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Kushiel's Pupil	By : Seraphis Category: G through L > Kushiel's Trilogy Views: 5698 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Kushiel s Trilogy, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Kushiel's Pupil
- 2-TWO
- 3-THREE
- 4-FOUR
- 5-FIVE
- 6-SIX
- 7-SEVEN
- 8-EIGHT
- 9-NINE
- 10-TEN
- 11-ELEVEN
- 12-TWELVE
- 13-THIRTEEN
- 14-FOURTEEN
- 15-FIFTEEN
- 16-SIXTEEN
- 10
- 11
- 12
With the Longest Night behind us, my mother began to plan to return to Siovale. She promised that during the spring I should have the opportunity to visit Verreuil, which was further west, toward Euskerria, than Montrève. It was not often that we visited my father’s childhood home, and I was glad of the promise of home before my official debut in the City of Elua.
We could not, in all good conscience, leave directly after the Longest Night, but it was not a week later that we found ourselves taking our leave of the queen, and the royal family.
‘I shall count the days till your return,’ Sidonie said, smiling and kissing my forehead.
‘You were a dear companion.’
‘I shall write to you, and to Imriel.’ I said, and turned to Yseulte, who sat quietly, keeping to herself, while the Duc L’Envers glowered behind her. She rose to kiss me, and I pressed her hands. ‘You will not be too oppressed by tutors?’ I smiled, and she laughed.
‘Oh, no I think not. But hurry back. Shamash provide that you do not break your neck killing boars.’ It had become a running joke, and I rolled my eyes.
‘Blessed Elua keep you, and hold you in his hands.’ I said, and embraced her.
Imriel walked with us to the courtyard, where our men-at-arms and attendants awaited us, a pair of carriages and a company of horses composing our travelling party. He embraced my parents fondly, and kissed me, mussing my hair. ‘Stay safe, Ana.’ He grinned, squinting into the sunlight reflected off the snow, as I swung up into Hephaestos’ saddle. ‘We shall see you come summer.’
We took to the road with little ceremony, and I found myself singing in harmony with Hugues as we rode out of the City into the open, rolling country beyond, toward Eisheth’s Way.
The air was beautifully crisp and clean, not at all too cold, and the scent of spring was already riding the wind as we rode.
The way from the City to Montrève was not long, five or six days at most with a party such as we were, though I have since made the journey in three days on horseback, without crippling either myself or my beast. It is simply a matter of being without attendants and carriages, and of knowing the country well.
When we arrived in Montrève, we were expected. There were roaring fires in all the rooms, and in the dining hall, and my bed was lined with hot stones to heat the linens. Richeline Friote and her daughter Katherine had prepared for us a bountiful supper of mutton,

braised with carrots and pickled cabbage, freshly baked bread and hot onion soup with leeks, and cheese with dried fruit for pudding. After so many weeks eating the dandified fare popular in the City, I was glad of simple, hearty food that filled the travel-hunger and caused the body to sing with warmth.
That night, I carefully wrote letters to each of the people with whom I had promised to correspond—first a letter to both Sidonie and Imriel, then one for Yseulte, one for Laurient, and one for Taurus. I sealed them up using the crest of Montrève, all save that which I sent to Imriel and Sidonie, for which I used the seal she had commissioned for me, bearing the crests of House Montrève and House Courcel.
The winter was a mild one, as Siovalese winters go, and people said it was a mercy that there came no snows or blizzards, though snow fell nearly every day. We were not at any very great height; the mountains of Siovale are not so high and fierce as the Camaelines, but their weather is still harsher than that of l’Agnace, which is in the bowl of Terre d’Ange, with its gentle landscapes and plentiful orchards.
If I did not have so many tutors rushing after me as I had in the palace, here, at least, I received far more focus from those I did have. Xephane nó Eglantine had accompanied us from the City, and continued instructing me, not only in dance, but in all the minute protocols of court etiquette, such as the depth of a curtsey or bow, the proper way to comport oneself in a formal setting, and how to address lesser nobles without giving offence. As both the vicomtesse of a lesser provincial estate and an adoptive member of House Courcel, my position would be tenuous at court, and I would have to walk a fine line between accepting the courtesies which were due to me, and presuming above my station.
