It caught Joscelin unprepared; I daresay he was ready for anything but respect in Melisande Shahrizai’s home. He had quarreled with Delaunay thrice this week about accompanying me on this assignation, since Delaunay was minded that Joscelin remain here, and not travel to the Duc de Morhban’s Masque.
We who are well-trained react out of reflex; in Joscelin’s case, he responded with his cross-vambraced bow. "The honor would be mine," he replied formally.
Melisande Shahrizai, at once resplendent and demure in a long coat of black-and-gold brocade, her hair braided in a crown, smiled warmly. "There is a niche in the garden, Messire Cassiline, if you wish to maintain Elua’s vigil. Phèdre, well met." She stooped to kiss me in greeting, and the scent of her perfume surrounded me, but her kiss was no more than perfunctory, and left me able to stand.
It made me more nervous than the other kind.
"Young men," Melisande murmured when they had left, smiling faintly. "Such a sense of honor. Is he a little bit in love with you, do you think?"
"Joscelin quite despises me," I said. "My lady."
"Oh, love and hate are two sides of the same blade," she said cheerily enough, motioning for a servant to take my cloak, "and an edge finer honed than yon Cassiline’s daggers divides them." Her servants led the way to her receiving room, gliding silently ahead to open doors; she took my arm as we went. "You despise your patrons a little, and love them too, yes?"
"Yes, my lady." I sat down in the chair held for me and accepted a glass of joie, eyeing her warily. "A little."
"And how many of them do you fear?"
I held my glass without sipping, as she did, and answered honestly. "One, at least, not at all. Most of them, sometimes. You, my lady, always."
The blue of her eyes was like the sky at twilight when the first stars appear. "Good." Her smile held promises I shuddered to think on. "Be at ease in it, Phèdre. This is the Longest Night, and I am in no hurry. You’re not like the others, who are trained to it from birth, like hounds cringing under the whip for a kind touch from their master’s hand. No, you embrace the lash, but even so, there is aught in you that rebels at it. Let others plumb the depths of the former; 'tis the latter that interests me."
At that, I did shudder. "I am at my lady’s command."
"Command." Melisande held her glass to the light, inspecting the sparkling cordial. "Command is for captains and generals. I have no interest in command. If you would obey, you will discern what pleases me, and do it unasked." She lifted her glass to me, smiling. "Joy."
"Joy." I echoed it unthinkingly, and drank the joie. It burned, sweet and fiery, blazing a trail down my throat, evoking memories of the Great Hall at Cereus House, a blazing hearth and the smell of evergreen boughs.
"Ah, you do please me, Phèdre; you please me a great deal." Rising, Melisande set down her empty glass, and reached down to stroke my cheek. "My attendants will make you ready. We leave for Quincel de Morhban’s Masque in an hour’s time."
With that, she swept from the room, leaving only the lingering scent of her perfume, and a maidservant with downcast eyes came to lead me away.
There was a hot bath awaiting, fresh-drawn, with wreaths of steam still curling above the surface of the water, candles set all around and two more attendants waiting. I luxuriated in the bath, while one of Melisande’s attendants rubbed fragrant oil into my skin and another tended to my hair, brushing it out at length, merely twining a few sprays of white ribbons in my dark curls. When the maidservant brought in my costume, I rose from the bath, letting them wind a linen sheet about my damp body, and looked at what she had brought.
I am used to fine clothing and not easily impressed, but the overgarment took even me aback. It was a loose-fitting gown of transparent white gauze with trailing sleeves-and it was spangled all about with tiny diamonds, sewn with exquisite care onto the sheer fabric. "Name of Elua! What does it go over?"
The maidservant fussed with a half-mask, a white-and-brown feathered osprey with the eye-holes trimmed in black velvet piping. "You, my lady," she said quietly.
In the candlelight, I could see right through the gauze. I would be as good as naked in it, before half the nobles of Kusheth. "No."
"Yes." Her manner may have been meek, but no one in Melisande’s service was going to gainsay their mistress. "And this." She held out one other item, a velvet slip-collar, with a diamond teardrop suspended from it, and a lead attached. I closed my eyes. I had seen such things, in Valerian House. In the privacy of the Night Court, it would not be so bad.
But Melisande meant to display me before the peers of the realm.
Gently and inexorably, her attendants helped me dress, putting on the sheer garment, adjusting my hair so that it spilled down my back, drawing the slip-collar over my head and settling it so the diamond fell just so in the hollow of my throat, and placing the mask on me. When they were done, I looked at myself in the long mirror.
A captive creature gazed back, masked and collared, naked beneath a scintillating curtain of gauze.
"Very nice." Melisande’s voice, amused, startled me; like Joscelin, I reacted out of reflex. A Cassiline bows in defense, and an adept of the Night Court kneels. I knelt and gazed up at her.
As I was in sheerest white, she was in densest black, velvet skirts sweeping the floor, the bodice tight to her torso, white shoulders rising above it, and black gloves above the elbow. Her mask was black, night-black feathers with a dark rainbow sheen upon them, sweeping up in points to mingle with her elaborately styled hair. A band of black opals on velvet encircled her throat, like the colors that glimmer 'round a cormorant’s neck, and I knew what her costume was then, and mine. There is a Kusheline legend of the Isle of Ys and its dark Lady, who commanded the birds of the air and kept a tame osprey about her. Ys drowned, they say; I do not know the legend well enough to remember why, only that there was a Lady, and her cormorants may still be seen fishing the waters above the sunken isle and crying out for their lost mistress.
"Come," Melisande said, and held out one gloved hand for my lead. Truly, there was no command in her voice, only the simple expectation of obedience.
I rose and followed her with alacrity.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I knew not what to expect from a Kusheline gathering, but in the end, it was not so different from other fêtes, only a shade darker in tone, with an unfamiliar undercurrent and a preponderance of Kusheline accents, at once harsh and musical.
It all fell to a hush when we entered.
The Duc de Morhban’s herald gave our names; both of them, though I had not heard what Melisande had said to him. For those who heard, even anonymity was stripped from me, marking me not as some nameless Servant of Naamah willing to contract on the Longest Night, but a member of a peer’s household, collared and bound to Melisande Shahrizai of my own free will.
We moved among the guests, and a murmur followed. I could not but feel my nakedness beneath the sheer gauze with every step. Masked faces, feathered and furred, turned to watch our progress. Melisande glided smoothly between them and I trailed, tethered, in her wake.
And to my chagrin, with a hundred eyes upon me and Melisande’s hand at the end of my velvet lead, I felt a desire such as I had never known stir in the distant reaches of my being, like the wave that had drowned Ys gathering force in the far depths of the ocean.
"Your grace." Only Melisande could make a curtsy seem the gesture of a queen receiving homage. A tall, lean man in a wolf mask inclined his head and looked gaugingly at her.
"House Shahrizai arrives," he said dryly. "And what have you brought?"