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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
- 8
- 9
- 10
NINE
It was not an unwelcome invitation, which summoned my father and I to the palace one afternoon to meet with Ysandre, only peculiar. I had been spending my days there, in company with Yseulte, while my mother spoke in conference with the queen and dauphine. I found the half Akkadian princess to be a very amiable companion to me, for she was as much a stranger to the City of Elua as I, having lived in the Khalifate until the past autumn. She was similar to me in some respects, though diametrically opposite in others. She was naturally timid, as I was, of strangers, but she had not been encouraged, as I had, toward physicality and sport. She had been confined to the seraglio of the Akkadian palace, the chambers of women, with her father’s concubines and their children, and was only allowed, otherwise, to frequent her mother’s quarters. She had acquired talents, however, that I lacked, for she sang like an angel, and played the guzla, a three-stringed instrument, which, when employed upon with a horsehair bow, gave forth a sweet, sharp sound. She also was talented in the art of spoken poesy, her gentle rhythm causing light to glow in the eyes of Gilles Lamiz.
It was not an uncommon thing for Yseulte and I to be found together in the days that followed, sitting in a near-darkened room, our heads close together, whispering by speaking in tales and poetry. Of a truth, I scarcely remember all the things we spoke on, only that she seemed, to me, betimes, to be an endless source of the most charming entertainments. I liked her far better than Eldora, for though the latter was an engaging girl, she was, to her fingertips, a child of the City, and one I found myself always in need of following. Yseulte’s was a more equal partnership, and if it was not terribly adventurous of me to sit and speak to her, there was a rightness, and beauty in it, by which I neither felt threatened, nor pressured to adopt.
Still, my presence, and that of my father, was desired by the queen on a particular day, and we were prompt to obey Ysandre. She received us in an indoor garden, where flowers and vine fruits were preserved alive, artificially, during the winter months, by a method of a hypocaust powered by steam water and the direction of sunlight with various glasses.
She was not alone, the queen, but leant upon the arm of another woman. They were speaking in low voices, cheerily, when we entered, and as my father and I bowed to Ysandre, she gave us the kiss of greeting, her smile warm, her eyes softer than ere I had seen them.
‘This is Xephane nó Eglantine,’ she said, gesturing to her companion, who was a long, graceful woman, as tall as a man, and dressed, furthermore, in breeches and riding boots cut above her knees, with a short garnet coloured jacket fitting close up against her throat in a froth of lace. She gave a bow, herself, a performer’s bow, with an easily enviable grace, her chestnut hair free and falling over her shoulders as she straightened. Her eyes were a little hard and overcanny, an indeterminate shade betwixt grey and gold. She held an eccentric sort of cane, fully my height, and bearing silver filigree round it, embedded like vines in the dark, reddish wood.
‘Good day, Lord Verreuil, and Vicomtesse de Montrève.’ The Eglantine adept said, and father kissed her hand.
‘Good day, my lady,’ father said, politely, and my voice was a near echo of his.
‘She is a gift for you, vicomtesse,’ the queen said, ‘out of the finest Salon du Danse in the City of Elua. She will accompany you to Montrève, and teach you all the niceties of deportment, as well, I imagine, as how to throw a standing somersault.’ I stared up at this woman, a veritable giant to me, who appeared to be my new dancing-teacher, and managed to stammer out my thanks to Ysandre. ‘Come, Joscelin,’ she turned to my father, who offered his arm automatically, ‘shall we allow the tutor and her new pupil to become acquainted?’ I petitioned him with my eyes not to go, but he only gave me a peremptory look, which instructed me to behave, and disappeared, with the queen on his arm.
I found myself facing my new dancing mistress with some trepidation. She was an intimidating figure, with her severe features, and the cane she carried. I was, however, unwilling to shrink from anyone with so limited an authority over my person, who was, furthermore, hired to serve me, and recalled to my mind the motto of Eglantine House, out of which this solemn-faced woman was bred: ‘to create is to live,’ was the phrase by which their lives were governed, and, even as I studied Xephane, I detected a sort of dancing mischief in her eyes, onto which I affixed my attention.
‘Vicomtesse,’ she began, laying aside her cane and coat, and crossing her arms, ‘her majesty informs me that you are not wholly uneducated in courtly matters, only that you are unrefined as a country squire. Also, you have some Cassiline disciplines returned upon you by your father, is it not so?’ I nodded. ‘Then you are light on your feet?’
‘I hope I have sufficient dexterity.’ I replied, provoking her to an unexpected smile.
‘You take pride in knowledge, do you? Are you a good study?’
‘Cassiel’s disciplines are hardly equal to dancing. They are an ancient and respected practise, by which we learn to bring our minds and bodies under subjection to Blessed Elua.’ I replied, with a little asperity. I was unaccustomed to having such surprises as this thrust upon me, and it appeared as though I would not be released from this woman’s custody until such time as she saw fit.
