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

But for Hyacinthe.

There is a Hellene myth, which tells of a man who had leave to ask a boon of the gods. He asked for immortality, and failed to ask for eternal youth in the bargain. The mocking gods granted his wish to the letter. Never dying, ever aging. At the end, when he had shriveled to naught but a dry, creaking thing of sinew and bone, they took pity on him and turned him into a grasshopper. How long? The myth does not say. To this day, I cannot hear the grasshopper's song without a shudder.

We passed a quiet night at Pointe des Soeurs, and in the morning, took our leave of the place. Evrilac Duré offered to send an escort with us, which I declined, though I thanked him graciously for the aid he had already provided. We broke our fast at dawn, and were on the road a scant hour later.

Joscelin, having already ascertained my mood, kept wisely silent on our journey, and Ti-Philippe knew well enough to follow his lead. It was young Hugues, prattling endlessly about the encounter, who would not let matters be. "They say his mother was the Queen of the Tsingani, with gold on every finger and gold scarves for every day of the week, and if she cursed a man, he would fall down dead. Is it true, my lady?" he asked eagerly. "They say he told fortunes in the marketplace when he was but a boy, and Palace nobles would line up to wait their turn!"

"He stole sweets," I said shortly, "in the marketplace. And his mother took in washing."

"Hugues." I rounded on him, drawing my mount up short. "Yes. Hyacinthe had the dromonde, and his mother before him. She told for tunes, and sometimes people gave her coin; mostly, they were poor. She ran a lodging house for such Tsingani as did not disdain a woman who had lost her laxta, her virtue, and she took in laundry and changed her profit for gold coin, such as you have seen around the necks of half the Tsingani women on the road. Do you think her son was marked for this destiny?"

Blood rose to his fresh cheeks. "I did not mean ..."

I sighed. "I know. It is a splendid, terrible tale, and you have been privileged to see a glimpse of it. Outside Azzalle, I do not think they even tell it. But Hugues, never forget it is real people who live out such tales and bear the price of the telling, in grief and guilt and sorrow."

He fell silent, then, and lowered his handsome head, and I felt remorse for having shamed him. We stayed at an inn in the town of Seinagan that night, and Hugues excused himself from the common room to retire early. Ti-Philippe, offering no comment, accompanied him.

It was pleasant in the common room, whitewashed walls freshly scrubbed, a fire to ward off the evening chill of spring smelling sweetly of pear wood. "You were hard on the lad," Joscelin said quietly, not looking at me, running his fingertips over the sweating earthenware curve of a wine-jug. "He's excited, no more. He meant no harm."

"I know." I put my head in my hands. "I know. It's just that it galls me, Joscelin. To see Hyacinthe thus, and be helpless. It is a pain in my heart, and I take no pleasure in it."

"Would that I had been the one to answer the riddle." Joscelin raised his head abruptly. "Is that what you want to hear? I would that I had, Phèdre. Better for all of us if I had. If I could trade places with him and spare you this pain, I would. But I can't," he said savagely. "I'm not clever, like you, and I have no gift of sight to aid me. Only these." He turned out his hands, palms upward, callus-worn. "It has been enough, until now." His expression changed. "And could be still, if you convinced him," he said slowly. "I do know the answer, don't I? I don't need to be wise or gifted, not anymore. All I need is for Hyacinthe to let me set foot on his shores.”

"Joscelin, no!" I stared at him in horror. "How can you even think such a thing?"

"Ah, well." He smiled faintly, wryly. "It would solve your prob lems."

"Idiot!" I grasped both of his hands hard in mine. "Joscelin Verreuil, if you think for one minute I would grieve over you one whit less than I do for Hyacinthe, you are a blessed fool," I said in exasperation. "He is my oldest and dearest friend and I love him well, but you ..." I shook my head. "You are an idiot. And if you think I'm going to walk into darkness without you at my side, an idiot thrice over. You're not getting out of it that easily."

His fingers closed over my own. "Then I shall stand at the cross roads," he said quietly. "And choose, and choose again, wherever your path shall lead. I protect and serve."

They were words that needed to be spoken between us, and in the morning I awoke with a resolved heart and made greater effort to be gracious to those around me. Thus we made good time on the road and returned the City of Elua to find the word of Drustan's arrival had preceded us by a day, brought by Azzallese couriers riding at a break neck pace to receive Ysandre's reward.

The Queen heard our news with grave compassion, taking note of the passage of power and Hyacinthe's words thereon. I daresay she was genuinely sorry for his plight—but there are limits even to a Queen's power. Ysandre had a realm to govern and her beloved husband, the father of her children, was making his way to her side. There was naught she could do. If there had been, I would have asked it; would have spent the boon, long-hoarded, she had granted me with the Com panion's Star.

