Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3)

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.

The Tatar bristled with weapons, clad in furs and plated leather. In one hand he held a short spear, and the other a sword. Stamping his feet, he roared out a challenge in an unintelligible tongue. I never did learn to speak Tatar, or the myriad dialects of it. Joscelin merely bowed, crossed vambraces visible beneath the sleeves of his sheepskin coat. The hilt of his sword rode over his shoulder, untouched. He held his daggers instead.

"Will he win, do you think?" the Mahrkagir asked me.

"Yes, my lord." I kept my voice dull. "He will win."

The Tatar moved, feigning a drunken stagger. On crouched legs, Joscelin slid to his left, daggers held low. With near-sober aplomb, the Tatar cocked his spear and threw it, hard, at point-blank range.

Joscelin's daggers swept up, crossing, catching the spear in mid flight, honed edges biting into the wooden shaft, its point mere inches from his face. The Drujani roared, loving it. When all was said and done, Joscelin Verreuil had never lacked a flair for the dramatic. I bit my lip to hold back the tears, terrified of revealing how much I loved him.

After that, it was a foregone conclusion.

A leopard among wolves, Drucilla had called him; I saw it, during that fight. With daggers against a sword, vambraces against armor, Jos celin toyed with his Tatar opponent, moving with grace through the elaborate Cassiline forms. After all, it was his strength—it is what they train for, this close-quarters combat.

And he smiled as he fought, a deadly smile. It is the only time I saw him smile in Daršanga. I do not know how many times he cut his opponent, glancing blows, pricking his thighs, slipping through gaps in his rough armor. Many. Enough that the Tatar began to stumble for pain and loss of blood, swinging his sword with comic ineptness.

It was cruel. The Drujani pounded their cups and shouted with approval; the Tatars merely grumbled. And Joscelin smiled up to the moment he slit his opponent's throat with crossed daggers, opening bloody gills on either side of his neck. The Tatar gaped like a fish, his mouth opening and closing, dropping his sword, dropping to his knees, hands rising in vain. The Mahrkagir was laughing, flushed, boyish and happy.

I had not thought, until then, what Joscelin would have to do to survive in that place, nor what it would cost him.

With studied care, he wiped his blood-stained daggers on the Tatar's furs, then turned to the Mahrkagir and gave his Cassiline bow, restored to impassivity. "Shahryar. This man doubted the skill of the wolves of Angra Mainyu." His Persian, I thought, had become good; quite passable. He had learned more than I guessed, listening to Tizrav's lessons on the road to Daršanga. Blessed Elua only knew what he had learned since.

"Do you hear that?" The Mahrkagir rose, a hectic gleam in his eyes, lifting his cup. "It is folly to delay, my friends! Angra Mainyu prevails, and his time is coming. Once the Tatar agree—Kereyit, Kir ghiz, Uighur, all the tribes—and Daeva Gashtaham and the other Aka- Magi decree it is time, the forces of Drujan will sweep across the land and armies fall and the priests of foreign gods will quail before us! Is it not so? Already, there is tribute sent. Jossalin Veruy," he announced with a magnanimous gesture, "Bringer of Omens, I give you pick of any woman in the zenana! If none here pleases you, go choose another." I heard my breath hiss between my teeth.

Joscelin stood unmoving. His gaze rested on me. "Shahryar Mahrkagir, I have given the only woman worth having to you," he said in a flat voice. "After her, there is no other."

"Bring him a boy, then," the Mahrkagir said, laughing, to Tahmuras. "What do you say? Shall we give him the D'Angeline boy, whose suffering caught the ear of his fearful gods? Why not, now? Perhaps it is a fitting step on the three-fold path!"

Behind him, Daeva Gashtaham stirred. "Shahryar," he murmured in warning.

What it meant, I could not say; I was caught in Joscelin's gaze, unable to look away. For an instant, a brief instant, I saw something human surface in his eyes. Does he know? it asked me. Does Imriel know? I gave my head an infinitesimal shake in reply. If I could, I would have told him to say yes, to accept the offer, to tell Imriel who we were, why we had come. But all I could do was answer the one silent question asked.

"Shahryar." Joscelin interrupted with a bow. "I desire nothing." The Mahrkagir shrugged, already forgetting the impulse. "So be it. See, Gashtaham?" he added to the priest. "All is well."