‘Is dancing any less sacred?’ Xephane began to circle me, slowly, and it was involuntarily that I turned, following her with my eyes. ‘It is a ritual by which we pay homage to the Precept of Elua, in courtship, and it may signify as complete a binding between partners as the bond between Cassiel and Blessed Elua. Is it not so?’
I shrugged. ‘I do not wholly perceive the veracity of your reasoning, but I have now given myself voluntarily to your tutelage, and you shall not find a reluctant student in me.’ I found myself falling automatically into formulaic courtly speech, with which I had become so newly acquainted.
‘Just as well.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘I wish to dance with you very soon, but our first lesson shall be theoretical.’
‘Theoretical?’ I sneered, forgetting myself. ‘How can dancing be—’
‘Come,’ she cut me off casually, with a casual flick of her wrist, taking up a small volume bound in leather and engraved with the marque of Eglantine, from the inner pocket of her discarded jacket, ‘This is a book published by a long-deceased dowayne of Eglantine House, which has long been canon of our house, required reading for those with the skill of dancing or tumbling. We shall not read it entirely yet, for there are portions which are unsuitable for you, but there are several chapters devoted to instructing those with a martial turn to their agility, which I believe will benefit both of us greatly.’ She sat herself upon a settee of cured and thatched vines, and beckoned to me. I have ever been one to respond to the promise of a story, and I went. She opened the book to a print of a man, in an elaborate pose similar to the cygnus, though he was dressed as a tumbler, in chequered pantaloons and a domino which obscured his face, only sufficiently that his identity was protected, but it did not hide the exaggerated grin the artist had cut into his features. ‘Chapter the first,’ she began to read the neatly written letters, ‘to create is to live.’
I listened to her even, earnest voice reading out the study. It was not a textbook, as I had expected, but rather, a memoir, of a long-deceased Eglantine dowayne by the name of Fenouil Bonfoi, bred for the Night Court by adepts out of Gentian and Eglantine. His mother had been a flautist, and his father, a dreamy-eyed prophet. The initial chapters were rather slow going, describing a childhood torn betwixt the two houses, for though he had been born in and for House Eglantine, he’d had a certain tendency toward the dreamy Gentian, which his mother had been hard-pressed to replace with a desire to create. At the age of twelve, he had suddenly discovered a talent for dancing, and two years later, he was further committed to Eglantine when he fell in love with a young poetess. He had been dedicated to Naamah at the age of thirteen, as is usual for adepts of the Night Court, and had begun instruction, both in the knowledge of pleasure and in the dance, the creation which he had chosen to pursue.
It was here that Xephane closed the book. I looked up at her, puzzled. ‘We have read nothing of instruction.’
‘Yes, we have.’ She smiled, and stood, taking me with her. ‘We have read of the struggle between conflicting desires. Young Fenouil was born between Gentian and Eglantine, as you were born between your duty as a lady and your love of freedom.’ I stared up at her, and her smile deepened into her eyes. ‘Our next lesson, vicomtesse, will be tomorrow in your mother’s study, at your own house.’
I found, as she escorted me from the garden to the study where Ysandre entertained my father, that I could give myself very easily over to her leadership, as simply as, every morning, I gave myself over to my father, and to Cassiel.
The weeks leading to the Longest Night were idyllic—quiet and restful, and I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the new lessons to which I was put, both with Xephane and with my mother. Heretofore, my education had been a mixed lot, fitting, certainly, for the daughter of the Comtesse de Montrève, but mayhap a little deficient for that of Phèdre nó Delaunay. Now, added to my curriculum of calculation, reading, history, and sciences was an entirely new subject—that of covertcy. I began to memorise the names of the Great Houses and their scions, to learn the intricate dance of court, to hear the sordid details underlying the subtle shifts of power governing Terre d’Ange. I read of Rolande de la Courcel and Anafiel Delaunay, how Ysandre’s mother, Isabel L’Envers, had been a murderess, how Imriel’s mother had sinned against the crown and country. I had known that he was ashamed of his heritage, and I had known that her crimes were great, but I knew, also, that she had loved Imriel, and that, for many years, was enough to pardon her in my mind. I learnt of Lyonette and Baudoin de Trevalion’s treachery with an eye toward how Melisande Shahrizai had been involved. I began to perceive, very slowly, patterns, to deduce from what I saw, and to recall both observations and conclusions.
Though I was scarcely the figure of a model pupil with my mother, she, at least, commanded my love, and therefore my respect, and could corral me, in my more rebellious moods, with a sharp glance from her mote-stricken eyes. Xephane nó Eglantine had no such advantage, so it was well enough that the disciplines she engaged me in were physical, and therefore unlikely to bore me as quickly as those studies focused purely in the mind, and the theoretical. It is true, we read more from the memoirs of Fenouil Bonfoi, and from other books of the canon of Eglantine House, but we progressed very quickly to practical lessons.
