agonizing throbs of desire to fade. With all pleasure gone, the pain came in its wake, and it was formidable. The Mahrkagir sat beside me and stroked my face, delighted with himself, with me. “You love me,” he said. “At least a little bit. Is it not so?”

“It is,” I said wearily, unable to lift my head. “At least a little bit. It is so, my lord.”

“I knew it!” He rose from the sleeping pallet, heedless of the iron phallus still jouncing at his loins, unbuckling its straps. “This,” he said, raising it reverently, tasting the mingled fluids that darkened it with the tip of his tongue. “This will be for you and no other.”

“As my lord wishes.” I looked away, unable to watch.

Ignoring me, he went to rummage in a chest, throwing aside sundry gifts of tribute; pelts, gold chains, a box of Bhodistani spices. “Ah!” Pleased at having found what he desired, the Mahrkagir returned to the bed-pallet, clutching in one hand a carved jade effigy of a dog. “Here,” he said, presenting it to me. “It is a gift, for you. From Ch’in, I think. Because you are my favorite, now.”

I made myself kneel, dragging my aching limbs into position, huddling against the cold shivers that had begun to overtake me. “My lord is too kind.”

“Yes.” He smiled at the scowling jade face of the dog, its fierce features. “There was a dog tonight, do you remember it burning?” I nodded, unable to speak for the lump of horror in my throat. “This is so you will not forget.”

“I do not think, my lord,” I forced the words out, “that I will ever forget tonight.”

“I forget things.” The Mahrkagir’s unfocused gaze wandered about the room. “Tahmuras said I had a dog, once. It was in the
zenana
, where he found me. Someone had flung it against a wall. It had blood on its jaws, though.” He laughed. “I think it bit an Akkadian.”

“You remember nothing from before?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Only the weight of bodies piled atop me. There was a woman’s face, so close.” He put one hand against his nose. “She had been strangled, and her eyes bulged in their sockets. I could feel one touching my cheek. Maybe it was my mother, I don’t know.”

A horrible wave of nausea and pity swamped me, making my heart lurch oddly. “When I was four,” I said, “I was sold into servitude in a brothel.”

“And you were born again as something else.” The Mahrkagir’s face glowed with understanding. “Something
more
.” He held my face with his cold, cold hands. “Your gods were shaping you, Phèdre. There are forces at work here I dared not dream. But Angra Mainyu knew! Oh, he knew. We are alike, you and I. I summoned you, through the three-fold path. You were made for me.”

I saw my twinned reflections in his gleaming black eyes, my face tear-stained, swollen-mouthed, nodding in helpless agreement. He smiled and released me.

“Tahmuras will take you back,” he said, adding, “Don’t forget your dog!”

And so I went, clutching the jade dog in one hand.

There was a passageway from the Mahrkagir’s quarters that led to the lower halls outside the
zenana
. I walked with difficulty, bracing my free hand against the wall. Tahmuras waited patiently, watching to see if he would need to carry me; I daresay he’d done it often enough. My limbs felt leaden, as they had in my dreams, and my body ached in myriad places. I could feel my inner thighs sticky with blood, a dull agony between them. I clenched my teeth and ignored it, along with a mounting dizziness.

And then we were there, and Tahmuras scratched at the latticed door, and Nariman the Chief Eunuch received me, his small eyes alight with cruel pleasure. He had already had his orders. I hadn’t expected that.

It was morning, and the
zenana
was already astir. I hadn’t expected that, either. I stood wavering on my feet, praying I would neither vomit nor faint, while a hundred eyes stared at me with unalloyed contempt. They knew. It had been seen, in the festal hall; witnessed, and reported. I had committed the greatest blasphemy they knew-I had desired my own debasement at the hands of Death. Nothing else could be so foul.

“Here is Phèdre of Terre d’Ange!” Nariman cried in a high, triumphant voice. “The Shahryar Mahrkagir has chosen a new favorite.” No one spoke. Nariman shoved me. “Go to your couch and get your things. Hiu-Mei’s room is to be yours. She died,” he added carelessly, “in the night.”

I went, placing one foot in front of the other. No one met my eyes, not even Drucilla. I concentrated on the placement of my feet. It hurt to walk. I had not remembered that the
zenana
was so large. The stagnant reek of the pool made me feel ill. I stared at the tiled floor, the bare aisles between the carpets. Once, I drew too near someone’s couch and saw a figure shrink, whisking back her skirts lest my touch contaminate them.

