Kushiel's Chosen

When all was said and done, he did cut a rather dashing figure.



It was a balmy and beautiful night, with bright stars emerging in the canopy of black overhead. The sea murmured and sighed as we dined on chicken roasted with rosemary and stuffed with goat cheese, accompanied by a salad of lentils and parsley-and wine, a good deal of wine. It was a red wine, new and a little harsh on the tongue, but I drank it recklessly and it made the lamps burn brighter. Kazan had two cups to my every one, and his gaze never left me. When his speech grew thicker, it was with desire, and not wine.



A cord may only be drawn so taut before it snaps; so with him. The servant lass had not yet cleared the dinner things when Kazan pushed back his chair and stood, extending his hand to me. "Come here, you," he said in his hoarse whisper.



Naamah's Servant, I went.



His hands closed hard about my waist and his mouth came down on mine; his tongue parted my lips, and he kissed me as a starving man eats. Urgency went through me like a bolt, and I wound my arms about his neck, his long hair sliding over my bare skin, kissing him back. He groaned aloud in my mouth, hands sliding lower to cup my buttocks, kneading my flesh and drawing me hard against him. Crockery slid off the table and smashed as he leaned me back against the edge of it, bracing his thighs against mine. I put my head back as his hands rose to fondle my breasts, nipples rising taut in response beneath the fabric of my dress. He moved his mouth over my neck and throat as if to devour me whole, tearing away my necklace of shells with one sharp jerk.



Never mind, I thought foolishly, Oltukh will make me another. I was ready for Kazan to take me then and there; Elua knows, more than ready. It was he who reined himself in, raising his head and breathing hard.



"It is not right, here," he said harshly. "Inside!"



Inside, outside; it mattered naught to me. Grasping my hand hard enough to hurt, Kazan strode into the house, dragging me stumbling after him. I caught a brief glimpse of Marjopí's face as we passed, too astonished to be disapproving. Moving like the wind, Kazan hauled me into his bedchamber and slammed the door shut behind him.



"Here," he said, reaching for me.



"Wait," I whispered; I had regained a measure of composure and guided him to the bed. The room was dimly lit by a single clay lamp. He sat staring avidly at me as I stood before him and loosed the ties that bound my dress, letting it slide from my shoulders. Stepping neatly out of it, I knelt before him to remove his leather boots.



Undressing is the first of the arts of the bedchamber proper that one learns and it is one of the hardest to execute with grace, being fraught with awkwardness in a way that lovemaking is not. I did not practice it often, as an anguis-sette; still, I knew what I was about. When I had done with his boots, I rose to remove his shirt. There is a trick to it, sliding one's hands under the hem that they may glide over the flesh as the shirt is raised. I could feel his chest rise and fall with his swift breathing.



When I unlaced his breeches, fingertips skimming the rigid phallus trapped beneath, he made an inarticulate sound. Still, he managed to stand. I drew his breeches down slowly, dragging my nails lightly over the skin of his hips and legs as I sank to my knees.



And that is as far as I got with D'Angeline subtleties and Kazan Atrabiades, who was shuddering all over like a fly-stung horse. In a trice, he had me on the great bed with its gilded headboard, and his face hovered over mine, flushed with triumph and desire as he forced my legs over his shoulders. With a great groan of relief, he sheathed himself in me to the hilt.



It had been a long time; a very long time, as I reckoned such things.



I daresay he took rather longer at it than I had expected. For all his impatience, Kazan knew the value of self-control, and he was no green lad to spend himself in one furious spurt. Conquest was his trade, and he plied it with women as well as enemies. Once inside me, he moved in long, steady thrusts, increasing his pace until it brought me to the brink of pleasure and beyond, then slowing until I whimpered with frustration and dug my nails into his back, pleading in D'Angeline. Only when I had been well and truly plundered did he take his own pleasure, his expression turning far-off and distant as the critical moment came.



Afterward he slept, as deep and sound as a man who has achieved his goal after long, hard labor. Since he had not told me to go, I stayed beside him, and lay awake thinking long after the lamp had sputtered into darkness, remembering the kríavbhog and wondering. In time my eyes grew heavy, and I, too, slept.