As a reward for behaving myself during classes, and acquitting myself like a lady, she taught me various tumbling manoeuvres, such as how to throw backflips and walk on my hands. One evening, when I had given her a perfect representation of a child’s galliard position, she taught me to climb a rope, how to tangle my body in the coils and use my stomach muscles to strain upward in a surging, serpentine motion, and, once at a secure height, how to swing upside-down safely.
My mother taught me, too. She sensed my boredom with poetry and music, and turned me instead to history and arithmetic. She despaired of me, betimes, saying that I could not be more different from herself as a child if I had been born to a stranger, but I could tell she was pleased that my talents in such things as held my interest were substantial. The things she could not teach me, she found others to do so, hiring a young engineer from a neighbouring village to come lecture me on the principles of the hypocaust, steam, the uses of gears and pulleys in mechanism, and such things as my Siovalese mind craved. My father often sat in on such lectures, drinking in the principles he had failed to learn while training as a Cassiline.
That study, too, I refused to neglect, and, as promised, he began to spar with me, betimes requesting Charles Friote or another of the guardsmen to train with me, so that I did not become too accustomed to fighting an opponent trained as a Cassiline. I admit, they were more difficult to predict, betimes, because of their more utilitarian training in classic fencing. Still, I never beat my father, though I bested some of the younger men-at-arms once or twice, to my immense satisfaction.
Spring came, and we began to correspond with Verreuil. There was a great deal to be done in Montrève during the spring, but Purnell and Richeline could manage well enough without us, and besides, with Ti-Philippe remaining as our steward, their responsibilities would be quartered, as there would be no need to care for us, the lords of the manor.
We took a company of half a dozen guardsmen and rode to Verreuil.
It is an expansive old manor, a fortress built originally some four hundred years previously, but several new wings had sprung up since, to house the sons of Verreuil and their growing families. My grandmother, Lady Ges, greeted us upon the hearthstones, embracing us all in turn. My grandfather, Millard, was asleep in his study, but my uncles, Luc and Mahieu, ranged about the antechamber, tall and grinning. My cousin Sanguieur, who was not four months my senior, dragged my away from the greeting party as soon as he could get close.

‘Oi, Ana,’ he towed me along the corridor, wheat-blond hair falling into his eyes, blue as mine, ‘Marcie just whelped, not four days ago. Come see the pups.’
I glanced back at my father and received a long-suffering smile. ‘Go on,’ he murmured, ‘before your aunt Jehane comes round and insists that you tell her precisely how you want your fosterage recorded in the Verreuil line.’
I grinned and clasped Sanguieur’s hand. We were nearly of a height at that age, he and I, though he outgrew me by nearly a head by the time we were fully grown, and I am not a small woman.
The hound-bitch was being kept inside the manor rather that in the kennels; she was scarce more than a year old, and this was her first litter. She was one of the long-legged, shaggy-furred animals bred by my uncles, a Verreuil tradition. We had kept the same breed in Montrève since Imriel was a child, but more care was taken over the breeding in Verreuil, to tell a true tale, and the coats of these hounds were always in a far more uniform colour than ours. Marcie’s litter amounted to six pups in all, cream-coloured, most with glossy chestnut points on the ears and tail, with some dappling along the muzzle. Her tail thumped on the floor as we approached; she was nursing her pups. Their eyes were still closed, but they were already taking small, stumbling steps, pausing every moment to sniff the air.
I knelt by the hound, giving her a scent of my hand and morsel of food that Sanguieur had pressed into my hands. She licked up the food and laid her head in my lap, her enormous eyes gazing adoringly up at me. Sanguieur lifted a pup from the litter, a male whose coat showed no hint of the chestnut brown that marked his littermates. ‘Look, Ana. In another generation, we will be producing pups with no markings. This summer, we had an enquiry from the Marquis du Toulard, asking for white pups. He says if we produce them, he will make them popular in the City of Elua.’
‘And you will run their line?’ I joked, though I knew he had considerable responsibility with the hounds and their breeding. A pang of regret touched me as I realised that I should have to tell Aedwar that I could no longer influence the hounds of Montrève when I was away. ‘Forget the Marquis du Toulard.’ I laughed, to cover my sadness, ‘I shall cause every peer to crave a white wolfhound of Verreuil. When I am in the City, all the lapdogs shall be thrown out, and hounds shall be the fashion!’ I laughed at his shocked expression. ‘Imri will help!’
