Kushiel's Scion (29 page)
It was only a year ago that I had been an undersized stripling, shrinking under the news of my mother's disappearance, brooding over Maslin of Lombelon, despising the Queen's Court. Now I was becoming someone new; someone tall for his age and strong with it, able to engage in light banter with friends, envied for his fine spotted horse, his rhinoceros-hide belt, and the stories that accompanied it.
I liked it.
I liked it enough that I forgot, sometimes, it was only a portion of the truth. And then Mavros would catch my eye in the Hall of Games, and smile his knowing smile, and I would remember. Or I would see Phèdre with Lady Nicola… That happened, once.
It was at a small salon gathering in the L'Envers quarters at the Palace. I knew Joscelin would not be in attendance. And I shouldn't have gone; I didn't intend to go, but I was with Bertran de Trevalion, and he had a mind to coax Raul to join us in the Hall of Games. Because we were who we were, the footman manning the door of the L'Envers quarters admitted us without question.
In truth, it was nothing. A handful of guests lounged on couches in the salon, conversing. And Phèdre was there, kneeling gracefully beside a couch; abeyante, they call the pose in the Night Court, except that her head was leant against the Lady Nicola's knee, and I could see Nicola's hand entwined in Phèdre's hair in a caress that was not quite a caress.
"Imri?"
I was already backing away as Phèdre rose, leaving Bertran to make our apologies. Gilot, who was attending me that evening, caught up to me in the hallway outside, putting his hand on my shoulder.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm fine!" I shook him off. "Elua's Balls, stop being such a nursemaid!"
"Fine," he said dryly. "Stop being such a child." I rounded on him with a glare, clenching my fists. Unimpressed, Gilot crossed his arms. "Well?"
I sighed, unclenching my fists. "It's just… never mind."
"You know, Imri, it's no concern of yours," he said. "They are all adults, and they have the right to enjoy one another's company without you having tantrums over it." He shrugged at my expression. "What? I'm not stupid, you know. Why does it bother you so?"
"I don't know," I murmured.
"Well, Raul's escorting the Dauphine and the young princess to the theatre," Bertran said cheerfully, emerging into the hallway. "So we're on our own. Why the sudden dash, Imriel? Do you need the privy?"
"He needs to get bedded, is what he needs," Gilot said. "Right and properly bedded."
"Gilot!" I Hushed.
"What?" He eyed me. "It would do you a world of good, if you ask me."
"There's a thought!" Bertran fingered the purse at his belt with a rueful expression. "My father's allowance doesn't stretch far enough to cover the Night Court, not unless I have a lucky night in the Hall. But mayhap if we pooled our monies on Imriel's behalf… You've not turned sixteen yet, have you? Well, we could go to Night's Doorstep—"
"No!" I cut him off, feeling my face grow warmer. "No Night's Doorstep, no bedding."
There wasn't; not that night, nor any other. We returned to the Hall of Games, where Bertran lost a portion of his father's allowance at dice, and I mulled over Gilot's words.
It wasn't that I lacked desire.
If anything, I had a surfeit of it. I thought about it all the time. I remember how Phèdre laughed when I asked her if she thought about my Shahrizai kin, about Mavros. A belly full of a seventeen-year-old's desires. What were those? She made them sound simple and urgent. And yet I was fifteen, and mine weren't. They were deep and awful. At fifteen, it seemed there should be a yearning sweetness, and there wasn't. I remembered the way Katherine had kissed me in the courtyard, tender and fleeting. It had opened up a pit of wanting in me. And in the meadow… ah, Elua! I was sick with it.
Betimes the desire was so intense, it seemed to swell my whole body to bursting. Such a vastness seemed out of place in the pleasant, bantering courtship that went on at the Palace; and what I wanted was neither tender or sweet, but dark and intense, tinged with the odor of violence and the stagnant-water stench of the zenana. And so I shied from it as a horse will shy at a high fence; and like a spooked horse, I built it higher in my mind.
"I'm not ready," I said to Gilot as we rode home that night. "Not yet."
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "Any readier and you'll burst, Imri."
"I'll take that chance," I said.
Gilot shrugged. "As you will."
It was that, as much as anything, that led to my decision regarding the Longest Night. Once again, I was invited to the Queen's fete. It was taken for granted that I would attend this year, not only because I had fallen ill after maintaining Elua's vigil last year. I had grown easier at Court; I had made friends, all of whom would be in attendance. Everyone expected me to go, even Joscelin.
It was at the dinner table that I announced otherwise. "I want to go with you to the Temple of Elua."
Joscelin dropped his fork with a clatter and stared at me. "After last year? No. Oh, no."
