Kushiel’s Dart

Is it any wonder, then, that I became what I did? Delaunay maintains that it was ever my destiny, and perhaps he is right, but this I know is true: When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me.

Chapter Two

I remember the moment when I discovered pain.

Life in Cereus House settled quickly into its own rhythm, unchanging and ceaseless. There were several of us younger children; four others, all told, and myself. I shared a room with two girls, both of them fragile and soft-spoken, with manners like exquisite china. The elder, Juliette, had hair darkening to a brassy gold in her seventh year, and it was reckoned that Dahlia House would buy her marque. With her reserve and solemn air, she was suited to its service.

The younger, Ellyn, was for Cereus House and no mistake. She had the frail bloom and pallor, skin so fair the lids were bluish over her eyes when she closed them, lashes breaking like a wave on her tender cheek.

I had little in common with them.

Nor with the others, in truth-pretty Etienne, half-brother to Ellyn, with his cherub’s curls of palest gold; nor with Calantia, despite her merry laugh. They were known quantities, their worth determined, their futures assured, born of sanctioned union and destined, if not for this House, then another.

It is not, understand, that I was bitter. Years passed in this manner, pleasant and undemanding, spent in the company of the others. The adepts were kind, and took shifts to teach us the rudiments of knowledge; poetry, song and playing, how to pour wine and prepare a bedchamber and serve at the table as pretty adornments. This I was permitted to do, providing I kept my eyes cast always downward.

I was what I was: a whore’s unwanted get. If this sounds harsh, understand too what I learned at Cereus House: Blessed Elua loved me nonetheless for it. After all, what was he if not a whore’s unwanted get? My parents had never bothered with teaching me the basics of faith, caught up in the rhapsody of their mortal devotions. At Cereus House, even the children received the benefit of a priest’s instruction.

He came every week, Brother Louvel, to sit cross-legged among us in the nursery and share with us the teachings of Elua. I loved him because he was beautiful, with long, fair hair he bound in a silken braid and eyes the color of deep ocean. Indeed, he had been an adept of Gentian House until a patron bought his marque, freeing him to follow his mystic’s dreams. Ministering unto children was one of them. He would draw us upon his lap, one or two at a time, and spin us the old tales in his dreamer’s voice.

This is how I came to learn, then, dandled on a former adept’s knee, how Blessed Elua came to be; how when Yeshua ben Yosef hung dying upon the cross, a soldier of Tiberium pierced his side with the cruel steel of a spearhead. How when Yeshua was lowered, the women grieved, and the Magdelene most of all, letting down the ruddy gold torrent of her hair to clothe his still, naked figure. How the bitter salt tears of the Magdelene fell upon soil ensanguined and moist with the shed blood of the Messiah.

And from this union the grieving Earth engendered her most precious son; Blessed Elua, most cherished of angels.

I listened with a child’s rapt fascination as Brother Louvel told us of the wandering of Elua. Abhorred by the Yeshuites as an abomination, reviled by the empire of Tiberium as the scion of its enemy, Elua wandered the earth, across vast deserts and wastelands. Scorned by the One God of whose son he was begotten, Elua trod with bare feet on the bosom of his mother Earth and wandered singing, and where he went, flowers bloomed in his footprints.

He was captured in Persis, and shook his head smiling when the King put him in chains, and vines grew to wreath his cell. The tale of his wandering had come to reach the ear of Heaven, and when he was imprisoned, there were those among the angelic hierarchy who answered. Choosing to flout the will of the One God, they came to earth in ancient Persis.

Of these it was Naamah, eldest sister, who went smiling to the King and offered herself with lowered eyelids, in exchange for the freedom of Elua. Besotted, the King of Persis accepted, and there is a story still told of the King’s Night of Pleasure. When the door to Elua’s cell was opened, a great fragrance of flowers poured forth, and Elua emerged singing, crowned with vines.

This is why, Brother Louvel explained, we revere Naamah and en er her service as a sacred trust. Afterward, he said, the King betrayed Elua and those who followed, and gave them strong wine laced with valerian to drink. While they slept, he had them cast on a boat with no sails and put out to sea; but when he awoke, Elua sang and the creatures of the deep came to answer, guiding the boat across the sea.