Kushiel's Chosen

blood."
    I knew; I knew it well. The Duc Barquiel L'Envers was high atop the list of peers I mistrusted. As it happens, I also owed him my life.
    "Well," I said reflectively. "A proper hornet's nest, it seems.”
    "When were politics aught else?" Cecilie gave me a long, evaluating glance. "If you're going to do this, we'll need to set you up properly, Phèdre no Delaunay de Montrève. In living memory, no peer of the realm has chosen to follow Naamah's service. You're going against fashion, my dear."
    "I know," I said. "But Naamah's arts are older than Terre d'Ange itself, and her service is ancient among us. I was her Servant before I was a peer. There was honor in both, once, and neither precluded the other. I swore an oath, Cecilie. I made the dedication and released a dove in Naamah's name. Do you say I should gainsay it?"
    "No," Cecilie sighed. "Nor will the Queen. Do you plan to maintain a salon?"
    "No." I smiled. "I never did, in Delaunay's service. My ... patrons ... prefer to set their own terms, on their own territory. I am an anguissette, after all."
    "Well, if anyone can restore the lustre to Naamah's service, it's you, child." She cocked her head. "You'll at least need the services of a proper attendant. Have you a seamstress in mind? If you've not, I've word of a lass in Eglantine House who might do." I shook my head. "Have you registered with the Guild yet? You'll need to do that, now that you've made your marque. Oh, Phèdre!" Cecilie clapped her hands together, eyes sparkling. "We've so much to do!"

THREE
    1 found the scholars' hall. The yeshiva."
    We had not spoken of it on the ride back from Cecilie's; Joscelin had not offered, and I pushed him on little these
    days. Pouring more tea, I raised my brows and waited.
    "I met the Rebbe." He cleared his throat and sipped at his tea. "He's... a rather formidable figure. He reminded me of the Prefect."
    "Did you speak to him of studying there?”
    "I mentioned it." Joscelin set his cup down. "He thought I was interested in converting," he said dryly. "Mayhap I should consider it."
    The Cassiline Brotherhood had a peculiar relationship to the followers of Yeshua; in many ways, they held the same beliefs. I felt a creeping sense of alarm, which I hid. "You didn't tell him about Hyacinthe, then."
    "No." Rising, Joscelin wandered the study, running his hand over the newly built shelves and cubbyholes. "I thought it best to wait. Phèdre, do you really think there's a key?"
    "I don't know," I answered honestly. "But I have to look."
    Somewhere, far to the west, on a lonely island, my Prince of Travellers spun out his days in apprenticeship to the Master of the Straits, condemned to serve out the terms of Rahab's curse. It was a sacrifice he had made for us all, a bitter bargain. If he had not, the Alban army would never have succeeded in crossing the Straits, and the Skaldi would have conquered Terre d'Ange. But, oh! It was a cruel price to pay. For so long as the One God punished the disobedience of his angel Rahab, the curse would endure; and as the Master of the Straits had said, the One God's memory was long.
    Elua disobeyed the commandment of the One God, but he and his Companions were aided by our Mother Earth, in whose womb he was begotten. Silent these many long centuries, She did not seem inclined to intervene once more-and this affair was none of Hers. No, if there was an answer, a means of breaking an angel's geis, it lay in the ancient doctrines of the Yeshuites.
    It had been done, I knew; there were tales of heroes who had defied the will of the One God's emissaries, outwitting them with guile and scholarship. But those were in the days when angels walked the earth and the gods spoke directly to their people. Now the gods kept their counsel, and only we lesser-born mortals, whose bloodlines bore faint traces of ichor, were left to the stewardship of the land.
    Still, I would try.
    "Well, I will speak to him, if he will hear me."
    "He'll be amused at the novelty." Joscelin's tone was dry again. "A D'Angeline courtesan speaking Yeshuite. He had a hard enough time hearing it from me."
    I have a gift for languages, but that wasn't what he meant. I closed my eyes against the pain; Joscelin's, mine, piercing at the core and welling outward in misery. Elua, but it was sweet! The pain of the flesh is naught to the pain of the soul. I bit the inside of my lower lip, willing the tide of it to subside, horrified in some part of me that I could take pleasure