Sanguieur smirked. ‘You are a dreamer, Ana.’ He said, and elbowed me in the ribs. My cousins in Verreuil had never had much to do with Imriel, and though they saw my mother and I as family proper, they never imagined their ties to the husband of the dauphine to be so close as a whisper of fosterage.
‘Well and so,’ I shrugged, imitating Eldora’s lofty accents, as when she chided Laurient, ‘let my dreams be proved as prophecies.’ I caressed Marcie a final time and got to my feet. ‘I’m hungry.’ I said. ‘My mother is like to kill me if I come to supper with dog on my hands.’
‘Come along, then.’ Sanguieur shoved his hair back from his face. ‘I’ll take you to wash.’
I had more cousins, a great deal of them, most of them older than me, all with the rangy lean height of Verreuil, though Aunt Jehane’s youngest daughter, Zolie, had hair a shade darker than the traditional Verreuil cast. Despite my own colouring, my black hair and sooty lashes, I scarcely stood out in the long-limbed, cheerfully loud crush of youth. The only one of my cousins missing was the second eldest son and third child of my uncle Luc, Théophile, who had been sent to the Cassilines some seven years previous.
I was presented to Lord Millard with little ceremony. When I saw him, he was sitting at the end of the dining board in a large, throne-like chair, gesturing to one of the serving attendants to serve my mother and father first, as guests. I ran to him, and threw my arms round him. His one good arm fastened round my shoulders, and I smelled woodsmoke, Akkadian tobacco, and ink on his clothes, and a little sawdust. It was not unusual for him to build small models such as I myself owned, in his study, using tools fitted to his absent left hand as aids. He was a dab hand at it, too, and gave half the small engines he made to his grandchildren. Many people did not know it, but he was a canny engineer, and had invented many small mechanisms to improve the machinery of Verreuil in a number of scarce noticeable ways.
He was old, very old, rising eighty, but hale with it, with clean, brisk Siovalese living. His hair was still abundant, held back in a long silver braid, and in the past four or five years, he had affected a heavy beard, which was wiry and thick, of intermingled gold and silver. His bright eyes, my father’s eyes, and mine, sparkled beneath heavy brows. ‘Anafielle Verreuil, you must not grow another inch,’ he growled good naturedly, ‘lest you surpass me as age bends my height.’
‘If you do not wish me to, grandpère, I shall not.’ I said, accepting his kiss on my forehead.
‘Ah, but you shall grow as tall as a tree, if Blessed Elua wills it.’ he smiled. ‘Come, to board, my little darling. To board.’
We set to our meal with a will. I do not recall all the good things we ate, cheeses and ptarmigan, fat and lazy and only just turning out of its white winter plumage, new spring fish, heavy with salty roe, venison and lamb, cooked with early apples, even a haunch of ham, thinly-sliced rich, coated in crushed white peppercorns, up from the curing cellars just for us. There were stews also, and pies filled with hearty vegetables, gravy of goose drippings and white wine, a mound of mashed turnips swimming in butter, fennel, blanched whole and beautiful in its delicate aniseed flavour, crisp to the bite. I ate as much as I could, not more than Sanguieur, but at least I had room for the glorious mint and strawberry tart that followed everything, with rich, sweet plum wine for the adults.
I was surrounded, afterward, by all my cousins, when we settled in the great hall before the fireplace for conversation and games. It was something like relating to Eldora my experiences of the Shahrizai hunting-lodge, speaking to my Verreuil cousins of the City of Elua. Some of the elder ones had been there, and, owing to my father’s fame and influence, had found positions of promise, but they still had not imagined that one of our number might be accepted as a member of the royal family, if only by fosterage. None of them seemed to think that my father had himself raised Prince Imriel de la Courcel as his own since he was my own age. To them, Imriel was as distant a figure as the sky, and for the first time, I feared to lose the hearth and security of my family in rushing so immediately to obey the queen.
I still could not precisely see the reasons Sidonie wished to foster me, though I had a vague understanding that somewhat had happened between herself and Imriel that compelled the decision. From how the queen had behaved, I doubted she herself had any interest in me beyond that I was my parents’ heir. It was not that Ysandre was cold to me, precisely, but she did not take the active interest in me that Sidonie did. I did not fault the queen for this; Terre d’Ange would not run so efficiently if she spent her time catering to every lordling’s brat shoved at her, and the fact that she was willing to introduce me to her Alban kin was a sign of the regard with which she held my mother, but I neither expected nor hoped for Ysandre de la Courcel’s attention to fall too heavily on my during my fosterage.