When I awoke, the sun was well above the horizon and Kazan was gone.



Marjopí gave me a breakfast of dates and honey with fresh bread to sop in it, giving me the evil eye and muttering in Illyrian. I ate in the bright, sun-lit kitchen, with several house cats twining around the legs of the table, and listened to her until I could endure it no more.



"I understand, a little," I said in Illyrian. "I do not mean harm to Kazan. When Nikanor comes, I will go."



She gave me the same look she had when I'd asked for a mirror; as if I were one of her cats that had suddenly opened its mouth and talked. "Oh, you are not bad in yourself, I know this," she said grudgingly. "But better you go now than later, before you steal his heart." She pointed to my left eye, marked by Kushiel's Dart. "It is bad luck, this says, and when blood-curse crosses blood-curse, someone will die."



Or somewhat similar; I was guessing, a little bit, but I understood the sense of it. "He will not let me, until the money comes. Marjopí, why is Kazan ..." I stumbled over the word "... blood-cursed? Because he killed his brother? Why?"



But she would not answer, and only turned away muttering again, too low to make out.



Thus was the pattern of my days and nights of waiting established. I have no words to describe my relationship with Kazan Atrabiades during that time for, in many ways, 'twas stranger than any I have known. By day, it pleased him to think himself my host, and not my captor; sometimes he played the role so well I daresay he forgot it himself, although I never did. By night, it was different, and sometimes I did forget that I was in his bed because I was a hostage, and not a Servant of Naamah.



And sometimes he was nearly like a friend, which was strangest of all.



Those were times when he was light of heart, and wanted to spin out the night with talk and love-play. It came to be a running jest among his men, to number the reasons why Kazan Atrabiades was short of sleep. "Kazan had fleas in his bed last night and could not sleep for itching," one would say to the others with a straight face. "Do not trouble him today." And the next day, another; "An owl kept Kazan awake all night; beware his temper!" And Glaukos would color, knowing I understood.



Other times, he was moody and withdrawn, and those were the times when the crawling shadows in the corners of his room made me uneasy. It was not until I awoke one night to find him standing in a square of moonlight, holding the wooden soldier, that he spoke of it.



"Kazan," I said gently, sitting up in bed. "What is it?"



For a moment, he said nothing, then answered roughly. "No matter, eh? I dreamed, I. It is nothing. Go to sleep, you."



I watched him put the child's toy carefully back in the drawer and close it; I'd not gone near it since the first time. "There is truth in dreams, sometimes. It was a dream that sent me to La Serenissima. Do you speak of it, my lord, mayhap I can help-"



"I dream of my brother when he was a boy." Kazan interrupted me, his voice grim. "He comes to me covered in blood, eh, and asks why I killed him!"



I caught my breath, and waited; he glared at me across the moonlit room. For the space of three heartbeats I waited, and finally asked it, quietly. "Why did you?"



For a short eternity, he only glared, and then the anger went out of him with a shuddering sigh and he sat on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands. I could barely make out the muffled words. "It was an accident."



Naamah's arts are not only for love, although ignorant people think so. I drew the story out of him that night like a thorn, piecing it together. The Atrabiades line was an old one and noble in Illyria; his father had been a captain in the Ban's Guard, with estates in Epidauro. A gently-bred wife, he had, and two sons; Kazan the warrior, his father's pride, and Daroslav the scholar, his mother's favorite. When he died in a skirmish, Kazan resigned his commission in the Epidauran navy to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Guard.



All of this was some ten years ago, and he but twenty-two or three years of age, a fierce, bright young warrior, rising quickly in rank until he had a unit of his own to command. It was the time of Cesare Stregazza's last great effort as the Doge of La Serenissima to subdue Illyria entirely and place a regent in Epidauro to rule it.



And it was a time when Kazan's brother Daroslav was home on leave from his studies at the University of Tiberium, much against his mother's wishes.



"He begged and begged, he," Kazan told me, staring open-eyed at his memories. "He had been studying the great battles, eh, the great generals. Always, he wanted to be like me, you know? To carry a sword, and be a soldier, to fight for Illyria like our father. Since he was a boy, he has this wish, to be something from the tales he studies. And our mother is so proud, she, to have a scholar-son; a great statesman, eh, this is what she sees for Daroslav, not to die on the end of a spear, like his father, like his brother will, she thinks."