Somewhat to my surprise, Phèdre did not refuse me out of hand. Instead, she turned her searching look on me, until I squirmed in my chair. Silence stretched and grew around the table. Out of nowhere, unbidden, a vision of her lodged in my head, accompanied by Mavros' voice. Melisande put a collar around her neck, a velvet collar with a diamond…
"All right," Phèdre said mildly. "But dress warmly."
"Are you out of your mind?" Joscelin asked her.
"No," she said in an absent tone, still looking at me. I had the horrible feeling that she could see the vision in my head. Her brows creased, a little furrow forming between them. "This is what you want, love? How you want to deal with it?"
I nodded fervently.
"Well, then, let him," she said to Joscelin. Her gaze sharpened. "Only this time, don't be a fool about it."
"I'll do my best," he said, fixing me with a wry look. "You will say something if you're on the verge of perishing of cold this time?"
"I will," I said. "I promise."
Chapter Seventeen
This year's vigil at the Temple of Elua proved less traumatic. It was long, it was bitterly cold, and at times, deadly dull. Wearing an extra layer of thick woolen attire and a heavy, fur-lined cloak, I knelt and shivered beside Joscelin while the City reveled, and this time I gained no epiphany for my efforts, nor words of prophetic warning. But I survived it with no ill effects, and I left feeling clear in my thoughts and pleased by my own hard-won self-discipline.
It had an unexpected effect at Court.
Of course, I had to hear about the marvelous gala I had missed—the costumes, the dancing, the varying liaisons that resulted from the Longest Night. It is ever a time of license in a City not known for its restraint, and in the eyes of my male friends I was a fool for forsaking the opportunities it afforded. But in the eyes of the women, what I had done was a gesture of great and terrible romance.
"I can't imagine!" Marguerite Grosmaine shivered at the thought of it. "Why do they do it? Why did you do it, Imriel?"
"Cassiel's servants do it to affirm his choice and the sacrifice it entails," I said solemnly. "I do it because I owe my life to Joscelin and to Blessed Elua, whom he serves."
"That's so lovely," murmured Colette Trente. "So noble!"
"So foolish," muttered her brother Julien. "If you ask me."
I shrugged. "I owe a debt."
It was true; and yet. I was conscious of using it for my own ends. I saw the way Marguerite looked at me. She had long, red-gold hair. I imagined seeing it fanned across a white pillow, and hearing her ragged breath gasping lewd words in my ear.
"I think it's noble, too." She smiled at me, touching my arm.
I gritted my teeth and withdrew from her. "No," I said in thick voice. "It's not. It's just… what is needful."
During the long, dark months of winter, that Longest Night's vigil served as my touchstone. I clung to it; to the discipline of it. When desire surged in me, I put myself there, remembering the frozen ground beneath my knees, and the sight of Joscelin's profile against the stars, his head bowed, serene and meditative.
It got me through the winter.
Then came spring, and the thawing of the earth.
Blessed Elua himself was nurtured in Earth's Womb. He was engendered by the blood of the Yeshuite mashiach, Yeshua ben Yosef, and the tears of his lover, Mary of Magdala; the Magdalene. He is the One God's ill-gotten son; but it is Earth herself who brought him to term.
In the spring, the Earth quickened; and I quickened, too.
And I turned sixteen years of age.
I knew somewhat was afoot. There are no secrets in a small household; and when all was said and done, House Montrève was that. I heard the talk and laughter among the men-at-arms as they debated, and Gilot arguing strongly among them. But I did not know what they had decided, and I was afraid to ask.
In the end, it was Phèdre who told me. She summoned me to her study on the eve of my natality. "Do you know what they're planning?" she asked without preamble.
My lips had gone dry, and I licked them. "Something to do with the Night Court."
"It's a rite of passage among young D'Angeline noblemen." Her tone was neutral. "Staging a mock abduction with all a young lord's friends, and hauling him off to taste the pleasures of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers."
"Oh," I said.
"Somehow, the women seem to manage with less fanfare." Phèdre smiled slightly. "Imri, if the notion pleases you, I won't speak against it. I'm sure your friends would think it a grand lark. They're young and heedless enough to give little thought to what memories it might evoke. But if you are uneasy at it, I will see it goes no further."
"What…" I cleared my throat. "Which House?"
"Which House would you choose?" she asked, curious. "They're like to make the choice for you if you can't say."
"I don't know." I looked away. "I don't think… I don't think I want this." I did and I didn't, and it made a sickening knot of desire and revulsion in my belly. When I imagined my friends and the Montrèvan men-at-arms around me, laughing and jesting as they accompanied me to Mont Nuit, the revulsion grew stronger. I didn't know which would be worse; the mock abduction, the agonizing indecision, or the terribly public nature of it all. "Not like this."
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