"No more, Diànne," he murmured, his once-awesome phallus damp and limp against his groin. "Enough."
"Elua!" His sister jerked hard on the pincers clamped to my nipples, joined with a leather thong; a fresh wave of pain lanced through my body, doubled and suspended as it was. "Do
you
say it is enough?" she asked ominously, trailing a pinion-feather along the soft skin of my inner thigh, between my legs, parting my damp and swollen nether lips with the tip of it.
One would think, after hard usage, the nerve-endings would grow dull to such finesse. Mayhap it is true with others. It is not true with me. I whimpered and closed my eyes, breathing the words of my response. "As you wish ... my lady."
"Pfaugh!" With a disgusted sound, Diànne de Fhirze tossed aside the feather and loosed the catch on the pulley that held me suspended; I dropped with a soft thud onto the cushions. "You disappoint me, Apollonaire," she said, going matter-of-factly about unfastening the leather shackles that bound my wrists and ankles, and the pincers as well.
Recumbent on cushions, he smiled at her with sweet con tentment. "Do I?"
She ignored him, laughing and toying with my hair. "You, though ... No one, man or woman, has ever outlasted my brother. No wonder the Dalriada went to war for you!"
Catching my breath a bit, I drew myself up to kneel and compose myself. "The story is somewhat exaggerated, my lady."
"All the best stories are," she said idly, reclining and eye ing me. "Tell me, Comtesse, what will you choose as a patron-gift? We have thrown open the coffers of Fhirze for this assignation, but I would not slight the traditions of Naa mah." Diànne gestured with one languid arm. "Anything you wish, in this house, is yours. Only you must name it. It is something indeed, to ride Apollonaire de Fhirze to exhaustion."
I gathered up my tumbled locks, raising my arms to lift my bare breasts, tossing my hair back so it fell dark and serpentine down the length of my back, obscuring my marque. "If you would honor Naamah in my name," I said, "make a gift to her Temple. For myself..." I smiled, "... I will bear the marks of your remembrance on my skin."
"Is it true that you were a spy?" Apollonaire asked sud denly. "Even in Naamah's Service?"
"Yes." Sitting on my heels, I looked gravely at him. "It is true."
He leaned on one elbow, face alight with interest. "What would you do, then, if you were spying on us?"
"Well, my lord." The question amused me, coming from a patron I had chosen wholly without regard to the arts of covertcy; which is likely why I answered it honestly. "I know of no intrigue coming out of Fhirze, but you are well-placed at the Palace, and like to hear gossip, especially since there are the two of you, and no doubt you mull over each day's gleanings together. If there was somewhat I wished to know, like as not I would sound you out."
"Such as what?" Diànne looked as interested as her brother. I had never reckoned, till now, the erotic potential my former—for all they knew—calling held for my patrons. I smiled and shrugged, turning my hands palm-up on my thighs.
"Nicola L'Envers y Aragon," I said casually. "Her interest in Marmion Shahrizai is passing strange, is it not? He set himself for the Queen, but she has turned his head."
"Nicola!" Diànne and her brother exchanged glances, and she laughed. "She hasn't a centime to her name, did you know it? It all went to her husband, through Aragonian law, and what he's not drunk, he's squandered. Whatever she's about, the Duc L'Envers put her up to it, and no mistake. 'Tis rumored that he's invested heavily in the tin trade everyone says will come out of Alba. It's in his interest to keep the Queen and her Pictish King sweet, with no scheming Shahrizai between them."
If I thought Barquiel L'Envers' schemes boiled down to mere commerce, I'd have slept easier at night. "Coin for her, and tin for him. Well, then, I would have learned somewhat." I shrugged again, and smiled ruefully. "But it would take my lord Anafiel Delaunay to make sense of it."
"I could tell you somewhat." Apollonaire sat up cross- legged, heedless of his own magnificent nudity. "Though I knelt demurely, I could not help but eye him. I had chosen well, with these two. "The Comte ... the Duc, that is, Percy de Somerville, is not so happy as he seems with the Queen's trust in the Unforgiven. I overheard him quarrelling with Ghislain. He is not so inclined as his son and the Queen to trust in the loyalty of the Black Shields!"