I exhaled a breath it seemed I'd been holding for ages, and the evening's amusements continued. I could have wept at the lost oppor tunity, at the brief glimpse of my beloved in the stranger's face Joscelin wore. I didn't. I sat at the Mahrkagir's side and watched the unholy license my presence had unleashed. His decree of last night held; the women of the zenana were fair game. The men took them, right there in the hall, as shameless as dogs. There was a line forming behind the prettiest. No wonder, I thought, they despised me so. After a time, we retired to his bedchamber.

My heart beat too fast, and there did not seem to be enough air in the cold, dark room. I knew, this time, what it was; I knew what to fear. It would be worse, this time, my flesh already torn and bruised. I could not help but look for it, sending fearful glances toward the cup board. The Mahrkagir watched me, smiling.

"This is what you fear, ishtâ," he said, taking it out and pressing the cold, nubbed iron against my cheek. "This is what you crave." It smelled like death and desire. "No," I whispered. "Not crave." "You will." He took it away and put it back in the cupboard. I concentrated on my own vast relief and ignored the sickened twinge of disappointment. The Mahrkagir smiled and caressed my hair. "It is easy enough to destroy your body. It is harder to consume your soul. I will wait. And in time, you will ask for it. Is it not so?"

"No," I whispered again, and this time I knew it for a lie.

It did not matter; Angra Mainyu delights in lies. I felt the encom passing darkness of Daršanga revel in my unwilling desire; a god's amusement, boundless and incomprehensible. The Mahrkagir laughed, something ancient and untamed looking out of his black, black eyes, and only sodomized me quickly and brutally, sending me back to the zenana to curl on my bed in my private chamber, throbbing with unwanted, unfulfilled desire.

And cursing Kushiel's name.

FORTY-EIGHT

IMRIEL DE la Courcel would not speak to me.I tried approaching him on a number of occasions. Drucilla had tried, so she told me—speaking to him in Caerdicci, endeavoring to convince him to see me. Alas, she dared not reveal why, and Imri only made her a rude reply in zenyan and avoided her thereafter.

It is, I will say, a near-impossible task to corner an agile ten-year-old boy in a large, crowded space. I took some glum comfort in the fact that despite what he had endured, Imriel was hale enough to evade me. I daresay none of the others were; there were only two, now, and the Ephesian was lost in secondhand opium dreams.

I did not know, yet, how severely Imriel had been abused, nor what purpose the Mahrkagir had in mind for him; or had had in mind. I gleaned some hope from the fact that Gashtaham was unwilling to let him lend the boy. Mayhap . . . mayhap he had been spared the worst. Still, I could not know until I spoke to Imriel—and that, he refused to do.

How many efforts did I make? A dozen, at least, much to the amusement of the women of the zenana. In the end, I was always forced to give up the task. We were the only two D'Angelines and I was a pariah; to an extent, no one questioned my desire to speak with the boy. Only to an extent. If I had scrambled panting after him to the point of humiliation, they would have begun to wonder.

And my position was already precarious.

There had been no further incidents since the despoiling of my coat—which had scrubbed clean, more or less—but it was always a possibility. There was no logic to it. However bad matters grew in the festal hall, I had freed them from the Mahrkagir's attentions, which were more deadly; one might suppose they would be grateful for it. They were not.

"It is always so," Drucilla told me. "The favorite is always despised, and you doubly so."

And Imriel de la Courcel despised me most of all.

I did not blame him for it; I never have. Whether he knew it or not, the blood of two noble Houses ran in his veins, in all its attendant pride. Horse-breeders will say that qualities are transmuted in the blood. I believe it. Throughout his solitary travail, Imriel's pride and anger had kept him alive. And now, at last, to have a countrywoman appear only to prove the most craven and self-abasing of slaves—Death's Whore, the abject offering of weak gods, for so they believed me, in the zenana—no, I did not blame him.

I sought to woo him with kindness, instead, and when that failed, to catch him unawares. None of it worked, of course. If it hadn't been for the Skaldi, like as not I'd still be chasing him.

I'd caught him out as I returned from a trip to the privy closet, finding him engaged in an effort to pry a board from the door that led onto the barren garden. "Imriel," I said, blocking the foot of the low stair leading to the garden entrance. "I want only to speak to you."

Startling, he rose from a crouch to show me a feral snarl and leapt sideways from the low stair, sidling along the wall, eyes darting, seeking an opportunity for flight.