But there was nothing.

As a matter of courtesy, I consulted with the Master of Ceremonies on preparing the way for Drustan's entry into the City; it is one of the great rites of spring nowadays, and I was there at its inception. Once, there were precious few D'Angelines who spoke Cruithne. Now, traffic is brisk between our lands, it is taught in many schools and Ysandre does not lack for translators. The children of the realm do not need my coaching to greet the Cruarch in his own tongue.

One distraction I had in the days before his arrival, and that was a cabinet meeting of the Guild of the Servants of Naamah. It is the only appointment I have ever sought, and I have served in the cabinet since the days of La Serenissima, designated as the Court liaison. They reckoned themselves lucky to have me at first—over a hundred years it has been, since a member of the peerage served on that Guild—but they did not always like the reforms I proposed. We voted on one that day that had Jareth Moran, the Dowayne of Cereus House, tearing at his hair in frustration.

"If we have sunk four thousand ducats into an apprentice's marque and training, my lady," he said carefully, "and he or she is found unfit to serve, we must have a way of recouping our investment! Elsewise we will be bankrupt."

"Then choose more wisely, my lord Dowayne," I said remorse lessly, "or have more care with your adepts. For those who are reckoned unfit have no way of recouping their lives."

Jareth glared, but made no retort, mindful of my history. I had been a child in Cereus House, reckoned unfit to serve by virtue of the scarlet mote in my eye. It was my lord Anafiel Delaunay who knew it for the sign of Kushiel's Dart and bought my marque, training me in the Naamah's Arts as well as the arts of covertcy. And with the gifts of my patrons I earned my freedom, inch by inch, paying the marquist to etch its progress on my skin. For each assignation, I paid, and my marque is complete. It rises from the base of my spine to the nape of my neck, a briar rose wrought in black, accented with drops of crimson.

If it signifies that I am Naamah's Servant, it also announces that I am a free D'Angeline, with no debt owing to be possessed by another. It is hard-won, my marque, and I have used the stature I have earned along with it to enact changes. No more were the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court allowed to set marque-prices for children sold into indenture, such as I had been. Now, it was all apprentices, or such children as were born into the Night Court and freely raised therein. Anafiel Delaunay would not be able to buy my marque today as he had when I was ten.

That was my doing, too, and I reckoned it well-done. For all that my lord Delaunay owned my marque, he had been the first to teach me that it was wrong to treat people as chattel. He did not permit it, in his household. All Naamah's Servants must enter the bargain of their own accord, but I do not think the choice was made so freely in the Night Court as in Delaunay's household. Now, it is. The Queen herself, newly a mother when I proposed the reform, backed it wholeheartedly.

And I do not think the ranks of Naamah's Servants have dwindled for these measures; indeed, if anything, they have swelled since I rose to prominence.

"Naamah lay down in the stews of Bhodistan with strangers that Blessed Elua might eat," said the priestess of the Great Temple of Naamah with considerable amusement. "Not to fatten the wallets of the Dowaynes of the Night Court, my lord Jareth. We find this proposal meet. If an apprentice is reckoned unfit to serve, it is meet that the Dowayne of his or her House provide a means for them to serve out the terms of their indenture in the time allotted. No more, and no less."

"You ask us to find employ for persons unfit for Naamah's Service?" the Dowayne of Bryony House inquired. "It is unreasonable. We do not have the means to serve as a referral agency for failed adepts."

"Will you tell me Bryony House cannot find a half a dozen suitable clerkships for a trained apprentice?" I asked cynically; everyone knows the financial acumen with which Bryony's adepts are instilled. "I am saying that the system of indenture as it exists is imperfect. It allows legal means whereby an apprentice may become a virtual slave to his or her House."

There was a silence, at that; D'Angelines like to reckon themselves better than the rest of the world, for we are closer than others to our nation's begetting. Even the meanest peasant among us can trace his or her ancestry to Elua or one of his Companions, who gave us many gifts. We have not practiced slavery since Blessed Elua trod our soil. Love as thou wilt, he bade us; slavery by its very nature violates his Sacred Precept. And owing a vast debt against one's marque is almost as bad as being a slave, when one is prevented from receiving patron- gifts.

I have a couturiere, sharp-tongued and gifted, who was a failed adept, flawed by a scar that rendered her unfit by the tenets of the Night Court; fifteen years or more, it might have taken Favrielle nó Eglantine to make her marque on the commissions her Dowayne allowed her— meanwhile, her youth fled and her genius gone to make the marques of her erstwhile companions. It did not happen, for I used my own earnings to pay the price of her marque and buy her freedom. But there were others, and I did not have the means to save them all.