Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [129]
If Alcuin had no way of knowing what questions roiled around my mind, he knew well enough from whence my hostility came. But he merely sat and regarded me with his grave, dark eyes.
"You do know," I said in sudden comprehension. "He told you." My anger flared, and I shoved at the books nearest me. "Damn you, Alcuin! We always, always promised we would share with the other what we learned!"
"That was before I knew." Quietly, he moved the most brittle of the scrolls out of my reach. "Phedre, I swear to you, I don't know the whole of it. Only what I need to aid him in this research. And I promised only not to tell you until your marque was made. You're near to it, aren't you?"
"Will you see?" I asked him coldly.
They were the words he had asked Delaunay. I saw him remember, and flush, the color as visible as wine in an alabaster cup. He'd known I knew; he hadn't known I'd seen. But it wasn't in Alcuin to evade the truth, and blushing or no, there was no guile in his eyes as he held my gaze. "You were the one who told him, Phedre. He might never have let it happen, if you hadn't put it in his thoughts."
"I know. I know." My anger died, and I held my head in my hands and sighed. Joscelin stared at us, blinking and perplexed. It was no easy thing, to follow a quarrel between students of Anafiel Delaunay's. "I saw too well how you loved him, and for all his cleverness, Delaunay was as simple as a pig-herder where you were concerned. He'd have let you starve your heart out in his shadow before he saw. But I didn't think it would hurt so much."
Alcuin came over to sit beside me and put his arms about me. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "Truly, I'm sorry."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Joscelin rise silently and give his formal bow, withdrawing tactfully from the room. In that distant part of my mind that was ever calculating, I regretted that we had driven him away, the first time that he had relaxed a little in our presence. But Alcuin and I had been too long together in Delaunay's household not to have this conversation, and it had been long days in coming.
"I know," I said to him. I laughed, and my breath caught in my throat, but I had no tears left for this. "I wish there were a little unkindness in you, Alcuin, so I could hate you for it. But I suppose I'll have to settle for wishing you well, and hating you for what you won't tell me."
He laughed too at that, his breath warm at my ear. His white hair spilled over my shoulder, mingling with my own sable locks. "Well, I'd have done the same."
"Yes," I said, "you would." I stroked his hair where it lay against mine, then drew out two lengths and braided them together, dark and white intertwining. He kept his head next to mine and his arms about me, watching. "Our lives," I said. "Bound together by Anafiel Delaunay."
Who, having entered the room, cleared his throat.
Alcuin, startled, jerked his head up. My hair, braided with his, tugged at my scalp and made me wince.
I can't imagine how foolish we looked; Delaunay's mouth twitched with amusement, but he managed to keep a straight face. "I thought you might like to know, Phedre," he said, working hard at keeping his voice solemn, "that Melisande Shahrizai has come to visit, and would like to make an offer of an assignation."
"Name of Elua!" I yanked at the braid, dragging Alcuin's head back down with a yelp, and began undoing it frantically. "Why can't she send a courier, like normal people?"
"Because," Delaunay said, still amused, "she is an acquaintance of long standing, and likely most of all, because she enjoys seeing you discomfited. Be thankful I bid her wait in the receiving room while I summoned