Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [350]
"I must have been out of my mind," I whispered, and lifted my head to kiss him.
It was as well I'd started my preparations early.
It began at sundown, when lamp-lighters moved about the City in teams, kindling torches and the innumerable glass oil lamps strung in dangling lines from tree to tree along the streets and in the squares. At every corner, in every square, musicians assembled, tuning their instruments. Workers hired by Namarrese wine-merchants followed in wagons, grunting as they hoisted casks of wine over the edge, stockpiling them in the squares.
People trickled into the streets, wondering if it were true.
It was.
I had planned a fête for the entire City of Elua; the City of Hyacinthe's birth, the City that had raised him. I had gotten Ysandre's permission, of course. She granted it, though she thought I was mad.
Drustan understood. The City Guard was tripled that night—in part to prevent riots, and in part to allow the guardsmen to work in shifts, giving each time to celebrate. Although the planning had been weeks in the process and a number of people were in on the secret, the broadsides had only been posted that day. I wanted to take the City by surprise—and Hyacinthe.
Night's Doorstep would be the heart of it.
So many memories! I had been seven years old when I'd climbed a pear tree and scaled the garden wall of Cereus House, finding my way to Night's Doorstep where a grinning Tsingano boy taught me to steal tarts in the marketplace. It was the first act of defiance I'd ever undertaken in my young life. And no matter who carted me back home, whether it be the Dowayne's guardsmen or my lord Delaunay's man Guy, I kept returning. It was there that Hyacinthe had grown from a half-breed street urchin to a young man with a thriving trade in information, a livery stable and a boarding-house, the self-styled Prince of Travellers who wielded the gift of the dromonde in earnest, my one true friend.
All that he had given up.
They remembered him, there. They had never forgotten him. Not the figure out of legend—for indeed, his legend had begun to spread already, and the tales they told along the coast of Azzalle had reached the City—but Hyacinthe himself, sharp with a jest, shrewd with a bargain, generous with coin, a caring son who had seen to his mother's comfort in her final years. They deserved a chance to bid him farewell.
We all did.
"You're fair glowing, you know," Joscelin murmured as we traversed the already-thronging streets in an open carriage, bending his head so his lips brushed my ear. A group of early revelers raised brimming cups in salute, shouting toasts.
I leaned against him and smiled. "You might have somewhat to do with it."
He'd worn the lion's mane after all; and overmore, he'd conspired with Favrielle nó Eglantine behind my back, planning on it. Ras Lijasu's gift had been sewn onto the collar of a splendid cloak, a hue of red one degree lighter than sangoire, that it might complement mine own attire. Pale as wheat, Joscelin's hair spilled over the tawny fur and deep-red velvet alike. Between that and his familiar Cassiline arms, polished to a high gleam, he looked, for once, utterly magnificent.
For my part, I too was clad in Jebean attire—the style of Meroë, as interpreted by Favrielle. It spoke to our journey; the best parts of our long journey. And so I wore a Jebean gown in the blood-at-midnight color of sangoire, which only I, as the sole anguissette in living memory, was entitled to wear. It left my shoulders bare and wrapped tight about my body, fastened with gold pins shaped like cunning darts. I wore my hair in a coronet of braids, the finial of my marque vivid at the nape of my neck, and ivory and gold bangles—another gift of Ras Lijasu—adorned my wrists.
And if I wore a single ivory hairpin thrust through my braids, who was to ask why?
Oh yes, I had kept it. Kaneka's hairpin, one of a pair. I'd left its mate in Daršanga, piercing the Mahrkagir's