Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [142]
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."
"Your marque is not yet limned, Servant of Naamah," he said stiffly, and I bit my tongue; it was true. He looked straight ahead. "Anyway, it's naught to me where you bestow your . . . gifts."
Only a haughty Cassiline could have summoned that much contempt for the word. He set spurs to Delaunay's saddle horse and left me scrambling to keep up, detesting him once more.
THIRTY-SEVEN
In due time, the deal with the gem-merchant was concluded, each tiny diamond assessed for its quality and worth, and when all was tallied and counted, I was presented with a goodly sum of money.
With Joscelin's rebuke still stinging, I wasted no time in arranging a final appointment with Master Tielhard. I confess, I looked forward to the day with no small excitement. Like most Servants of Naamah, I had made my marque in slow, agonizing inches; to have it done in one blow, as it were, was a coup indeed.
Alcuin had done it, of course, but Alcuin had forced his patron's hand to it, and done penance to Naamah for it. Melisande's gift, whatever motivated it, was genuine. Whatever strings were attached to her gifts lay in the one about my throat, and not the one to be limned on my back.
Until the day of my appointment arrived, I dwelled in a strange hinterland, neither bond-servant nor free D'Angeline citizen. For once, though, I did not chafe at my confinement, but strove to make sense of all that had happened, not the least of which was my last encounter with Hyacinthe. I had a strange longing then to see his mother.
I wish, now, that I had seen her; Delaunay would decry it as superstition, but there was a grim truth in her prophecies. Perhaps things might have fallen out differently, if I had.
The wisdom of hindsight is always flawless. I know, now, that I should have told Delaunay the whole of what had befallen between Melisande and I; I should have told him that I knew about Prince Rolande. Indeed, I should have guessed it for myself. Of all the shadows that darkened Delaunay's soul, that had always been foremost among them: the Battle of Three Princes.
Rolande had fallen; Delaunay had failed to save his liege-lord. I had thought that was all it was. But now, I looked at him differently, remembering the words of his poem. O, dear my lord, Let this breast on which you have leant, Serve now as your shield. He had loved Rolande, and failed him. "Rolande was always rash," Delaunay had said, his voice bitter. "It was his only flaw, as a leader."
I should have known.
So I think, and doubt, and second-guess myself. But in truth, would it have mattered? I cannot know. I never will.
The day of my final appointment with Master Tielhard dawned cold, crisp and bright. Delaunay, half his mind elsewhere, was expecting a visitor; he agreed unthinking to the loan of his horse and Alcuin's, so my surly Cassiline companion and I rode to the marquist's shop.
Master Tielhard was not a greedy man. He was an artist, and no question about it. But artists,