Kushiel's Chosen

What did she expect, she who had sold me into slavery among the Skaldi? I had fought hard for my survival, and won greater hardships for my pains. It was true, Ysandre had used me at need, sending me into danger as great as that I'd left behind. But I had gone consenting, then. I had faced death, more than once. I walked into death's open arms on the battlefield of Troyes-le-Mont, and I went knowing what I did. I had lost comrades and loved ones, and grieved. I was not what I had been, when Melisande first had me. These things I thought, sitting on the flagstones of my cell and gazing up at her impossibly beautiful face.

"I was a child then, my lady," I said softly. "My price is higher now."

For once, I did not fear her; I was safe in Kushiel's dreadful shadow, and the sick, throbbing ache in my head protected me still. Melisande simply nodded, accepting my reply. "I will give you a day," she said. "On the morning after tomorrow, two of Benedicte's guards will come for your answer. They will speak to you in person. If your answer is yes, you will leave with them. If it is no..." She shrugged. "You stay. Forever. I will not ask again."

"I understand."

"Good." Melisande turned to knock at the door, then turned back. "You were unwise to play this hand so quickly, Phèdre. I will be more careful in the future."

"I play the hand you dealt me, my lady," I replied.

"Do you?" She looked curiously at me. "I wonder, sometimes."

To that, I had no answer. Melisande gazed at me a moment longer, then knocked on the heavy door for exit. Once more the key snicked in the lock, the hinges creaked open. I watched her go, taking every ounce of color and beauty with her.

Only her scent remained.

I opened my hand, revealing her wadded, blood-soaked kerchief, folds already beginning to stiffen until I smoothed it open. It was fine cambric, trimmed with lacework, with the swan of House Courcel embroidered small in one corner. A suitable lover's token, as matters stood between us.

One day.

And then I had to choose.

FORTY-FIVE

1 thought a good deal about Hyacinthe that day.

It was ironic, in a situation laden with bitter ironies. I had chosen this very fate when I had fathomed the riddle of the Master of the Straits; not merely a lifetime, but an eternity, bound to a lonely isle. I would not have faced the madness of Asherat's grief, of course, but I daresay centuries of tedium would have served much the same.

Hyacinthe had used the dromonde to read the past, and stolen my doom.

And now I faced it once more.

How had he stood it, I wondered. How did he fare now? The Master of the Straits had warned it would be a long apprenticeship. Ten years? Fifty? A century? I had sworn to do all I could to free him. Instead, I was imprisoned, and all my efforts had done was guide Joscelin to the Yeshuites so I might lose him. Now, I peered out the narrow window at the maddening sea, and wondered if there was any way Hyacinthe might free me. I had wondered, idly, aboard the ship from Marsilikos, how far the domain of the Master of the Straits extended.

Would that I'd come to some other conclusion. But his reach had never gone more than a few leagues beyond the Straits, and I was far, very far, from there.

And very, very alone.

I bowed my aching head against the lip of the window. Melisande was right, I'd been a fool to reveal the lengths to which I would go to defy her. All it had got me was a sore head and the fleeting satisfaction of seeing her surprised. It was an idiot's ploy, and not one I'd care to use often. And yet... I had needed to know, for my own sake. I could defy her, if I summoned the will for it.

Although it took a split skull to break the spell of one kiss.

And Melisande was capable of much, much more than that.

I knew; I remembered. I remembered altogether too well. An anguissette is a rare instrument; most of my patrons lacked the art to sound all my strings. Pain and pleasure, yes, of course, but there are others, too. Cruelty, humiliation, dominance ... and compassion and kindness. It took all of these, to make truly exquisite music. That was the part so few understood.

Affection.

It was my bane with Melisande, always the potential key to my undoing. No matter how much I hated her-and I hated her a great deal in a great many ways-there was a part of me that did not, nor ever would. Waldemar Selig had been a formidable foe with the advantage of owning me outright, but no matter how many times he mastered me, nor how many ways, I never risked losing myself in him. I had not been at least a little bit in love with him.

