Kushiel's Dart

man now, who would take me without consent, by virtue of an ownership he held through betrayal. "I am my lord's servant," I said stoically.
    Gunter Arnlaugson was in high spirits; sarcasm was lost on him. "And a cursed fine one at that," he agreed cheerfully, picking me up once more and slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of meal. "If I'm not back in two hours, send in a barrel of ale and a rasher of meat," he called to his thanes, striding out of the hall.
    I hung, helpless as a child, over his shoulder, listening to the shouts and jibes of his men as we left. I could feel his muscles working beneath his woolen jerkin; I swear it, by Elua and his Companions, Skaldic warriors are unnaturally hale. In his modest quarters, he set me down and turned to build up the fire in the hearth. His room was simple timber, and held nothing but a rough-hewn bed covered with furs and a pile of tangled equipage, bits of steel and leather peeking from behind the edge of a shield, in one corner.
    "There," he said with satisfaction, rubbing his hands together. "That should be warm enough for your thin blood, D'Angeline." He eyed me, the unnerving shrewdness back in his gaze. "I know what you are, D'Angeline, that you are trained to serve your goddess-whore. Kilberhaar's men told me, that I would pay the purchase-price, when I could have had a village girl for free but for the cost of a raid. We have done it before, you know."
    "Yes," I said. I knew. I thought of Alcuin, whose village had been burned by the Skaldi. I thought of how the screams of the women had echoed in his ears, as he rode astride Delaunay's pommel. "What do you wish of me, my lord?"
    "What?" Gunter Arnlaugson grinned, stretching his massive arms wide in the firelit bedroom. Light glittered on Melisande's diamond. "Everything, D'Angeline! Everything!"
    It is funny how despair can so soon become an old companion. What he asked, I gave; not everything, not everything I had to offer, but everything he might desire. I was not fool enough to spend the coin of my skill all at once-and indeed, he was too young and too crude in the ways of Naamah to have grasped its value. But what I gave him, you may be sure, was beyond any price he had known to ask.
    If I thought before that I knew what it was to serve Naamah, I learned that evening that I had grasped only the smallest part of it. On their wandering, Naamah lay in the stews with strangers for love of Elua, and Elua alone; I had done it for coin, and my own pleasure. Only now did I grasp what it was she had done. For my own part, I would not have cared overmuch if I lived or died. Joscelin thought I had betrayed him, but it was for his sake, and for Alcuin and Delaunay and his oath to Ysandre de la Courcel, I had to live, by any means I could.
    I had nothing else to live for, save vengeance. •
    The arousement alone was enough for my Skaldi lord; I had barely begun the languisement when he gave a mighty whoop and toppled me onto his fur-clad bed, harpooning me with the gusto of a starving whaler. Melisande's diamond dangled from his neck and brushed my face as he plunged into me, burning like a brand. There is a point, always, where I no longer control either my patrons' desires nor my own. I gazed over Gunter's shoulder, the room swimming red in my vision, gritted my teeth and wept at my body's inevitable betrayal. Delaunay had lied, when he had set his value upon me. / can make of her such a rare instrument that princes and queens will be moved to play exquisite music upon her , he had said. A rare instrument I was, that sang at a Skaldi's crude thrusting. Pinioned under my master's hairy, heaving bulk, I came shuddering to climax, and despised all I was, and most especially the part that savored the humiliation of it.
    In the hall, I had to endure his strutting and boasting, and the envy of his thanes. It was not so hard, compared to what had gone before, but still it galled me. Hedwig saw, and paused in passing to lay a kind hand upon my arm.
    "His mouth is large," she said gently, "but his heart is larger. Don't take it so ill, child."
    I looked at her without answering. If I found compassion in my soul later for Gunter Arnlaugson, I had none that night. Whatever she saw in my eyes, it sent her hurrying away.
    I cannot recall the verses that Gunter sang that night; well-trained as my memory is, there are times when there is a kind of healing in forget-fulness. It sufficed that my reputation was made, there in the