We tarried two weeks in Verreuil, as spring rose up all round us. The trees began to yield their first green leaves and the grass quickened in the cold ground. My father and uncles spoke of foaling and lambing, my aunts and cousins of calves and milk, of cheeses and repair to the manor house, and my mother…my mother thought of covertcy.
I did not take well to the more subjective points of the discipline. So far as studying the names, lines, and histories of the great houses, it was a simple matter of memorisation, of numbers, of names and faces. But when she asked me to tell her whether a guardsman was worried, whether one of my cousins preferred sheep’s milk to cow’s, whether my grandmother Ges was planning to order fowl or lamb for supper, I was lost. I could not read the human face as she could, nor could I guess at plans or reactions simply by observation. It did vex her a little, I think, that I did not come to the discipline of covertcy as naturally as Imriel had, but she knew that he, the scion of Kushiel, had an inclination toward such things where I, of Shemahazai’s line, had an affinity for precision, for fixed parts moving in harmony, for numbers and inventions, the objective and observable disciplines.
I wondered, betimes, what her heritage was, my mother’s divine line, that instilled her generosity and cleverness, stubbornness, and pride in love. To be sure, it was likely a mix, though they say that in the purest lines of the Night Court Houses, the blood of Naamah runs as thickly as that of Elua runs in House Courcel, and the family of her mother, Liliane de Souveraine is very old in Naamah’s Service, and in Jasmine House.
Still, if I would never be a master of spies, like the equally Siovalese Anafiel Delaunay, I benefited from my mother’s patient instruction in myriad other things. I became more aware of myself, and I began to wonder about things I had never before considered. I asked more questions, wished to intake more facts, more stories of the certain, tangible quality I was adept at analysing.
I asked my father about the Cassilines.
It was not gently done, I admit it, even for a child, but I was not in the habit of dissembling with my father, and I think he was grateful for the simple question I made of it. We were sitting, of an evening, upon our return to Montrève, in my mother’s study, reading. She had retired already, but my father had found a treatise on road-building in the Tiberian Empire, and I had found a history of the campaigns of Iskandr the Macedon, and we were alike devouring the study of our respective interests. I looked at the candles, burning low in their holders, and I thought that I had yet a little time before bed, in order that I should awake early enough to practice with my father, and the question came, unbidden.
‘Papa,’ I said, not pausing to frame my words with any diplomacy, ‘what was it like, becoming a Cassiline?’

He was very still a moment, his eyes fixed upon his book, though he had stopped reading. The lines bracketing his mouth deepened momentarily before he smiled, and looked up at me with a very strange expression. ‘You know, Ana,’ he said quietly, ‘no one has ever asked me that. Not your mother, not Imriel, not even the Queen of Terre d’Ange.’
‘Well,’ I put aside my history, ‘I have asked.’
‘Do you really wish to know?’ I nodded, and he sighed. ‘In truth, I do not think it is all so grim as many believe. The Cassiline Brotherhood keeps its secrets close, but we are still d’Angeline, and if we do not respect the theology of other Companions, we do not violate the precept of Blessed Elua. I was only a little older than you are now, when I was given to the Brotherhood. Verreuil is an old name, and we are devout.

‘It is said that Shemhazai, during the age of Elua’s vigil, did twice lay with the heir of Verreuil, who was herself, or so it is written in our genealogy, the daughter of Eisheth, and that three sons were produced from their union, first a pair of twins, and second, a singleborn son. It is written that Cassiel, seeing the bounty of angelic ichor, petitioned Shemhazai for one of his sons, to follow him and Elua, and to protect their blessed master from aught that meant him harm. Shemhazai in turn entreated his mortal lover, and she gave the second of the twins up to Cassiel’s untender training when he attained ten years of age.
‘Twenty years later, or so the story goes, after Elua and Cassiel had passed into Terre d’Ange Beyond, the middle son of Verreuil returned, an apogee from the Cassiline Brotherhood, and entreated his brother to give him his own middle son, to rear him in the following of Cassiel, and the eldest brother acceded. So has it been, through time, throughout generations. The second son of House Verreuil has ever been a Cassiline, every generation. Even Luc’s son, Théophile.’ He paused then, a little sadly. ‘I was the first generation ever to be declared anathema, or to renege on my oaths.’
