Kushiel’s Dart

"D’Angeline and Alban alike," she said. "We give praise this day to Blessed Elua, and celebrate his words! Why are we here, if not for that? Nation, home and hearth, land, sea and sky, kith and kin, friend and lover, mistress and consort-" A rippling laugh answered, and she smiled. "-and husband and wife, we honor Elua’s sacred precept. Join me, then, on this day and ever after, and love as thou wilt."

No other sovereign would have given such a toast, I think; but this was Terre d’Ange, and Ysandre was our Queen.

We drank, and drank deep, servants filling our nuptial goblets with joie, that clear, bright cordial that made the torches burn brighter.

Afterward, the musicians struck up in earnest, and we danced on the green lawn, while the soft candlelit twilight faded unnoticed and the stars kindled in the black sky, a scent of flowers heady in the summer night. I danced first with Joscelin, and then Gaspar Trevalion bowed and extended his hand, and after that I lost count, until Drustan mab Necthana claimed a dance.

There were whispers, at that; some of the nobles knew who I was, and some did not, but now my name was known, and Kushiel’s Dart gave me away. Always, at court, there runs the murmuring river of politics, beneath the surface at any occasion.

Drustan ignored it and so did I; he danced well for an Alban, despite his lameness. I remembered the first time I’d heard his name. Ysandre de la Courcel shall teach a clubfoot barbarian Prince to dance the gavotte. So she had, and I danced with him now, while we smiled at one another. Cullach Gorrym, Earth’s eldest children. It meant nothing to the D’Angelines, but they had not been there when the black boar burst from its copse outside Bryn Gorrydum. I had.

We always did understand one another, Drustan and I.

I had patrons there, too. I’d chosen my assignations from among the highest-ranked in the realm, that last year or so. I gave none of them away. It was not the place to acknowledge such things. Some, like Quincel de Morhban, would not have cared; others depended on the discretion of Naamah’s Servants. It did not matter. I knew, and they knew, whose patron-gifts were etched indelibly onto my skin, link by link, forming the chain of my marque that rendered me free.

In the small hours of the morning, Ysandre and Drustan took their leave, and we followed them as far as the bedchamber, a great crowd of mixed folk, shouting out good wishes-and some bawdy ones-and pelting them with a hailstorm of petals, until they, laughing, closed the bed-chamber door and barred it, petals clinging to their hair, and Ysandre’s grim Cassilines turned us away, with an especially dour look for Joscelin.

No end to the revelry, though; the Queen had bid it carry on until dawn, and I saw it through to the end, having a deep need in my soul for a joyous daybreak to cleanse away the memories of too many others.

Joscelin, too; he understood. We had had the first dance together, and we had the last. Later I would laugh to hear the forays he had endured in between, staged by D’Angeline lords and ladies curious to test the virtue of a Cassiline apostate. Then I merely rested safe in the circle of his arms, glad to be there, where neither of us ever thought to find ourselves.

And we watched the sun rise over Terre d’Ange.

The days that followed were full of activity, for there remained a great deal to be done; but my role in it, for the most part, had come to an end. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer bestowed upon me the balance of the proceeds from the sale of Delaunay’s estate, I begged of him the name of a reliable agent, and made arrangements for the care and investment of my unexpected wealth.

With some portion of these funds, Joscelin spent his days making preparations for our journey to Montrève. We would not ride alone, it seemed, for three of Phèdre’s Boys, among those survivors of the wounded at Troyes-le-Mont, begged leave to be dismissed from Rousse’s service and enter mine.

Quintilius Rousse acceded and Ysandre agreed to the increase in Montrève’s allotment of men-at-arms, and that is how I came to acquire three Chevaliers: Remy, Ti-Philippe and Fortun. Why they persisted in their extravagant loyalty, I never understood-although Joscelin laughed and said he did-but I was glad of their presence, for I had no few trepidations regarding the welcome I would find in Montrève.

The folk there had been loyal to Delaunay’s father, the old Comte de Montrève and, so far as I knew, to his cousin as well; Delaunay, they’d not known since his youth, and me they knew not at all. Born and bred to the Night Court, I was no blood kin of theirs. I was not even Siovalese.

On the day before our departure, I received one last surprise. A royal page came to fetch me, claiming strangers at the Palace gates were asking for me.