Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [15]
I know why, now; Delaunay told me. There is an old, old story, older than Elua, about the Sun Prince wedding the Winter Queen to claim lordship of the land. Such stories, he said, are always the oldest, for they are born of our first ancestors' dreams and the eternal turning of the seasons. Whether or not this is true, I do not know; but I know of a surety that Anafiel Delaunay was not the only one who knew the story that night.
But this was yet to come, and in the preceding days, the mystery-shrouded confines of Cereus House abounded with activity. The doors to the Great Hall were thrown open, and it was given such a cleaning as was seldom seen. The walls were scrubbed, the colonnades polished, the floor waxed and buffed until it shined like mahogany satin. Every speck of ash was emptied from the massive fireplace, and rickety scaffolding was erected so teams of agile painters' apprentices could cleanse a year's accumulation of soot from the frescoed ceiling. Slowly, the Exploits of Naamah brightened, colors emerging fresh and new from beneath the accretion of grime.
When the empty and pristine hall was judged ready, it was decorated with fresh white candles, all unlit and smelling of sweet beeswax, and great boughs of evergreen. And then the long tables were covered with brilliant white cloths to receive the bountiful feast that was being prepared in the kitchens. Indeed, I was manifestly unwelcome in all my usual haunts, as everyone from the concierge on down to the lowest scullery maid was busy making ready for the Midwinter Masque. Say what you will of the Night Court, but no one entered its service without pride. Even the stables were off-limits, as the Master of Horse supervised through gritted teeth a thorough scouring of the entire premises. If Ganelon de la Courcel himself, King of Terre d'Ange, were to attend the Midwinter Masque (and such a thing had happened in other times) he would find his horses better tended than in the royal stables.
Of course, I had witnessed such preparations before, but this year it was different, since I was to attend. Of my erstwhile companions, only the frail beauty, Ellyn, would be in attendance, for Juliette's marque had been bought by Dahlia House, as all had guessed, and the merry Calantia had gone on to foster at Orchis when her tenth birthday had arrived. Ellyn's pretty half-brother Etienne was too young, and must pass the Longest Night in the nursery.
There were two other new fosterlings, though, whom I'd not met, for Cereus House bought the marques of children from other Houses too; pale Jacinthe, whose blue eyes were almost-but-not-quite too dark for the canon of Cereus, and a boy, Donatien, who never spoke. Like Ellyn, they were destined to be initiated into the mysteries of Naamah, and I envied them their surety of place.
On the Longest Night, though, there would be no contracts, no exchange of coin. Among the Servants of Naamah and their elect guests, only such liaisons as pleased the fancy would be made; our role was to adorn the festivities. It is tradition to drink joie on Longest Night, that clear, heady liqueur distilled from the juice of a rare white flower which grows in the mountains and blossoms amid the snowdrifts. We were to circulate among the guests, offering tiny crystalline glasses of joie, which we bore on silver trays.
Because it is the privilege of Cereus House to elect the Winter Queen, it is the theme we maintain, in costumes of white and silver. I was hoping to see Suriah, to show her mine. All four of us were adorned as winter sprites. We wore sheer white tunics of gossamer to mimic the effect of snow drifting in the wind, with dagged sleeves beaded in glass that hung down like icicles when we raised our trays in offering. Simple white dominos edged in silver, suitable for children, masked our faces, and we wore only a touch of carmine on the lips for colour. An apprentice ribbonnaire bound our hair, and did