Kushiel’s Dart

Once we emerged from the Senescine, our route grew ever more obvious, despite the increasing number of roads. As the dank cold of false spring eased into the truer promise of spring-to-come, pale green buds emerged on the trees around us, and traffic grew steadily along the roads.

And amid the travelers, we saw Tsingani in numbers, the true Travellers, journeying always upon the Long Road.

There is another horse-fair at the Hippochamp that takes place in late summer, when the most promising of yearlings are green-broken, offered to the gadje noblemen for outrageous prices. That fair, Hyacinthe assured us, dwarfed this one, as did the fair in midsummer in Eisheth. This was primarily a Tsingani affair, when there were opportunities to be seized early, untried yearlings and stumbling foals at auction, only their bloodlines and the cunning gaze of their breeders to recommend them.

No one has ever made a count of the Tsingani in Terre d’Ange; they are too migratory to stand still for it, too suspicious to report honestly. I have seen them gathering and I can say that they are many, more than we reckon.

As we drew near to the Hippochamp, we passed caravans of Tsingani. It was a strange thing, to witness the change in Hyacinthe. For it was he whom they acknowledged, calling out greetings in their private dialect. And why not? He was young, bold and handsome, one of their own. Hyacinthe shouted back, waving his velvet cap, black eyes sparkling. Their tongue was mixed with D’Angeline, but I scarce understood a word of it.

"You didn’t tell me I had to learn Tsingani," Joscelin muttered to me, riding close by my side.

"I didn’t know," I replied, chagrined. Even Delaunay, scholar that he was, hadn’t reckoned Tsingani a proper language. In all the time I had known Hyacinthe-through all the meals I’d eaten in his mother’s kitchen-I’d never understood what it meant to him to be a Tsingano. In front of me, they spoke D’Angeline proper. I thought of all the casual cuffs and curses he’d endured, from the very beginning of our acquaintance, when the Dowayne’s Guard had found me. I hadn’t known. I hadn’t understood. When he took a broken-down nag and built a profitable livery stable out of it, I hadn’t realized how deeply rooted in Tsingani tradition it was. I’d merely thought him clever for it.

It is a funny thing, how one’s perspective changes. I saw Hyacinthe through new eyes as we journeyed toward the Hippochamp. We passed Tsingani wagons, far more colorful and elaborate than Taavi and Danele’s humble Yeshuite conveyance, though similar in design, and the young women hung out the back, making eyes at Hyacinthe. I learned to tell the unmarried ones, who wore their hair uncovered. They chattered and flirted as we passed, and Hyacinthe grew more desirable with every exchange.

If they seem shameless enough to make a D’Angeline blush-and some of them do, those Tsingani women-I will say that it is a deceptive thing, although I did not learn this until later. For all their licentious behavior, it is only show. Among their own, the Tsingani hold chastity in fierce regard. But I did not know this at the time, and I will admit that it galled me somewhat, to see the number of women who made free to bid for Hyacinthe’s attention.

For Joscelin’s part, his appearance was met with giggles and titters, whispers passed from lip to ear behind shielding hands. The Skaldic women had ogled him openly; Tsingani dared not. The law of laxta is fierce in their society. Hyacinthe could not translate this word exactly, but it is the unsullied virtue of a Tsingani woman. This may be lost in a hundred ways-suffice to say that if I’d ever had it, it was long gone-but foremost among them was the mingling of precious Tsingani blood with one of the gadje, the Others.

Once I understood the gravity of this law, I understood somewhat of the sin of Hyacinthe’s mother. Not only had she allowed her body to be defiled, to become vrajna and unclean, but she had fouled her very bloodline. She had lost her laxta, all her worth as a Tsingano woman.

But they did not know this, the Tsingani en route to the Hippochamp. They knew only that Hyacinthe spoke and thought as one of them. If a D’Angeline fineness illumed his features, that keen, cutting beauty that is our blood-right, they saw in it only that he was a fine specimen, a veritable Prince of Travellers.

And so he was, with his bright, fine clothes, rich brown skin, his gleaming black ringlets, the merry light that danced in his dark eyes. When he called out that he was seeking the kumpania of Manoj, they laughed and called back, pointing. Manoj was there, the old patriarch, already a-field. Surely he would welcome Hyacinthe, blood of his blood, and all his uncles and cousins and aunts he had never met.

That was his dream, the old dream, and it bode well to come true. I saw it as we rode, drawing nearer, in the eagerness that marked him, the white grin that flashed out without warning.