Still and all, now I knew; that sword cut two ways. Melisande cared enough for me to make her vulnerable, at least a bit. Even so had Kushiel cared for the damned in his charge, when he was still the Punisher of God; he loved them so well they received pain as balm and begged not to leave him. So too it made Kushiel vulnerable, for the One God was displeased with him and would have cast him down. But he followed Blessed Elua, who said, love as thou wilt. I wondered if he feared, mighty Kushiel, (his scion of his who burned so brightly. Elua and his Companions did not quarrel among themselves; not for them the jealousy of other gods. No, but each claimed his or her province in Terre d'Ange, and held it solely. Each save Blessed Elua, who ruled without ruling, wandered and loved, and Cassiel, who stood at his side and cared only for Elua.

The others-Kushiel, Azza, Shemhazai, Naamah, Eisheth and Camael-were they jealous of their immortal thrones, in the Terre d'Ange-that-lies-beyond? It might be so. It was so, among other gods, other places. Standing at the heart of Asherat's grief, I knew that much to be true. Mortals conquer and slay; gods rise and fall. The games we play out on the board of earth echo across the vault of heaven.

Melisande knew it.

I bore the mark of Kushiel's Dart.

My thoughts chased each other around and round. I tried to pray; to Kushiel, to Naamah, who were my immortal patrons; to Blessed Elua, who is lord of us all. But the pounding rage of Asherat's grief scattered my thoughts, driving away the solace of prayer.

If I were not chosen for somewhat, I would be dead now, as surely as Remy and Fortun. But what? To thwart Melisande by choosing no, denying her the chance to break Kushiel's Dart? Or to face her, and dare win a greater stake?

She would be cautious; she would be very, very cautious. My chances of defeating her plans were nearly nonexistent.

Nearly.

And the deeper game she played? I didn't know. By the • end of my day of grace, I was no wiser. I stared out the window, brooding, while the rays of the setting sun bloodied the waters. I wished that Hyacinthe were here with me now, to speak the dromonde for me. Not that he would; he never would, for me. Out of fear, at first. His mother foretold that I would rue the day I learned the answer I sought, the riddle of Delaunay. She was right, for 'twas the day he died. Afterward, Hyacinthe said he could not see, for the path of my life held too many crossroads. Truly, I stood at a dire one now. still, I wished he were with me. My one true friend, I used to call him. Even Joscelin, bound by his vow, had not proved so true.

Only love had bound Hyacinthe and me.

And he would be lost, too, if I told Melisande no. However slim the hope that I might find a way to break his geis, it would die with me here in La Dolorosa. If I said yes ... texts, if you wish, Melisande had said. I could continue. And there was nothing, nothing she could do to Hyacinthe, which gave me a certain grim satisfaction.

But there was Ti-Philippe ... and Joscelin.

My Cassiline, who left me. I hated him for that; hated and despaired, for it may have been the one thing that would save his life. But it had left me bereft, well and truly alone. I had been stronger with him at my side, my Perfect Companion. He lent me the courage and strength to cross the Skaldic wilderness in winter, and when Ysandre bid me go to Alba, he left the Cassiline Brotherhood itself to go at my side.

And then he left me.

The light on the water faded to mauve, and Tito came with my evening meal, looking with worriment at my face, my bloodstained dress, and coaxing me to eat before the light went altogether. I did, finally, if only to ease his distress. If I chose no, if I stayed, his hulking kindness would be the only spark in my life. I wondered, would it continue? If Melisande's ban was lifted and the warden freed his men to use me as their plaything, would Tito be among them? Simple and kind, yes, but a man, confined to this rock. I imagined Malvio showing him what to do, grinning all the while, and shuddered.

The worst of it... I did not like to think.

I thanked Tito as he took my tray, closing the door behind him. It was hard to make out shapes by now. I fumbled my way to my drinking bucket, rationing the water I consumed to save a little for washing my face. The hair at the back of my head was stiff with matted blood, but I didn't have enough water to cleanse it. I dampened my fingers enough to part it, touching the wound gingerly. It had clotted over cleanly, I thought, beginning to heal. More of Kushiel's questionable mercy, keeping me hale to endure fresh torments.

With the encroachment of night came a fitful wind and scudding clouds, obliterating the stars. Awake, I stood clinging to the bars of my window, facing unrelieved blackness and feeling the warm breeze on my skin. Asherat's grief moaned in the wind and surging sea. I separated the threads of sound from my various cell mates, finding a new voice among them, or mayhap only a new phase of madness. This was a deep cry on a rising tenor that reached a certain pitch and broke off in a throaty gurgle; the Howler, I named him. I listened for the others, counting, and did not hear the Screamer, although the Pleader's voice was among them, an endless litany of begging.