"My lord Delaunay would have found that interesting," I murmured. It
was
interesting. Would Ghislain plot with the former Allies of Camlach? Would Percy plot against them? Or was it naught but father-son rivalry? Ghislain had ridden with Isidore d'Aiglemort, the consummate traitor and ulti mate hero of Troyes-le-Mont. So had I. Percy had not. It was interesting. So was the Marquis de Fhirze, who beamed at me, proud of his revelation, his sizeable phallus beginning to stir to life.
I felt my arms caught from behind in an unexpectedly strong grip, elbows drawn together. Diànne's breasts pressed against my back, her voice laughing at my ear. "It seems," she whispered, "my brother is not so tired as he thought.
Your Delaunay's machinations are an inspiration to the sci ons of Naamah!"
So it seemed, for I continued to inspire them for a good while longer.
One does not reckon, at such times, the cost to one's limbs and joints; there is a limit to the pliancy of the mortal form. I daresay I surpassed it that day, although I have kept myself limber, ever since Delaunay first ordered Alcuin and me to study as tumblers. Still, it was a fine time, for brother and sister alike were wholly without shame in the arts of Naamah, and had honed their desires on the fine edge of Kushiel's cruelty. Some things I learned, and it accomplished what I set out, purging my mind for a time of its endless workings.
For all of that, my bed was still lonely when I went to sleep at the end of the day, and I still woke shuddering from nightmares.
NINETEEN
Winter spun out its length in grey, dreary days, chill wind and bluster, and only sometimes a snow that transformed the City into a vista of pristine whiteness, shining towers and icy minarets. I had become quite the fashion by this time, and I accepted assignations as readily as my swift-healing flesh allowed, choosing sometimes at whim and sometimes out of covert interest, so that no pattern might be discerned in my choices. My patrons were noble-born, scions of Elua and his Companions, diverse in their desires, and not a one displeasing to me.
Everything I had dreamed of having as a young adept in Delaunay's service, I had. Poets wrote odes in my honor, praising my beauty and charms; indeed, one slept three nights on my doorstep, nearly dying of cold and exposure, until Fortun dragged him bodily to his home. My patrons sent me gifts unbidden, curiosities and trinkets of varying value. Of money, I had no want; it flowed like a river. I paid my retainers and servants generously, and my debt to my glumly unsurprised factor. I invested in a Serenissiman enterprise, on the strength of a vague foreboding. I gave, quietly, considerable sums to Naamah's Temple, and made certain a portion of it went to sanctuaries in Namarre devastated in the war, where a captive priestess had once given her body to win me a few precious minutes of freedom in which to warn the fortress of Troyes-le-Mont.
I paid visits to Favrielle no Eglantine, who had taken to freedom like a fish to water and designed for me any number of spectacular gowns with the fierce, focused joy of a genius at work. And when I was not doing any of these things, I met with the Rebbe Nahum ben Isaac and bent my mind to the difficult tasks he set me, droning Habiru verses for hour upon hour, while he chewed his beard and glowered at me.
And I was, quietly, unhappy.
No more pieces of the puzzle fell into place, no matter how I juggled them in my mind. No matter how diligently my chevaliers drank and diced and delved, not a single guardsman from Troyes-le-Mont was found. No word was forthcoming from the Prefect of the Cassiline Brotherhood; not in answer to Joscelin's query, and not in answer to the Royal Archivist's. I gave myself up to violent ecstasies at the hands of patron upon patron, all the while waiting and watching and listening in that tiny, Delaunay-trained corner of my mind I held back, but none divulged the key to make sense of it all.
Joscelin and I spoke less and less.
Somewhere, Melisande was laughing.
I thought a great deal of Hyacinthe in those days, and sometimes I missed him so terribly I ached with it. It had been our youthful dream, he and I: The Queen of Courtesans and the Prince of Travellers. Well, I was living it, but a shared dream half-lived is a hollow thing. I used to tell him everything. I could not even count the hours we spent in the Cockerel, puzzling out the mystery of Anafiel Delaunay, putting the pieces together, trying to guess at the patterns that emerged. He had always wanted to hear it all, my guesses and speculations; and the tales of my patrons, their wants and foibles, listening while his black Tsingano eyes danced merrily, his white grin flashing at the good parts.
Sometimes I felt as alone and islanded as he.
I had my chevaliers, it is true, and their ever-burgeoning, swaggering pride; Remy and Ti-Philippe, at least. Fortun was always steadier. I used to gaze at him, sometimes, and the way his dark hair curled on his brow, and thought of taking him as a lover. Thought, and chose not to, time and again. I liked Fortun, very much, and trusted him not a little.
