I am used to fine clothing and not easily impressed, but the overgarment took even me aback. It was a loose-fitting gown of transparent white gauze with trailing sleeves—and it was spangled all about with tiny diamonds, sewn with exquisite care onto the sheer fabric. "Name of Elua! What does it go over?"
The maidservant fussed with a half-mask, a white-and-brown feathered osprey with the eye-holes trimmed in black velvet piping. "You, my lady," she said quietly.
In the candlelight, I could see right through the gauze. I would be as good as naked in it, before half the nobles of Kusheth. "No."
"Yes." Her manner may have been meek, but no one in Melisande's service was going to gainsay their mistress. "And this." She held out one other item, a velvet slip-collar, with a diamond teardrop suspended from it, and a lead attached. I closed my eyes. I had seen such things, in Valerian House. In the privacy of the Night Court, it would not be so bad.
But Melisande meant to display me before the peers of the readm.
Gently and inexorably, her attendants helped me dress, putting on the sheer garment, adjusting my hair so that it spilled down my back, drawing the slip-collar over my head and settling it so the diamond fell just so in the hollow of my throat, and placing the mask on me. When they were done, I looked at myself in the long mirror.
A captive creature gazed back, masked and collared, naked beneath a scintillating curtain of gauze.
"Very nice." Melisande's voice, amused, startled me; like Joscelin, I reacted out of reflex. A Cassiline bows in defense, and an adept of the Night Court kneels. I knelt and gazed up at her.
As I was in sheerest white, she was in densest black, velvet skirts sweeping the floor, the bodice tight to her torso, white shoulders rising above it, and black gloves above the elbow. Her mask was black, night-black feathers with a dark rainbow sheen upon them, sweeping up in points to mingle with her elaborately styled hair. A band of black opals on velvet encircled her throat, like the colors that glimmer 'round a cormorant's neck, and I knew what her costume was then, and mine. There is a Ku-sheline legend of the Isle of Ys and its dark Lady, who commanded the birds of the air and kept a tame osprey about her. Ys drowned, they say; I do not know the legend well enough to remember why, only that there was a Lady, and her cormorants may still be seen fishing the waters above the sunken isle and crying out for their lost mistress.
"Come," Melisande said, and held out one gloved hand for my lead. Truly, there was no command in her voice, only the simple expectation of obedience.
I rose and followed her with alacrity.
THIRTY-FIVE
I knew not what to expect from a Kusheline gathering, but in the end, it was not so different from other fetes, only a shade darker in tone, with an unfamiliar undercurrent and a preponderance of Kusheline accents, at once harsh and musical.
It all fell to a hush when we entered.
The Duc de Morhban's herald gave our names; both of them, though I had not heard what Melisande had said to him. For those who heard, even anonymity was stripped from me, marking me not as some nameless Servant of Naamah willing to contract on the Longest Night, but a member of a peer's household, collared and bound to Melisande Shahrizai of my own free will.
We moved among the guests, and a murmur followed. I could not but feel my nakedness beneath the sheer gauze with every step. Masked faces, feathered and furred, turned to watch our progress. Melisande glided smoothly between them and I trailed, tethered, in her wake.
And to my chagrin, with a hundred eyes upon me and Melisande's hand at the end of my velvet lead, I felt a desire such as I had never known stir in the distant reaches of my being, like the wave that had drowned Ys gathering force in the far depths of the ocean.
"Your grace." Only Melisande could make a curtsy seem the gesture of a queen receiving homage. A tall, lean man in a wolf mask inclined his head and looked gaugingly at her.
"House Shahrizai arrives," he said dryly. "And what have you brought?"
She made no answer but to smile; I sank deeply in a curtsy. "Joy to your grace on the Longest Night," I murmured.
His fingers lifted my chin and he searched my eyes through the holes of my mask. "No!" he exclaimed, glancing at Melisande, then back at me. "Is it true?"
"Phedre no Delaunay," she said, with her faint smile. It curved like a scarlet bow beneath the black mask that hid her features. "Did you not know Elua's City boasted a genuine anguissette, your grace?"
