Kushiel’s Dart

After a small eternity, the base was outlined. Chin propped on my elbows, I watched as Master Tielhard gathered the tools of his profession; the ink-trough and his tappers. His apprentice watched me out of the corner of his eye, nervous and excited. The boy was no more than fourteen, and I smiled to think of my effect on him. He blushed as he mixed the ink, and covered it by bustling about the brazier, heaping it with coal until the marquist’s shop was as warm and toasty as a baker’s oven. Master Tielhard snapped at him for it, and he blushed again. I didn’t care; being naked, it felt good.

And at last it was time for the marquist to start limning. As is customary, he began at the base of my spine, at the very knob where it ends, below the dimples of the lower back. I could not see him choose a tapper and dip it in the trough, but I felt it against my skin, the prick of a dozen tight-clustered needles and the seeping wetness of the ink.

Then he struck the tapper with his mallet and a dozen needles pierced my skin, impregnating the flesh at the base of my spine with a dollop of ink-black. The pain of it was an exquisite shock. I made an involuntary sound, my hips moving of their own volition to thrust against the hard surface below me, grinding my pubis into the limning table. Master Tielhard swatted me again.

"Damned anguissettes" he growled, concentrating on his work. "Grandpere always said they was worse than criers or bleeders. Now I know why."

Ignoring his complaint, I held myself still with the greatest of efforts while he continued, tapping, tapping, tapping with the mallet, piercing the lines of my marque into my skin.

I savored every moment of it.

Chapter Eighteen

This marked the beginning of a period of time that in many ways was the finest of my life. All that Delaunay had prophesied for me so long ago came to pass. Word of Delaunay’s anguissette spread like a slow fire, the kind that smolders and burns below the surface, impossible to extinguish. The offers continued to come, most of them discreet, a few direct.

It was during the first year that Delaunay’s cunning in the matter of our exposure became evident to me. Alcuin’s patrons were a select group, most of them hand-picked and targeted by Delaunay. Friends, acquaintances or cordial enemies, they had been to Delaunay’s house, had watched Alcuin grow from a beautiful boy. Delaunay had cast out a net with his auction, but he had certain fish in mind. As he drew it in, he selected his catch with care.

With me, it was another matter.

Many patrons, like Childric d’Essoms, Delaunay had anticipated; but others, many others, he had not. If Alcuin was a net cast on known waters, I was a line thrown out at sea and not even Anafiel Delaunay knew for certain who would rise to the bait.

And lest it be thought that my assignation with Childric d’Essoms laid the pattern for all further patrons, I hasten to disabuse anyone of this notion. My second assignation, a member of the Exchequer who paid dearly for the privilege, could not have been more different. Slight and deferential, Pepin Lachet seemed to me at first glance the sort of patron far more likely to contract Alcuin than I. Indeed, in the bedchamber he did naught but remove his clothes, lie upon the bed and bid me in an uninterested voice to please him.

If Childric d’Essoms required little of my art, Pepin Lachet required all of it. Disrobing, I climbed onto the bed and knelt beside him, beginning with the caress of trailing willows. I loosed my hair and flung it over him, letting it spill over him like water, slowly drawing it down the length of his body.

He lay unmoving and unexcited.

Undeterred, I set about the arousement, beginning with confidence. In the hour that followed, I tried every technique Cecilie had taught us, working with fingers, lips and tongue on every part of Pepin Lachet’s body from the tips of his ears to the ends of his toes. In the end, desperate, I resorted to a measure usually used by the cheapest of prostitutes, a crude manipulation called coaxing the turtle. Pepin Lachet’s member responded, stirring to a half-hearted salute.

Fearing to lose even that, I bestrode him and began to move urgently, but instead of rising further, his phallus grew limp and slipped out of me. Near to tears, I met his cold gaze.

"You’re not much good at this, are you?" he asked contemptuously, spilling me off him. "I’ll show you how it’s done."

"My lord, I am sorry…" I fell silent as he reached into the nightstand and brought out silk bonds, making no protest as he tied my wrists and ankles to the bedposts. When he brought out the pincers and his phallus began to rise untouched, engorged and swollen, I understood.