Kushiel's Dart

for your name, so much the better. What did you think, when you bid me on this mission?"
    "I don't know," I whispered, and buried my face in my hands. I saw, in the darkness there, Waldemar Selig and twenty thousand Skaldi, the
    Allies of Camlach, glittering and fierce. It was not true. I had known. "Call them what you will."
    He did, too. The name still stands, in the Royal Fleet.
    When Quintilius Rousse had departed, I sought out Hyacinthe, who maintained an unspeaking vigil at Moiread's bier.
    "I heard," he said dully, sensing my approach. "Congratulations."
    "Hyacinthe." I said his name, once my signale , and touched his shoulder. "I never sought acclaim for it. You know that."
    He heaved a sigh, shuddering all over, and his face took on an expression I recognized as human. "I know," he said softly. "It is war. But, ah, Elua! Phedre, why? She was only a girl."
    "You cared for her." I said the obvious.
    "I cared for her." Hyacinthe smiled painfully, faint and wry. "Yes. Or I might have, at least. Waking dreamer, that's what she named me, isn't it? She said it, first. On the beach." Another profound shudder; I put my arms around him. His voice came muffled against my shoulder. "My own people, they cast me out for it... you believed, I know it's true, you talked the Admiral into as much . . . but she was the first, to touch me, to put a name to it, in welcome, Necthana's daughter..."
    Hyacinthe wept, I wept; both of us did. War is a strange thing. All that lay unspoken between us, unaddressed, set aside for this business of war. We are on a mission for the Queen. That, above all else ... I knew it, as well as he. And yet, when he turned his grief-stricken face to mine, I kissed him, lowering my lips to his. His arms caught at me like a drowning man's.
    At Balm House, in the Night Court, they say Naamah lay with the King of Persis out of compassion, to heal the pain in his soul. I grew up in the Night Court, I knew such things, yet never did I understand them until that night, when I drew Hyacinthe out of the circle of torchlight that surrounded Moiread's bier.
    We err, those of us who have quarreled, fragmenting Naamah's desire into thirteen parts, Thirteen Houses. There are many threads, it is true, but all of one piece, woven together like a Mendacant's cloak. Comfort and atonement, sorrow and exhilaration; all of a piece, woven together on the green earth of Alba. The poets do not sing of this, either, how death begets the urge toward life. I, who knew how to take pain, took Hy-acinthe's. Pain and delight, I took from him, and gave him back both, until we understood, the both of us, how they are intertwined, how one does not come without the other.
    Friend, brother, lover ... I shaped his face in darkness with my hands, his mouth with my lips, his body with my own.
    He cried out, before the end; I had used somewhat of my art.
    "Shhh," I whispered, stilling his cry with my fingertips, my own flesh sounding like a plucked harpstring. "Shhhh." Until I die, I swear, I will never grasp the whole of what it is to serve Naamah.
    Afterward he drew away, guilt coming in the ebb of desire.
    "Hyacinthe." I laid my cheek against his back, the warm brown skin, and put my arms around him. "The draught of poppies takes away pain, that the body might sleep and heal. So Naamah may send desire, that our hearts may forget for a time and heal."
    "Is that somewhat else you were taught ?" he asked, the last word harsh.
    "Yes," I said softly. "By you."
    He looked around at me then, turning in the circle of my arms, touching my face and shaking his head. "It wasn't supposed to be like this, Phedre. You and I. Not like this."
    "No." I smoothed his black ringlets, touched with silver by the faint starlight, and smiled ruefully. "We were to be the Queen of Courtesans and the Prince of Travellers, ruling the City of Elua from Mont Nuit to the Palace, not coupling on the sod of Alba near a blood-soaked battlefield, with six thousand wild Cruithne and grief in attendance. But here we are."
    It made him smile too, a little bit. "We should go back," he said, gazing toward the torches and the blazing fires. The Dalriada and Drustan's Cruithne celebrated still. Somewhere, penned together and under guard, the remnants of Maelcon's army watched in sullen exhaustion. They'd buried their dead too, and a harder job it was, though no cairn marked their grave, for the dead were many, and the diggers few.
    Others had taken up the vigil at Moiread's bier