"I cannot credit it." Without removing his sharp gaze from mine, he reached forward and gathered up the sheer folds of my gown, slipping his hand beneath them.
I cried out then, out of pleasure and shame both. The Duc de Morhban regarded me from behind his mask, an amused wolf. Melisande twitched the line and I staggered, dropping to my knees in defense. The tiny diamonds sewn into my sheer gown bit into my flesh.
"The Due de Morhban is not your patron," she reminded me, one hand twining in my hair in a gesture that was half caress, half threat.
"No, my lady," I breathed. Her hand grew gentler, and I found myself leaning into it, pressing my cheek to the velvet of her skirts and inhaling her scent as if it were a sanctuary. Her fingers trailed down my throat, and I heard as if from a great distance my own answering whimper.
"You see, your grace," Melisande said lightly. "Kushiel's Dart strikes true."
"Well, have a care where it strikes!" he snapped, turning away. I could feel her low laugh thrumming through her, and a crimson haze rose to cloud my vision.
I could not say what transpired during the remainder of the Due de Morhban's Midwinter Masque; and I tried, for Delaunay queried me at some length, having never known my wits to thus falter. I can only say that my time there passed as if in a fever-dream. As Blessed Elua is my witness, I tried to pay heed to what passed about me and what conversations I overheard, but the slender velvet rope Melisande Shahrizai had set about my neck had severed at last my connection with that far part of my mind that was ever thinking and analyzing at Anafiel Delaunay's behest, and I was aware only of her hand on the far end of it. When I reached for that calculating corner, I found only the indrawn susurrus of the great wave gathering, and knew myself doomed when it broke.
If you were to ask me what I remembered of that Masque, it is only this: Melisande. Every laugh, every smile, every movement, all thrummed along the velvet cord that bound us, till I was nearly gasping with it.
There was a pageant; I remember nothing of it, except the outcry of the horologer, Melisande clapping, and her smile. I see that smile still in my dreams.
And too many of them are pleasant.
It is a small mercy that Joscelin was not there to see me.
When at last we left, the guests were fewer. Now it seemed I stumbled in her wake, and when the coachman handed me into the trap, I was quivering all over like a plucked harpstring. The velvet lead-line grew tight between us; she had not released it, getting into the coach.
"Come here," Melisande whispered as the coach lurched into motion, and there was still no order in it, but the velvet cord twitched and I slid, helpless and obedient, into her arms. Elua knows, I had been kissed before, but never like this. Everything in me surrendered to it, until she released me and pulled off my mask, stripping off the last vestige of disguise. Hers she kept, glowing blue eyes flanked by the dark upsweep of cormorant wings. And then she kissed me again, until I could return it with no artistry, but mere craving, clinging to her and drowning under her mouth.
Until the coach stopped, shocking me with its suddenness. Melisande laughed as the coachman opened the door onto her own courtyard; I could not imagine that we had arrived so soon. He helped me out, face studiously averted—I cannot even think what I looked like, glaze-eyed, touseled and naked beneath the expanse of diamond-studded gauze—and the velvet line grew taut. Too far from her, I shivered with dismay until she disembarked, and guided me, gently, into her home.
It was the Longest Night. It had only begun.
What befell afterward, I relate without pride. I am Kushiel's chosen, as she was his scion; this had been a long time coming between us. With Baudoin, I had seen her pleasure-chamber. This time, I saw the inner sanctum that was her boudoir. Little enough I saw of it, at that first glance: lamps burning scented oil, a great bed, and from the highest rafter, a single hook hung. That much I saw, and then she bound my eyes with a velvet sash, and I saw no more.
When she took the slip-collar and lead from about my neck, I almost wept; but then I felt them again, the familiar cord binding my wrists as she raised them above my head and looped them securely about the dangling hook.
"For you, my dear," I heard her whisper, "I will not dally with lesser toys."
A sound, then, of a catch being lifted. I hung suspended, too high to kneel, too weak to stand, and wondered what.
"Do you know these?" The cold caress of steel against my cheek, a razor-fine edge tracing the line of the sash binding my eyes. "They are called flechettes."Then I did weep, and it availed nothing.