But he did not make me laugh. And there was Joscelin.
One day our paths crossed at the yeshiva, although he knew it not. The Rebbe had sent for me, and Ti-Philippe had driven me; I gave him leave to dally at a nearby wineshop while my lesson was concluded. It was a long ordeal and draining; I saw in the Rebbe's eyes the mingled pride and despair, that a pupil of his should exceed so well, and have so little faith. And, too, I was hearing tales by then spoken openly in D'Angeline circles of the schism among the Yeshuites. I had not forgotten what I saw in the courtyard, the young men with swords at their hips, arguing fiercely in Habiru for harsh glory to be won in a far-off land.
The Rebbe dismissed me that day, lowering his hoary old head with weariness. I went quietly, stooping to kiss his withered cheek and seeing myself out of the yeshiva to await Ti-Philippe's return. I knew the way well, by then.
Impossible to mistake a D'Angeline voice in that place, even in hushed tones.
I have not forgotten my earliest training. I can move silently when I choose, and make myself as unobtrusive as a shadow. With noiseless steps, I followed the thread of Jos celin's voice, until I came nigh upon them, conversing in
urgent tones in an empty study chamber. I had heard her speak before; it needed only once, for my memory. A young woman's voice, speaking softly accented D'Angeline. She taught the children, and had given him a
khai
pendant.
Hanna, her name was. It meant "grace." I knew, because I studied her mother tongue.
"Don't you see, Joscelin," she pleaded in her charming voice, "this pain, this
pain
you suffer, you cling to it; it is the pain of separation from Adonai, who is Lord of us all! You have only to make an offering of this pain, lay it upon the altar of Yeshua, and He will take it away. Can you not see it?"
Joscelin's voice was tense. "You speak of it as if it were a thing separate from me. It is not. I am Cassiel's, and vowed to his service. It is all that I am, this pain."
"Do you think Adonai would demand less?" Her voice took on passion, the shaking passion of a true believer. "Your pain is your pride; do not think He does not see that! But He is compassionate, and loves you all the more for it. I tell you, the Mashiach lived and suffered, to redeem the pain of us all. Would you belittle His sacrifice? Even so, He loves you, and awaits you like a bridegroom. There is a place prepared for you at His table, I tell you! And it awaits us, so close we might touch it, not even beyond the gates of death, but here and now, if only we dare seize it! The Diaspora has begun, Joscelin, and Yeshua's kingdom lies to the north. Will you deny, even now, your place in it?"
"Yes." His voice was harried, and I heard his vambraces rattle against his dagger-hilts. If he had bowed, it must have been with unwonted awkwardness. "No. I don't know, Hanna! I must think on it."
Another rattling bow, and the quick rush of his long strides departing, carrying him away. I sank back against the dim-lit wall, and he never saw me; all the turmoil he felt reflected in his face. I heard her sigh, and make ready to leave.
I stepped into the hallway in front of her.
Hanna's face changed when she saw me; guilt and defi ance and passion all at once. A Yeshuite and a teacher, she was, but a woman too, and one in love. I had heard as much, in her voice. I am versed in such things. "My lady Com tesse," she said defensively, drawing back a step and clutch ing her shawl at her throat. "We were but talking. Joscelin Verreuil is not your servant, when all is said and done."
"No," I said softly, tilting my head to gaze at her. "When all is said and done, he is Cassiel's servant. And the gods are jealous of those they have marked their own. I ought to know."
"Gods!" The young Yeshuite teacher's eyes flashed, and her hand dropped from her throat, clenching into a fist. "Whom Joscelin worships as a god is but the least of Adonai's servants. Will you condemn me for telling him so?" When I did not answer, but shrugged, turning away, she raised her voice. "Comtesse!" Despair made her harsh. "The Rebbe has no knowledge that will save your friend. He plays you for a fool, knowing that where you are tied out of hope, Joscelin will be bound out of loyalty. You may be a lost cause; but he is nearly one of us, now. It is said that if ever Cassiel the Apostate returns to the throne of the Almighty and bows his head to the Mashiach, Elua's Companions will follow. All rivers flow to the ocean in time, Comtesse. Adonai is the sea, and one mortal soul may turn the tide."