Well, I thought, mayhap they were different all along, and the Screamer has become the Howler. It could be that this Howler was a new prisoner, but I listened further and decided no, that the sounds were too far gone from human. An old cell mate with a new voice, then. A new phase of madness.

I made my way back to my pallet by touch, wondering, what voice will I have when first I break? A Ranter, mayhap. I liked to think I would retain intelligible language, at least for a good while. Longer than most, likely. It would take a long time, for Kushiel's chosen to forget entirely what it meant to be human. They are not like us, who cannot forget.

Mayhap I never would, until I died.

I do not think I lack for courage, although admittedly, it is my own kind. I am no warrior, to face naked steel on the battlefield, but it is true, what I considered earlier; I have faced dire fates before. If I feared, if I prayed and pleaded it might be otherwise, still, I went. Into the Skaldic winter, into the teeth of the Straits, into the hands of Waldemar Selig. I was not a coward.

But this fate I could not face.

So be it, I thought, sitting alone in blackness, I cannot do this thing. Blessed Elua have mercy on me, but I would rather be Melisande's creature than a broken thing in a cell. At least it gave me a chance, a fragile, deadly chance, but a chance all the same. Here, I had none.

I had chosen.

My decision made, I felt somehow calmer, and at last was able to pray. I prayed for a long time, to Elua and his Companions, all of them, to protect and guide me, and above all, to give me strength not to betray my own companions. And if there was some chance, any chance, that Ti-Philippe and Joscelin lived, that they might yet act against Melisande and Benedicte, let my lips remain sealed. She would be cautious, but she would press; it made her uneasy, to know they had evaded her. Well and good, then let me serve as living distraction, no matter what the cost, no matter what she might do. Let my pain atone for the deaths I had caused.

Let me keep silent. Let me be the sacrifice.

It was better than this.

When I was done, I felt at peace for the first time since I had beheld Melisande, and despite the maddening wail of Asherat's grief, despite the cries and howls of the other prisoners riding the night winds, I laid my head down on my pallet and slept soundly.

It was the sound of shouting that awakened me.

I came awake in an instant, heart pounding, gathering myself to crouch on my pallet. No wind or sea, this, nor prisoner's madness; no. The sound echoed in my memory, recalling others like it. Men, shouting; reports and urgent orders. I'd heard it last in Southfort, among the Unforgiven, when Captain Tarren d'Eltoine sent riders north to seek out the guardsmen of Troyes-le-Mont. It was the sound of a garrison, only a garrison roused. A torch flame streaked the darkness outside my narrow window, a voice called out in Caerdicci.

And through the heavy door of my cell, I heard quick footsteps in the corridor, the sound of keys jangling, doors opened and slammed.

They were checking on the prisoners.

La Dolorosa was under attack.

I'd scarce had time to think it when my own door was thrown open, and the sudden glare of lamplight made me wince. I shielded my eyes with one hand, making out the silhouetted figure of the guard even as he went to close the door, satisfied that I was safely contained.

"Fabron, please!" My voice outstripped my thoughts, pleading. He hesitated, and I rose from my pallet in one graceful motion, using all the art of the Night Court. "Please, won't you tell me what's happening?" I begged him, turning out both hands. "I heard shouting, and it frightened me!"

He hesitated, then jeered. "Yah, D'Angeline, too good to look at me, until you're scared, huh? You think I'll protect you, when I amnn't even allowed to touch you?"

"Please." I didn't have to feign a tremor in my voice. "If you'll only tell me, I'll... I'll let you, I swear it. I won't say a word."

Fear and obedience were strongly ingrained in him; even then, he paused before taking two swift steps into my cell, closing the door and setting down the lantern. Lit from below, his face was eerily shadowed. "Let me see, then," Fabron said hoarsely. "Make it fast."

Holding his gaze, I slid the overlarge woolen gown from my left shoulder. The neckline dipped low, laying bare one breast. He made a guttural sound and stepped forward, reaching for me. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">