Kushiel's Dart

trimming the tunic beneath his armor. He stepped into the circle of torchlight and wrenched at the neck of my gown, tearing it open. I felt the night air moving upon the bare skin of my back.
    "Ysandre de la Courcel!" he shouted, his voice carrying. "See what becomes of spies and traitors!"
    I heard the sound of his belt-dagger rasping clear of its sheath, felt the point of it placed against the skin of my left shoulder blade. The White Brethren held my arms as he began to cut.
    Waldemar Selig was known to be a mighty hunter. Unlike D'Angeline nobles, Skaldic lords do not have servants to perform distasteful chores. They skin and gut their own kills. When Selig scored a strip of flesh from my back and began slowly to pull it down, I knew what he intended.
    He was going to skin me alive.
    I have known pain; Elua knows, I have known it. But nothing had ever prepared me for this. I gasped aloud as he cut, and when he took the strip of flesh, slippery with blood, in a pincerlike grip and began to draw it down, I screamed.
    And it would go on for a long time.
    Pain burst red across my vision, staggering me. I knew where I was, and did not. Kushiel, I thought, and my blood roared in my ears, beating like wings. I have done all I could. It was a relief, to surrender at last, at long last. I could hear my voice still, whimpering, ragged with pain, and Selig's whisper in my ear, tell me, tell me. These things happened, I know. And yet it all seemed distant and far beyond me, minor tempests on the outskirts of the maelstrom of agony I inhabited. The world lurched sideways through a bloodred haze, and hands dragged me upright. Pain blossomed all through me, finding a home at the base of my spine, radiating outward. Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present. I fell into it as if into a dark, bottomless well, seeing the bronze mask of Kushiel hanging before me, stern and compassionate, bronze lips moving, speaking words I felt in my bones. Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death. I saw faces, other faces, mortal and beloved: Delaunay, Alcuin, Cecilie, Thelesis, Hyacinthe, Joscelin . . . and more, flickering too fast to number, Ysandre, Quintilius Rousse, Drustan, the Twins, Phedre's Boys, Master Tielhard, Guy . . . some I didn't expect, Hedwig, Knud, Childric d'Essoms, the old Dowayne, Lodur One-Eye . . . even, at the end, my mother and father, dimly remembered, and the Skaldi mercenary who had tossed me in the air and laughed through his mustaches . . .
    Melisande.
    Ah, Elua! I did love her once . . .
    It was the cessation of pain that brought me back. Selig's knife had halted in the course of parting my skin from my flesh, paused in an incredulous moment. A voice was speaking, one I knew, clear words ringing on the night air in heavily accented Skaldic.
    "Waldemar Selig, I challenge you to the holmgang!"
    They let me go, then, and I fell over, my cheek cradled on the dusty, trampled field. I bled into the dirt and blinked unbelieving at the figure that had parted the Skaldi ranks.
    Stolen armor and a stolen horse for disguise-he had done it before-and Cassiline arms, summer-blue eyes behind the wild, desperate dare.
    "Elua, no," I murmured against D'Angeline soil.
    Waldemar Selig stood staring, then laughed; laughed and laughed. "It would have been too much to ask!" he declared joyfully, spreading his arms. "Ah, All-Father Odhinn, you are generous! Yes, Josslin Verai, let us dance upon the hides, and then . . ." He turned, roaring his words toward Troyes-le-Mont. "Then let Terre d'Ange see how Waldemar Selig deals with her champions!"
    These are the things the Skaldi love, the stuff of legend. Twenty spears pointed at Joscelin as he dismounted and his stolen mount was seized. They stripped away his stolen armor, too, while a ripple ran through camp as they searched for a suitable hide to stake out for the holmgang. Hauled to my knees and held in place by the two White Brethren, I saw it all. Selig's hazel eyes gleamed keen and bright as he tested the heft of his shield.
    No one would lend one to Joscelin. He stood at ease in the Cassiline manner, only the steel vambraces on his forearms to protect him. I knelt bleeding, rife with pain, and cursed him in my soul. Whether Selig defeated him or no, it didn't matter. He wasn't fool enough to throw victory away on a game of honor. He would break Joscelin; or worse, use me to do it.
    Joscelin, Joscelin, I thought, tears