Kushiel’s Dart

Thus we ended at our familiar table in the back of the Cockerel, though with the unfamiliar addition of a Cassiline Brother seated in the corner with folded arms, steel glinting off his vambraces as he scowled at the other customers. The inn-keeper looked almost as displeased at Joscelin’s presence as he did himself.

I told Hyacinthe most of what had happened. He fingered the diamond at my throat and whistled.

"Do you know what that’s worth?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No. A fair amount."

"A lot, Phèdre. You could…well, you could do quite a few things with the money it would bring."

"I can’t sell it." Remembering the cord taut around my throat, I flushed. "Don’t ask why."

"All right." Hyacinthe regarded me curiously, his black eyes lively with intelligence. "What else?"

"Joscelin." I fished a coin from my purse and slid it across the table. "Will you buy a jug, and bring it to Hyacinthe’s crew in the stable, with my regards?"

The Cassiline looked at me with flat incredulity. "No."

"I swear, it’s nothing like the other time, and naught against your vows. It’s just somewhat…well, you’d rather not hear. I’ll not stir from this chair." I grew annoyed as he sat unmoving. "Name of Elua! Do your vows say you have to remain glued at my side?"

With a sound of disgust, Joscelin shoved his chair back and snatched the coin from the table, heading to the bar.

"Let’s hope we don’t find him in need of rescue," Hyacinthe said, watching him go. "What is it?"

I told him quickly about Delaunay and Prince Rolande, what Melisande had said, and the book of verse. Hyacinthe heard it out.

"No wonder," he said when I was done. "So he was neither brother nor betrothed to Edmée de Rocaille after all?"

"No." I shook my head. "No, he wasn’t avenging her, he was protecting Rolande. I think. You never…you never looked?"

"I said I would not use the dromonde in this. You know why." It was the wholly serious tone I doubted many had heard in Hyacinthe’s voice.

"Your mother’s prophesy." I glanced at him, and he nodded briefly. "Either it came to naught, or it waits the day I know the whole of it."

"Pray it is the former," he murmured, then recovered his spirits, flaunting his white grin. "So you’ll no longer be a vrajna servant, Phèdre nó Delaunay! You know what that betokens."

"It means I can aspire to heights on my own greater than I’ve reached as Delaunay’s anguissette" I said coolly. "Mayhap one day I’ll have my own salon, which might even surpass the fame of Cecilie Laveau-Perrin, who trained me. Who knows what suitors that will bring?"

It took the wind from his sails, momentarily gratifying, but it wasn’t easy to discomfit Hyacinthe. He touched Melisande’s diamond where it lay in the hollow of my throat. "You know what it will bring, Phèdre," he said. "The question is, what will you choose?"

Annoyed, I slapped his hand away. "I’ll choose nothing, now! I’ve spent all my life at someone’s bidding. I’ve a mind to taste freedom before I choose to give it up again."

"I’d put no collar on you." He grinned at me again. "You’d walk the long road with me, free as a bird, the Princess of Travellers."

"The Tsingani collared your mother with shame," I said, glowering at him, "and set her to washing clothing and telling fortunes for copper pennies. And if the stories are true, they’d collar your dromonde, Prince of Travellers, and set you to playing the fiddle and shoeing horses. So don’t ply your O Star of the Evening wiles on me."

"Oh, you know what I mean." He shrugged, undisturbed by my ire, and plucked the velvet cord at my throat. "I’d not parade you half-naked before the peers of an entire province, Phèdre."

"I know," I whispered. "Hyacinthe, that’s the problem."

I don’t think, before that moment, that he truly grasped the nature of what I was. He knew, of course; had always known, and had been the one person who’d never cared for what, but only who I was. I saw him comprehend it now, and feared. It could change everything between us.

Then he flashed his irrepressible grin. "So?" he asked and shrugged, miming the crack of a whip. "I can learn to be cruel, if that’s what you want. I’m the Prince of Travellers," he boasted. "I can do anything."

At that, I laughed, and took his face in my hands and kissed him; and caught my breath when he returned it, kissing me back with unexpected skill and sweetness-they’d taught him well, the married noblewomen with whom he dallied-until Joscelin’s mail-backed fist slammed my change onto the table and both of us jumped, guilty as children, to meet the Cassiline’s dour gaze.

Riding homeward beside him in the gloaming winter twilight, I glanced at Joscelin’s forbidding profile and ventured to speak of it. "I told you there was no harm in it, and no concern of yours," I said, irritated by his silence. "My marque is made; I’ve no bond to betray now."