I poured him water from the pitcher on the bedstand; he drank it at a gulp and told me the rest: How the Ban's Guard had ridden down a Serenissiman contingent in the foothills, and learned of an assault to be launched on the armory in Epidauro in two days' time; how they had planned to conceal themselves within, ambushing their attackers. And how Kazan had relented, and told Daroslav of their plan, that he might observe it from a safe distance.



It had not been enough for Daroslav Atrabiades, who had drawn on the cunning of the great generals he had studied to conceive a brilliant rear-guard attack. Armed with his elder brother's second-best sword, he rallied a handful of young men disgruntled at having no post in the Ban's Guard. When the trap was sprung, they fell on the Serenissiman rear.



By all accounts, Daroslav fought very well indeed, wresting a Serenissiman helmet and a full-body shield with the Stregazza arms from the first man he killed. Thus armored, he broke through the Serenissiman line and burst into the arsenal in the flush of first triumph, racing to take his place fighting at his vaunted brother's side.



"He opened his arms, he," Kazan said. "He opened his guard, and said my name, eh? And I saw only the helmet and the shield, I, the arms of Serenissima. I stabbed him in the heart."



I had thought... I don't know what I had thought. Something else-a quarrel, a woman, something. Kazan was hot-tempered; 'twas easy to cast him as the villain. Not this awful, tragic dupe of fate. "I am sorry," I said at length. "Truly, my lord, I am."



He stirred; I nearly think he'd forgotten me, telling it. "No matter," he said, his voice hardening. "It is done, and I am blood-cursed, I, with my mother's bitter words to make it stick, eh? So she spoke them, when we carried him home, and I followed the bier, I, with Daroslav's blood on my hands. No more to have a home, no more to go to Epidauro, or the kríavbhog will swallow my soul. Always it waits and watches, yes, but it will not have me yet!" And he stared fiercely into the darkness in the corners of the room, as if daring it to defy him.



Well and so; that was the story of Kazan Atrabiades, who slew the brother he loved. I got him to sleep in time, and the ghost of Daroslav troubled him no more that night, nor in the nights that followed.



FIFTY-FIVE



A light rain was falling the day that Nikanor's ship returned.



I was sitting on a bench in the arcade with Glaukos, enjoying the coolness in the air and practicing my Illyrian when the runner came from the summit, panting and barefoot. Someone ran to fetch him a dipperful of water and someone else ran to get Kazan.



By the time the ship had entered the harbor, we had all assembled on the beach to greet it. Though I kept my features composed, my heart was beating like a drum. There wasn't much of a breeze, and it seemed to take forever for the ship to cross the quiet bay. I dashed the rain from my eyes repeatedly and struggled to conceal my impatience.



At twenty yards out, I realized something was amiss; Nikanor's crew was undermanned. Twelve had gone forth, but I counted no more than six on deck. Kazan saw it too. I noted his thoughtful frown before he drew his sword and hailed the ship. The gathered crowd murmured. They could count, and they had sons and brothers and husbands aboard that vessel.



Nikanor returned Kazan's hail with a shout, drawing his own sword in salute as the oarsmen put up and the ship glided alongside the dock. Some few of Kazan's men ran out to meet it, leaping agilely aboard to aid in furling the sails while the rowers rested on their oars.



"Wait here," Kazan told me, striding toward the dock.



I waited in agony as he conferred with Nikanor, trying to read their conversation in their expressions and gestures. Kazan was frowning, but he was not in a rage; Nikanor explaining. While they talked, men disappeared into the hold, reemerging with heavily laden coffers, which they bore onto the beach under Kazan's scowl. Everyone crowded round, straining to see or hear, and I felt jostled and anxious.



Presently Kazan and Nikanor disembarked, and Kazan addressed the villagers, sparing a brief glance in my direction. "The D'Angelines will meet our terms," he announced in Illyrian-I understood it passing well by now, though I spoke it poorly, "but they have claimed six men as surety for our bargain, until it be finished. As surety for their good faith, they send this." And he ordered the locks struck on the coffers.