Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [193]
"So what makes you so certain they exist?" I asked.
There were other things she couldn't tell me—couldn't or wouldn't. On the matter of my alleged enemies, she refused to speak further, saying only that it was the price the Guild had set on my loyalty. But I continued to ask questions, hoping to reason my way out of the web in which I was entangled. And then Erytheia and Silvio would return and I would be paid my silver coin, and in their eyes I became somewhat else altogether, Claudia Fulvia's kept boy.
It shouldn't have bothered me, but it did.
I knew what it meant to serve Naamah. I had seen the profound reverence with which her adepts approached their work at Balm House, at once grave and joyful. I had seen kindness and compassion in those who answered Naamah's calling in Night's Doorstep. Even in Valerian House—especially in Valerian House—there was a singular pride, deep and untouchable.
It was different here.
And when I saw the way Silvio looked at me, I thought about the young woman at the brothel, weeping and begging me not to leave. I thought about the whore on the streets, spitting at my feet.
I thought about Daršanga. And I wondered, betimes, about the damage done to me there. I told myself I only allowed myself to be caught in Claudia's thrall because of the intrigue, because I wanted to know the truth. But I knew, every time I went to her and she left me wrung out and gasping, that it was half a lie. I wanted her, too. I wanted to gain a sense of mastery over her, to drive her harder than she drove me.
And there was never enough time. I wanted more, more than Eyrtheia's hourglass permitted. Dangerous games with dangerous toys. Claudia made me promises, whispering in my ear, telling me things she longed to do. Ways she wanted me to take her; ways in which she wanted me to submit to her. She promised there would be another time, soon, when we could spend a night together.
I wanted it.
I dreaded it, too.
Worst of all were the evenings after I left the atelier and joined my friends in the wineshop. There I became yet another self, and it was the self I liked the least. I got into the habit of visiting the baths after I was with Claudia, but I could still feel her on my skin. I looked at Eamonn, who I claimed to love like a brother, and felt I was living a lie. I looked at Lucius Tadius, to whom I had promised friendship, and felt myself to be the worst kind of hypocrite. I looked at all of them, wondering who, if any, were part of the Unseen Guild, and I felt very alone and lonely in the midst of the camaraderie.
I'd come to Tiberium to find out who I was, and I had been divided against myself. I'd come to discover what it meant to be good, and I was floundering in lies, hypocrisy, and suspicion.
I was learning, though.
Claudia was right. I was being trained in the arts of covertcy. Not the skills of observation and stealth, but the deeper arts. The ability to navigate alone through a web of deceit and mistrust with a pleasant mask on my face. In time, I even got good enough to fool Eamonn, letting him believe a near-truth, that I was having an affair with a Tiberian noblewoman that I dare not risk exposing.
I'd told the same half-truth to Gilot, threatening him with dire consequences if he ever revealed the location of the domus he'd led me to on the night of that first liaison with Claudia. He believed it easily enough and kept his mouth shut. Gilot had no great fondness for Lucius, and as long as I didn't put myself at risk, wandering the streets alone, he didn't care what I did.
Lying to Eamonn was harder. It hurt. And I would never have done it if I wasn't afraid for him. If it wasn't for the nagging doubts. We were alone and far from home. If the Unseen Guild existed, I didn't dare risk telling him.
Is that a warning?
Yes.
Betimes I wasn't certain how much of it I believed. Of a surety, there was a conspiracy at work here, but there was no evidence of its scope, and Claudia was hard put to prove it to me. There was the Persian guide's name,