Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [265]
"Oh, Joscelin, Joscelin!" My own voice, breathless with joy. He let me slide through his grip and set me down, burying both hands in my hair and drawing me to him.
"Never again, never, never, never, Phèdre, I swear it," he murmured, muffled words punctuated with frantic kisses, "in the name of Blessed Elua, I swear it, I will never leave you again, take a thousand patrons if you want, take ten thousand, wed Severio Stregazza, I don't care, but I will never leave you!"
I raised my face and he kissed me, long and hard, until desire and love, like a dagger in the heart, sent the world reeling around me and I had to cling to the front of his jerkin when he released me, struggling to remain on my feet.
We regarded one another.
"You're alive," Joscelin whispered, astonishment in his summer-blue eyes.
"You're ... your hair!" I said idiotically to him, reaching up to touch it, ragged dun streaked with ash-grey. "What did you do to your hair?"
"It's walnut dye." It was another voice that spoke, a D'Angeline voice, thready but familiar. "It washes out, in time." I whirled in Joscelin's arms, seeking the speaker; Ti-Philippe grinned at me, thin, worn face beaming under asimilarly ragged crop of hair, dyed a flat, dark brown.
"Philippe!" I flung both arms about his neck, kissing his cheek. He held me hard, and I saw tears in his eyes when he let me go.
"We thought you were dead, my lady," he said softly. "Joscelin saw you fall from the cliff."
"No." I smiled through my tears. "Not quite, not yet." I swallowed hard, adding, "Fortun and Remy ... Fortun and Remy are dead."
"We guessed." Joscelin's voice was quiet. "Phèdre, who are these people?"
He had taken a step back, crossed hands hovering over the hilts of his daggers. Wiping my eyes and gathering myself, I saw that Kazan and his men had come up to surround me, while the others, Joscelin's folk—Yeshuites, I saw, young men and one woman—had done the same on their side. I realized then that we had been speaking D'Angeline, and none of them knew what had transpired.
"Friends, all of them," I said firmly in Caerdicci, and repeated it in Illyrian for the benefit of Kazan's men. "Friends." I looked at Joscelin, my heart breaking at the sight of his beloved face. "Joscelin Verreuil, this is Kazan Atrabiades. I owe him my life."
They regarded each other; two men, much of a height, some ten years difference between them. What transpired in that silent exchange, I will never know. It was Kazan who broke it, grinning broadly.
"As I owe her mine, I," he said. "I have heard of you, D'Angeline! You have a reputation to live up to, you."
Joscelin bowed, his crossed vambraces flashing in the autumn sun. He smiled as he straightened, a wry, familiar smile, and my heart sang to see it. "Does Phèdre nó Delaunay owe you her life, my lord," he said, "then I owe you my reason for living. Let us be friends."
Thus were we met, Illyrians and Yeshuites and D'Angeline alike, and the bond among us forged. From our meeting-place in the glade, we went to Joscelin's hiddenencampment, a rough establishment of tents and shanties where we sat to confer.
To recount all that was told at that conference would take nigh as long as it took to live it, although we spoke swiftly in turns, starting in the middle of the tale, voices tumbling over one another in a myriad of tongues. I told the bare bones of what had befallen me since I had plunged from the cliffs of La Dolorosa, leaving most of the details of our Kritian sojourn for another day, and Joscelin and Ti-Philippe told their end of it.
With many interruptions, I pieced the story together bit by bit. When Benedicte's guardsmen broke into our