Kushiel's Dart

me. He took my face in both hands. "Do you know what mark you bear, little Phedre?"
    His voice had turned caressing and his thumbs stroked my cheekbones, perilously close to my eyes. I quivered between his hands like a rabbit in a trap, longing. . . longing for him to do something, something terrible, fearful that he would, rigid with suppressing it.
    "No," I breathed.
    He took his hands away, touching my cheek briefly in reassurance, and stood. "Kushiel's Dart," he said, and laughed. "You've an anguissette on your hands, Miriam; a true anguissette . Look at the way she trembles, even now, caught between fear and desire."
    "Kushiel's Dart." There was an echo of uncertainty in Jareth's voice. The Dowayne sat unmoving, her expression shrewd. Anafiel Delaunay crossed to the side table and poured himself a glass of cordial uninvited.
    "You should keep better archives," he said, amused, then spoke in a deeper voice. " 'Mighty Kushiel, of rod and weal/Late of the brazen portals/With blood-tipp'd dart a wound unhealed/Pricks the eyen of chosen mortals.' " His voice returned to its conversational tone. "From the marginalia of the Leucenaux version of the Eluine Cycle, of course."
    "Of course," the Dowayne murmured, composed. "Thank you so much, Anafiel. Jean-Baptiste Marais at Valerian House will be gratified to learn it."
    Delaunay raised one eyebrow. "I do not say that the adepts of Valerian House are unskilled in the arts of algolagnia, Miriam, but how long has it been since they've had a true anguissette under their roof?"
    "Too long."
    Her tone was honey-sweet, but butter wouldn't melt in the old woman's mouth. I watched, fascinated and forgotten. I wanted desperately for Anafiel Delaunay to prevail. He had laid his poet's hands on me and changed my very nature, transformed the prick of my unworth to a pearl of great price. Only Melisande Shahrizai ever named what I was so surely and swiftly; but that was later, and a different matter. As I watched, Delaunay shrugged eloquently.
    "Do it, and she'll go to waste; another whipping-toy for the ham-fisted sons of merchants. I can make of her such a rare instrument that princes and queens will be moved to play exquisite music upon her."
    "Except, of course, that you already have a pupil."
    "Indeed." He drank off his cordial at one draught, set down the glass and leaned against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, smiling. "I am willing, for the sake of Kushiel's Dart, to consider a second. Have you set a bond-price?"
    The Dowayne licked her lips, and I rejoiced to see her tremble at bargaining with him, even as my mother had trembled before her. This time, when she named a price, there was no surety in her voice.
    It was high, higher than any bond-price set in my years at Cereus House. I heard Jareth draw in his breath softly.
    "Done," Anafiel Delaunay said promptly, straightening with a negligent air. "I'll have my steward draw up the papers in the morning. She'll foster here until the age of ten as customary, yes?"
    "As you wish, Anafiel." The Dowayne bowed her head to him. I could see, from my kneeling perspective, how she bit her cheek in ire at having set the bond-price so low he didn't even deign to barter. "We shall send for you upon the tenth anniversary of her birth."
    And with that, my future was decided.

FOUR
    Life within the Night Court was ever a closed society, and I would have left it with Anafiel Delaunay the moment the bargain was struck, had he allowed it; but he did not want me, not yet. I was too young.
    Since I was to go into the service of a friend of the royal court, I must reflect well upon Cereus House, and the Dowayne gave orders to ensure I received proper instruction. Reading and elocution were added to my curriculum, and in my eighth year I began to learn the rudiments of the Caerdicci tongue, the language of scholars.
    No one expected to make a scholar of me, of course, but it was rumored that Delaunay had attended the University of Tiberium in his youth, and he had a name as an educated man. He must not find embarrassment in a child fostered at Cereus House.
    Much to the surprise of my tutors, I enjoyed my studies, and would even spend spare hours in the archives, puzzling out the riddles of Caerdicci poetry. I was much taken by the works of Felice Dolophilus, who joyfully unmanned himself for love of his mistress, but when Jareth found me reading them, he made me stop. Delaunay, it seemed, had given orders that I was to be rendered unto