‘You followed Blessed Elua’s teaching.’
‘I made love my duty, rather than loving the duty that was set to me. Yes, Ana, I followed the Precept of Elua,’ he laid his own book aside, smiling less now. ‘But you asked me what it was like to become a Cassiline.’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes, I cannot believe it was only ten years of my life. I have spent thrice that with your mother, thrice that being the anathemised oath-breaker. I have spent as long being your father, and who is to say which decade was the more trying?’ he teased, and upon seeing my expression, he held out his arms. I climbed into them, nestling in his side, my face against the steady beat of his heart.
‘It was hard, to leave my family, though I knew my fate as soon as I could comprehend things, knew that I was destined for Cassiel’s service. It was hard to leave Verreuil, but not so hard as it might have been. My uncle came for me, brought me to the Prefect. I was examined for health, and my name put down in the records.
‘There were chores, of course; the life of a Cassiline is hard. We woke before dawn to pray, to tell the hours, to run. We ran a great deal. Miles, whatever the weather. We cleaned our quarters, drew our own water, washed our own dishes. Once we were old enough, we cooked our own food and built our own cells. We were re-taught the Eluine Cycle, taught that what we had already learnt was heresy in the eyes of Cassiel and in the eyes of the One God.
‘We were taught that the Companions, the seven beside Cassiel: Eisheth, Naamah, Anael, Azza, Shemhazai, Kushiel, and Camael, were all disobedient to the One God, and damned, that Cassiel alone truly obeyed. He had compassion when the One God forgot, grieving for his son Yeshua ben Yosef, and went alone, thinking to bring them back to heaven and the One God. We are not taught as I now believe, that Cassiel followed Elua for love, and no other reason.
‘It was hard, Ana, but no harder than the life of a peasant, who works the earth, betimes for naught. We were privileged, in a way, the final legacy of Cassiel’s disciplines. It was Cassiel himself who taught us to fight, to protect the scions of Elua. I will not lie, and say I hated it; if I had not endured it, you would not be here. Terre d’Ange might not be here. But it was hard, most of the time.’ He chuckled. ‘Why, would you have me setting you to hauling water and washing dishes, that you may say you are a Cassiline trained proper?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I simply…I just…’ I realised he had divined the true nature of my question, and blushed. Joscelin Verreuil had not lived thirty years with Phèdre nó Delaunay to no effect. ‘Papa,’ I said, slowly, ‘how good am I? Really?’
‘Why do you ask, love?’
‘Because it is what I am best at.’ I said, a little more crossly than I meant to. ‘Because I am not pretty, or clever, like maman, or beautiful and right like Imriel, or good, like you. I am learning new things, but what I am best at is the Cassiline forms, fighting, duelling. If I am really no good at that, if I have no real promise, then I am awfully wretched at everything else.’
He did laugh, then, my father, a proper laugh, full-throated and cheerful. ‘You are clever Anafielle Verreuil de Montrève,’ he sighed. ‘And you are good at the forms. You’re quick, and you learn well. Perhaps a mite too well. I don’t fancy you getting into duels in the City once you’re grown simply because everyone knows you’re Cassiline trained and wishes to try the skill of a woman duellist.’
‘Oh, papa!’ I cried despairingly, and hugged him. I am not sure why it was so important to me to know that I was good at something, but it comforted me greatly to know that my father thought I was too good at them, and that I might come to be known as a duellist who was Cassiline trained.
‘Come along, love,’ he said, blowing out most of the candles, and taking one up. ‘The hour grows late. If we’re to make a proper Cassiline out of you, we must be up early on the morrow.’
He lit my way up the stairs, and to my room, which was only across the hall from that which he shared with my mother, and kissed me good night.
I lay awake for a long time that night, trying to think of what it would be like to be taken away from home to a destiny you knew was inescapable, to become the heir and avatar of a fruitless god, to unlearn all that you knew of your heredity, to see those you revered denounced as nothing more than debauched traitors. The image of Sanguieur formed in my head, and when I finally slept, all I saw was the stern visage of Cassiel, the angel of compassion and moderation, of self control and chastity, his daggers crossed, and his head bowed.
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Kushiel's Pupil