Blessed Elua, what have you done to me
?

I paused for a moment, gathering myself, then continued. It must be near; surely, I had reached my couch! I raised my head to look … … and saw him.

He was standing in my path, fists clenched, half-shaking with rage. A slight figure, standing no taller than my breastbone, his face white and bloodless, a shocking beauty. His eyes blazed like sapphires in that vivid, white face and his hair, lank and tangled, still fell with a blue-black sheen.

“Imriel,” I said softly.

With a viper’s speed, he darted forward and spat in my face, retreating before I could react, dodging around a set of couches.

Somewhere in the
zenana
, someone clapped; someone loosed a shrill laugh.

A warm gob of spittle slid down the side of my nose. I took a deep breath, fixing my gaze on my couch, a few yards away, Valère L’Envers’ marten-skin coat tossed carelessly at one end. I took one step, and then another. The room reeled crazily in my vision. I saw the couch hurtling skyward in a smooth arc and understood that I was falling.

The last thing I saw before the tiled floor rose up to meet me was that someone had defecated upon my coat. Then darkness claimed me, and I knew no more.

Forty-Seven

“THIS
WILL
hurt.”

Drucilla’s voice was impersonal, all of yesterday’s-was it only yesterday?-warmth gone. I knelt without moving as she smeared a pungent salve on various weals and cuts. It stung like fury. “Camphor?” I asked.

“Camphor and birch oil, mixed with lard.” She sealed the jar. “The Tatars use it on their horses, and themselves as well. It is the only thing I can get.” A muscle in her jaw twitched with distaste as she nodded at my lower regions. “I should examine you. Women have taken septic and died before.”

I let her, shifting to allow her access, gritting my teeth against the burn; Drucilla had not wiped the camphor liniment from her fingers. It felt… ah, Elua.

“It could be worse. Most are.” Straightening, she did wipe her hands, as if she had touched somewhat foul. “Your … willingness … made it easier. You’re already beginning to heal.”

“I heal quickly,” I murmured bitterly, leaning my head against the wall of my private chamber. It is true. It is the only gift Kushiel ever saw fit to give me.

Drucilla gave a brusque nod. “You bathed thoroughly?”

“Yes.” There were some merits to being the Mahrkagir’s favorite. Rushad had brought me a basin unbidden. I’d gotten him to boil the bedclothes, too; Hiu-Mei had died in them, infected by an unnamed pox.

“Then that is all.” Gathering her things in a basket, Drucilla turned to go.

I struggled into my gown, watching her, suddenly, desperately bereft. No one else had even spoken to me; not even Rushad would meet my eyes. I daresay Drucilla wouldn’t have either, if she were not clinging to her physician’s identity as her sanity.

“Drucilla,” I said as she parted the hanging curtain of beads that served for a door. She halted, her back to me. “Drucilla, I am an
anguissette
. I was chosen by the gods to find pleasure in enduring pain.”

She did turn around, then, still holding her basket, a frown creasing her brows. “Why would your gods do such a thing?”

“To preserve balance.” I held her eyes, keeping my voice steady, trying not to betray the dreadful urgency I felt to make one friend, one ally. “So say the priests of Kushiel, the god who has marked me as his own. Because there are people born into this world-or made by it-who lack all compassion, whose pleasure is only to own, to possess, to destroy. To hurt.” I thought of the priest, Michel Nevers. “‘To endure suffering untold, with infinite compassion.’ That is the balance, so they say.”

Drucilla swallowed; once, twice, and the blood drained from her face. “Who
are
you?” she whispered, staring at me as if seeing me anew. “And why have you come here?”

“I had a friend, once,” I said slowly, praying I had not revealed too much. “When I was a captive … another place, another time. He was a Hellene man, a slave, a physician’s grandson in Tiberium, freed by pirates. And now you, here … a physician of Tiberium, captured into slavery in Hellas.” I looked at her, standing with her maimed hands clutching the handles of her basket. “If I had an answer to your question, Drucilla, it might be worth my life to speak it.”

“First do no harm.” A measure of strength returned to her voice, her frowning face. She set down the basket. “Whatever or whoever you are, Phèdre nó Delaunay, know this. I am a physician. I have sworn the sacred oath of Hippocrates, of which that is the first tenet. The day I violate it is the day I die. I cannot promise you I won’t, in this place. Only that I will never do it of my own will.”

