Kushiel's Avatar

“I may favor the countryside to the City, but seeing you thus ...” He shrugged. “It makes me wish I’d a large fish to throw at your feet.”
    I laughed, and shifted in the tub, making room for him. “Come here,” I said as he shed his clothes and climbed in, the light of myriad candles casting into shadow the scars that pitted his body; scars he’d earned on my behalf. I circled dripping arms about his neck as he fit himself beneath me. “Yes, there.”
    “Imriel,” Joscelin murmured, shifting under my parted thighs and gripping my buttocks, “is of the opinion that I should wear the lion’s mane given me by Ras Lijasu.”
    “Is he?” I bit my lower lip as the tip of Joscelin’s phallus parted my nether lips.
    “Yes.”
    “Well.” Water slopped over the sides of the tub as I impaled myself upon him, inch by delicious inch. “Mayhap he’s right.”
    “Didn’t you say I looked foolish in it?”
    “Did I?” I locked my legs behind his back, feeling wanton and replete, filled to the core. “I don’t remember.”
    “Yes.” Joscelin moved slightly, his fingertips digging into my buttocks. I gasped, and more water slopped over the edge. “You did.”
    “I must have been out of my mind,” I whispered, and lifted my head to kiss him.
    It was as well I’d started my preparations early.
    It began at sundown, when lamp-lighters moved about the City in teams, kindling torches and the innumerable glass oil lamps strung in dangling lines from tree to tree along the streets and in the squares. At every corner, in every square, musicians assembled, tuning their instruments. Workers hired by Namarrese wine-merchants followed in wagons, grunting as they hoisted casks of wine over the edge, stockpiling them in the squares.
    People trickled into the streets, wondering if it were true.
    It was.
    I had planned a fête for the entire City of Elua; the City of Hyacinthe’s birth, the City that had raised him. I had gotten Ysandre’s permission, of course. She granted it, though she thought I was mad.
    Drustan understood. The City Guard was tripled that night-in part to prevent riots, and in part to allow the guardsmen to work in shifts, giving each time to celebrate. Although the planning had been weeks in the process and a number of people were in on the secret, the broadsides had only been posted that day. I wanted to take the City by surprise-and Hyacinthe.
    Night’s Doorstep would be the heart of it.
    So many memories! I had been seven years old when I’d climbed a pear tree and scaled the garden wall of Cereus House, finding my way to Night’s Doorstep where a grinning Tsingano boy taught me to steal tarts in the marketplace. It was the first act of defiance I’d ever undertaken in my young life. And no matter who carted me back home, whether it be the Dowayne’s guardsmen or my lord Delaunay’s man Guy, I kept returning. It was there that Hyacinthe had grown from a half-breed street urchin to a young man with a thriving trade in information, a livery stable and a boarding-house, the self-styled Prince of Travellers who wielded the gift of the dromonde in earnest, my one true friend.
    All that he had given up.
    They remembered him, there. They had never forgotten him. Not the figure out of legend-for indeed, his legend had begun to spread already, and the tales they told along the coast of Azzalle had reached the City-but Hyacinthe himself, sharp with a jest, shrewd with a bargain, generous with coin, a caring son who had seen to his mother’s comfort in her final years. They deserved a chance to bid him farewell.
    We all did.
    “You’re fair glowing, you know,” Joscelin murmured as we traversed the already-thronging streets in an open carriage, bending his head so his lips brushed my ear. A group of early revelers raised brimming cups in salute, shouting toasts.
    I leaned against him and smiled. “You might have somewhat to do with it.”
    He’d worn the lion’s mane after all; and overmore, he’d conspired with Favrielle nó Eglantine behind my back, planning on it. Ras Lijasu’s gift had been sewn onto the collar of a splendid cloak, a hue of red one degree lighter than sangoire , that it might complement mine own attire. Pale as wheat, Joscelin’s hair spilled over the tawny fur and deep-red velvet alike. Between that and his familiar Cassiline arms, polished to a high gleam, he looked, for once, utterly magnificent.
    For my part, I too was clad in Jebean attire-the style of