Kushiel's Dart

There was no shame among the Skaldi, and I could feel his eagerness when he brushed up behind me, his considerable phallus erect and straining at the front of his trews. It would be some time before he wearied of this. To my dismay, I felt the answering moisture begin between my own legs. I would have wept again, but my eyes, at least, were dry. I concentrated instead on the murmurs. "He would be a fool not to give her up," I heard. "Even Waldemar Selig has nothing like that ."
    A gift fit for princes, I went obediently toward my own personal hell.

FORTY-TWO
    Embers smoldered in the hearth in Gunter's bedroom. He lay beside me, deep in slumber, rumbling sounds emanating from his broad chest. This too was a strangeness to me; never, in all my days as a Servant of Naamah, had I shared sleep with a patron. He had fallen soundly asleep with one arm flung over me, but hadn't woken when I'd cautiously moved it. As well to know it; there was no lock on the bedroom door, likely I could slip out without waking him.
    Gunter seemed to have no fear of my trying to escape. Rightly so, since I feared the snow and the journey as much as capture . . . but mayhap there was some merit in his casual trust. As I lay awake, considering the possibilities, I saw it.
    It was not, I feared, an option I liked; I liked it not at all, in truth, and the prospect of success was as terrifying in its own way as failure.
    Still, it had to be tried.
    Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. In the morning, I attended Gunter at his breakfast, serving him with the unobtrusive grace that was a hallmark of Cereus House. It pleased him well enough, and I had hopes that he was in a generous mood, but when I asked permission to see Joscelin, he slewed his gaze round at me with that canny look.
    "Nay, he's a hellion, that one. Let him stew in the kennels a while longer. I'll not show him softness till he learns to heel to the hand as feeds him," he said, laughing. "Leastwise he's making some new friends a D'Angeline lordling doesn't often get to meet, eh?"
    Poor Joscelin, I thought, and let the matter go for that day. Gunter patted me on the head and went out from the great hall to do whatever it was he did while away-betimes hunting, I later learned, and betimes making the rounds of the farms on his steading, seeing that all was well with his carls.
    So I was left to idle once more, only now there was some resentment in the glances of the women, whose labors seemed more onerous than mine. I would have traded places with any one of them, but they had no way to know it, and no reason to understand it. Hedwig resisted him, but Gunter was accounted a handsome man, I learned, and no small prize for the woman who would get him to plight his troth with her.
    Never skilled at doing nothing, I asked for pen and paper, that I might work out more translations of D'Angeline songs for my meager repertoire. They stared at me uncomprehending-the Skaldi have no proper written language, but for a magical system of runic sigils they call futhark . Odhinn the All-Father gave them to his children, they say, and there is virtue in them. I do not laugh at this, for it was Shemhazai who taught the D'Angelines to write. It is my thought that he made a better job of it, but then, I am biased. At any rate, there was neither pen nor paper to be had in the steading, so I made due with a clean-swept table and a burnt twig.
    Happily, the Skaldi women were intrigued by my charcoal scratchings, and their hostility eased as I explained what it was I did. They taught me songs, then, that I had never heard: Skaldic songs, but not of war . . . songs of life, of the harvest, of courtship, of love, of childbearing and loss. Some I still remember, but I wish I'd had paper to write them down. What the Skaldi lacked in melody and tone, they made up for in surprisingly beautiful imagery, and I do not think any scholar has catalogued these homely poems of house and hearth.
    So it was that I had more songs to sing that night, D'Angeline and Skaldic alike, and they were well received. Gunter dandled me on his knee and beamed; I was something of a luck-charm to the Skaldi, it seemed, with this sorcerous gift of tongues.
    The second night passed much like the first. I saw that Gunter was well pleased and slept the sleep of deep exhaustion, and repeated my request in the morning. Again he denied it, and I bided, to ask again after the third night.
    "When he is tamed, I will show him kindness," he