I nodded. It was enough; it had to be. “I’ve come for the boy.”

“
Imri
?” Drucilla’s voice rose in surprise; her knees gave way and she sat down abruptly on the bed, giving a startled laugh. “Are you mad?” she asked, eyeing me with uncertainty, feeling at my forehead. “It may be fever, or the violence done you… Phèdre, you would not be the first to escape into fantasy-”

“No.” I caught her hand. “Ask him, if you doubt; he will not speak to me. Ask him if it is not true that he was raised by priests in the Sanctuary of Elua, if he was not captured by Carthaginian slave-traders while herding goats.” I released my grip on her. “They took him to Amílcar, and sold him to a Menekhetan, Fadil Chouma. It was Chouma who sold him to a
Skotophagotìs
, to one of the Mahrkagir’s priests.”

Drucilla’s hand slid over her mouth, eyes wide with shock. “How can you know this?”

“I learn things.” I thought, for some reason, of my lord Delaunay. “It is what I am good at, along with enjoying pain.”

For a time, she sat saying nothing, knotting the folds of her shawl. “You have a plan?”

I shook my head slowly.

“You are mad, then.” This time there was no uncertainty in her voice. “Who is he, anyway, that you would walk into the jaws of Death for him? He doesn’t even know you!”

“I know.” I shifted on the bed, experimenting. The liniment was doing its work. The sting was fading, and the pain with it. A few hours of sleep had done the rest. I was Kushiel’s Chosen. I would heal, whether I liked it or not. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t even know himself. I have to try.”

“You know there is nothing I can do to aid you.” Drucilla held out both hands before her, worn and maimed, the tissue pink and scarred on the stumps of her fourth and fifth fingers. “This is all I have; this, and some Tatar horse-liniment.”

“You have Imriel’s ear,” I said. “Convince him, if you can, to hear me. And you can look at me as if I am not something one finds on the bottom of one’s shoe.”

Drucilla nodded doubtfully, unconvinced of either skill. “What of the D’Angeline lordling?” she asked, standing to go. “The one who swore his sword to his lordship’s service?”

There were limits to my trust. I was willing to risk my life. Not Joscelin’s. I shook my head, letting a touch of frost into my voice. “His business is his own.”

So passed my first day as the Mahrkagir’s favorite.

That night, he sent for me again. I went, of course; I had no choice in the matter. My companions were different ones. The Menekhetan boy had died-of internal injuries, Drucilla thought. A chirurgeon might have saved him, though perhaps not.

It was different, this time. Word spread quickly in Daršanga, and anyway, they knew. Like the women of the
zenana
, they had seen it last night. I was different. I was Death’s Whore. The Drujani greeted me with obscene cheers. The kneeling Magi lifted up their faces as I passed to stare at me with horror and disgust. The priest Gashtaham smiled to himself like a cat licking cream. The Mahrkagir … he was smiling, too, his manic smile, one hand extended as I went to him, black eyes gleaming. I took my place at his side.

How many nights did I sit there beside him, at the head table in the festal hall? I cannot say. I could not bear to count them. In truth, I am not certain which was worse, the bedchamber or the festal hall. What passed between us in private was horrible. I came to know, in that cold chamber, the lowest depths to which I was capable of sinking, the worst depravities. And the more I became the thing I despised the most, the more I craved them, the more I yearned for punishment and humiliation. It is not a place I willingly visit in my memories.

But the hall … the hall had Joscelin.

And that was harder to bear.

I had to see him, his beloved face as impassive as stone and twice as hard, and know that he was watching it all, hearing it all. I couldn’t fail to see him in that dark, sullen hall, his fair hair gleaming, the proud, austere lines of his face, as splendid as distant mountains. And I knew, with every breath I drew, that he was living in hell.

He held his own among them, Joscelin did, although they tried him. A Tatar tribesman tried it that second night-ferocious, drunk on kumis and dangerous with it. I didn’t see how it began, only heard the roar of approval when the fight was engaged. They cleared a space amid the tables, and the wagers went fast and furious. The Mahrkagir watched it with unalloyed pleasure, one hand on his wine-cup, one hand on me, eager as a boy for the spectacle. I watched it with my heart in my throat, digging my nails into my palms, my face expressionless.