The fine blade of the flechette, keen as a chirurgeon's tool, trailed down the length of my throat and brushed the neckline of my gown. How much that diamond-spangled gauze had cost, I could not guess, but the sheer fabric parted with a sigh, and I could feel the brazier-heated warmth of Melisande's bedroom against bare skin. The sleeves were pooled around my upwardly wrenched shoulders; the flechette traced the veins in my bound wrists, not breaking the skin, down the length of my arms to whisper effortlessly through the gauze. I felt the gown slither away, tangling about my ankles, the tiny diamonds clicking against each other.
"Much better." The fabric was withdrawn and tossed to one side; I heard it rustle and click in falling and turned my head after the sound. "You don't like having your eyes bound, do you?" There was deep amusement in Melisande's voice.
"No." My skin shivered all over involuntarily and I fought to remain still, fearful of the deadly point of the flechette. It was hard to do, suspended like that. The blade moved softly over my skin and the point of it pricked between my shoulder blades.
"Ah, but if you could see, the anticipation would be so much less," she said softly, drawing the flechette down the length of my spine. I didn't answer. I was shuddering like a fly-stung horse, and couldn't stop the tears that steadily soaked the velvet binding my eyes. Fear made my mind a blank, and a yearning so sharp it was like pain made breathing a struggle.
"Such desire," Melisande murmured, and the tip of the flechette danced over my skin, pricking my taut nipples. I gasped, bound hands clenching involuntarily, making the chain sway. Melisande laughed.
And then she began to cut me.
Any warrior wounded in battle has taken far worse from a blade than I had from Melisande's flechettes; I daresay it was nothing to the knife-slash Alcuin had endured. But the point of the flechette is not injury: it is pain. The blades are unimaginably sharp, and part flesh nigh as easily as gauze. One barely feels it, when first it pierces the skin.
That is why the subsequent cutting is done very, very slowly.
Blind and dangling, gripped by terror and longing, my entire consciousness narrowed to the scope of the flechette's blade as it harrowed my flesh with agonizing slowness, etching an unseen sigil on the inner swell of my right breast. I could feel the blood running in a steady trickle between my breasts and down my belly. My skin parted before the blade, and flesh was carved by it. It was like the pain of the marquist's needles multiplied a thousand-fold.
How long it continued, I could not say; forever, it seemed, until she stopped cutting and traced the point of the blade slowly down the path my blood had taken.
"Phedre." Melisande's voice whispered softly at my ear. I could feel the warmth of her body. The tip of the flechette trailed downward from my belly, a cool and deadly caress, until I felt it hovering near my nether lips, and trembled like a leaf. I knew where next the blade would go. I could almost hear Melisande's smile. "Say it."
"Hyacinthe!" In a paroxysm of terror, I gasped the signale, and every muscle in my body went rigid against the force of the climax that overtook me. Not until it ended did Melisande laugh and withdraw the flechette, and I sagged, limp, at the end of the chain.
"You did very well," she said tenderly, removing my blind. I blinked upward in the lamplight, half-dazzled, as her beautiful face swam into focus. She had taken off her mask, and her hair fell loose, rippling in blue-black waves.
"Please." I heard the word before I realized I'd said it.
"What do you want?" Melisande cocked her head slightly, smiling, pouring warm water from a ewer over my skin. I didn't even glance as it sluiced away the blood.
"You," I whispered. I had never asked it of a patron before: never.
In a moment, Melisande laughed again, and unbound my hands.
Afterward, she was well-pleased and let me stay, toying with my hair. "Delaunay saw to your training well," she said in her rich voice, sending a thrill through every fiber of my being. "You could match your skills against any House in the Night Court, my dear." She drew one finger up the line of my marque and raised her brows. "What will you do when it's done?"
Even now, I shivered at her touch with the aftershocks of pleasure. "I don't know. I've not decided."
"You should think on it. You're near enough to it." She smiled. "Or has Delaunay some target left for you?"
"No," I said. "I don't know, my lady."
