Kushiel's Dart

naught, or it waits the day I know the whole of it."
    "Pray it is the former," he murmured, then recovered his spirits, flaunting his white grin. "So you'll no longer be a vrajna servant, Phedre no Delaunay! You know what that betokens."
    "It means I can aspire to heights on my own greater than I've reached as Delaunay's anguissette" I said coolly. "Mayhap one day I'll have my own salon, which might even surpass the fame of Cecilie Laveau-Perrin, who trained me. Who knows what suitors that will bring?"
    It took the wind from his sails, momentarily gratifying, but it wasn't easy to discomfit Hyacinthe. He touched Melisande's diamond where it lay in the hollow of my throat. "You know what it will bring, Phedre," he said. "The question is, what will you choose?"
    Annoyed, I slapped his hand away. "I'll choose nothing, now! I've spent all my life at someone's bidding. I've a mind to taste freedom before I choose to give it up again."
    "I'd put no collar on you." He grinned at me again. "You'd walk the long road with me, free as a bird, the Princess of Travellers."
    "The Tsingani collared your mother with shame," I said, glowering at him, "and set her to washing clothing and telling fortunes for copper pennies. And if the stories are true, they'd collar your dromonde , Prince of Travellers, and set you to playing the fiddle and shoeing horses. So don't ply your O Star of the Evening wiles on me."
    "Oh, you know what I mean." He shrugged, undisturbed by my ire, and plucked the velvet cord at my throat. "I'd not parade you half-naked before the peers of an entire province, Phedre."
    "I know," I whispered. "Hyacinthe, that's the problem."
    I don't think, before that moment, that he truly grasped the nature of what I was. He knew, of course; had always known, and had been the one person who'd never cared for what, but only who I was. I saw him comprehend it now, and feared. It could change everything between us.
    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