She wound a lock of my hair around her fingers. "No? Perhaps he's satisfied, then. He used you to gain access to Barquiel L'Envers, didn't he? And used the Due to gain revenge on the Stregazza." She laughed at my expression. "Who do you think taught Anafiel Delaunay to manipulate others, my dear? Half of what he knows, I taught him; he taught me in turn to listen and observe, and the two skills together are more formidable than either alone could hope to be."
"He said you were well-matched in many ways," I said.
"All but one." Melisande tugged gently at my hair and smiled. "Sometimes I think we should have wed anyway, for he's the only man who truly makes me laugh. But then, his heart was given long ago, and I think a large part of it died with Prince Rolande."
"Rolande?" I sat upright, staring at her, my wits scrambled into a dazed sort of alert. "Prince Rolande?"
"You really didn't know, did you?" Melisande looked amused. "I wasn't sure. Yes, of course, ever since they were together at the University of Tiberium. Even Rolande's marriage couldn't come between them, though of a surety, Delaunay and Isabel detested each other. You've never read his poetry?"
"There's no copy to be found in the City." My mind reeled.
"Oh, Delaunay keeps a book of his verse, locked in a coffer in his library," she said idly. "But what's he up to, then, if he's no longer using you as his eyes and ears?"
"Nothing," I said absently, trying to remember. There was a coffer; I'd seen it, atop a high shelf on the eastern side of the room. It was dusty and uninviting, and I'd never wondered what was in it. "Reading. Waiting for word from Quintilius Rousse. Nothing." Too late, I remembered where I'd heard him mention Quintilius Rousse, and glanced quickly at Melisande, but she was disinterested.
"Well, mayhap he'll have sent a message with the Duc de Morhban's party; Rousse's fleet is anchored just north of Morhban." She drew me back down, tracing the lines of a sigil carved into my skin. The bleeding had long since stopped, but the lines were clear. "He'll want to see you."
"De Morhban?" Delaunay, Prince Rolande, oaths and poems and coffers; Melisande's mouth moved on me, following the lines she had graven, and it all went out of my head.
"Mmm. He's a Kusheline lord, albeit a half-bred line." Melisande drew back and watched the flush mount to my cheeks, amused. "Choose as you will, but remind him who he has to thank for the knowledge of you." With no bonds, no blades, no pain to compell me, she parted me effortlessly and slid her fingers inside me. "Say your little friend's name again, Phedre. Say it for me."
There was no reason for it, no reason to give the signale.
"Hyacinthe," I whispered helplessly, and the long-cresting wave broke over me once more.
In the morning, I woke in a guest-room, and one of Melisande's efficient servants drew me a bath and brought my own clothes to me, neatly laid out upon the bed. When I was conducted to the dining hall, Joscelin was there, and I was hard-put to meet his eye. For his part, he was inclined to ask no questions, seeing me apparently hale. Indeed, I had been in far worse condition—physically, at least—after my assignation with Childric d'Essoms, and I think Joscelin was somewhat relieved.
As she had before, after the night with Baudoin, Melisande came to bid me farewell. She greeted Joscelin graciously and he bowed stiffly in response. "Perhaps'twould be best if you kept this, Cassiline," she said, tossing him a purse. "On Naamah's honor." To me, she turned smiling, and slid something over my head.
It was the velvet cord; she tied it off, and settled the teardrop diamond in the hollow of my throat. I felt the relentless tide of desire surge in me.
"That," Melisande said softly, "is for remembrance, and not for Naa-mah." Then she laughed, and gestured to a servant behind her. He came forward with a bow, and filled my arms with a tattered mass of diamond-studded gauze. "I've no need of rags," Melisande added, wickedly amused, "but I've a certain curiosity to see what an anguissette trained by Anafiel Delaunay will do of her own accord."
"My lady." It was all I could get out, meeting her gaze. She laughed once more, kissed me lightly, and left.
Across the table, Joscelin stared at me. With my arms full of gauze and diamonds, I stared back.
THIRTY-SIX
Delaunay's home was quiet; it was early enough yet that nigh everyone, the housekeeper told me, was asleep yet, including his lordship. The Longest Night, by tradition, was a late one. Joscelin handed me Melisande's purse and excused himself, with red-rimmed eyes, to get some sleep. He had slept not at all, maintaining Elua's vigil.