Still, learning to waltz and gavotte, and properly execute a formal curtsey, were not without their difficulties. I found myself, more often than not, being rapped smartly on the calves with Xephane’s walking-stick, or my shoulders pushed back and my chin tilted upward with her strong, hard-palmed hands. During our lessons, I was forced out of my riding boots and into merciless, hard-heeled little dancing slippers of lovely, pale yellow satin, which I loathed with all the fury of my wayward heart. A thing which galled me, though I always wished it would not, was how Xephane would sigh and declare, in a mournful whisper, ‘Oh, you shall be so ugly when you are thirteen.’ In a fit of annoyance, I tattled on her to my mother, who laughed at me.
‘And so what? She would know, would she not? Raised and bred for the Night Court, with her marque made in four months?’ she took me into her arms, here, as though to soften the next words she said. ‘And anyway, I think she is right. You shall be all legs and arms till you are at least fifteen. But then think of how all the boys will gape at you when you are eligible for courting. Why, they shan’t know who you are.’
‘I don’t care.’ I replied, haughtily. ‘I don’t care if I am ugly, and I shan’t care if I am pretty.’
‘Well, you will be both, and I think it will be good for you.’ I was somewhat pacified by this, but only because I knew how wise my mother was. ‘Well and so,’ she continued, ‘you shall at least be very lovely for the Longest Night at the palace.’ My eyes opened wide at this, for I had forgotten the celebration, as much as I anticipated it every year. The last time my parents had celebrated it in the City of Elua, I had been only four, and did not recall much beside a whirl of capes and cloaks, of masks and gowns, and the marked absence of my father. He had been, as he was nearly every year, observing Cassiel’s vigil in the Sanctuary of Elua.
This year, however, he would be attending, at the particular request of Ysandre, and, in yielding to the queen, he was compelled to accompany my mother and I to Favrielle’s salon to be measured for a costume.
We stood, the three of us, and Ti-Philippe, who would be minding me, before Favrielle’s stern, grey-eyed gaze, and I wondered whether I would need to come to her so often as I had in the past months when I came to the City of Elua to foster.

‘You expect much, comtesse,’ she repeated the much-used line, still with a wry twinkle in her eyes, ‘but if you carry on being so damned useful to the queen, I suppose I have no place throwing out your custom. Particularly if you bring your chevalier with you rather oftener.’ She plucked flirtatiously at Philippe’s collar, and he winked back, without breaking the regimental pose he held. I suspected Philippe could hold himself like a sailor proper during even a full blown gale. Finally, Favrielle, tapping her forefinger against her teeth and nodded, as though coming to a conclusion. ‘Alban gods.’ She nodded again, several times. ‘Risky, of course—they are not so well known, but it does honour to the queen and the dauphine, and since she has wed your Shahrizai spawn, there has been far less murmuring about her father’s blood. It will give your vicomtese something to speak about, also, when she meets the Cruarch.’ Favrielle pulled a crayon absently from behind her ear a flicked through a stack of drawings until she came to the one she had made of my Tsingani costume. ‘This gave you all the elegance of a little woodland scamp.’ I grinned at her description, trading amused smiles with my father.
‘It won’t do,’ my mother said quietly, ‘not for the Longest Night.’
‘No, indeed.’ Favrielle agreed. ‘The goddess Sadbh, I think,’ she squinted at me.

‘An Alban myth, a white doe, the mother of a whole host of other deities. She shall be charming in the mask of a deer, no need to constrict her with a gown. It shall be scarves for you.’ She pulled me toward her, and tried a handful of filmy, light colours against my skin. ‘More blue in the white, I think.’ She murmured.
‘Would you be very wroth with me,’ mother said, ‘if I told you I wished to have Ana and Ti-Philippe a pair, separate from Joscelin and I?’
‘Oh, no.’ Favrielle smiled again. ‘I think you have read my mind. You would make lovely Menekhetans.’
‘Surely not!’ my father insisted.
‘Oh, no, Joscelin, she is quite right.’ My mother sighed. ‘It will annoy the Duc L’Envers very much, but he knows better than to doubt us. And no one else can be aware of their plans beside the queen, and you know, I think she will find it very amusing.’
‘You have discussed this already.’ Father said flatly, looking from mother to Favrielle, his eyes narrow. He rolled his eyes, then drew up nearer my mother as Favrielle turned away to fuss with the points of Philippe’s shirt, speaking in a low tone. ‘Phèdre, the message was hardly clear. Even L’Envers could not name all his sources, or the channels through which they passed their knowledge.’
‘Notwithstanding,’ my mother smiled at Favrielle, ‘I do have an affection for white this time of year. And you, Joscelin, would you rather parade yourself before the peers of the realm in cloth-of-gold? We could go as Apollo and Daphne, you and I.’ she smiled covertly, and Favrielle grunted somewhat in assent, holding a scrap of ruddy gold fabric against my father’s cheek.
‘The colour looks well enough on him, comtesse,’ she murmured, her voice serious, but still with a vague dance of mischief in her eyes. My father batted her hand away with a practised gesture, and leant toward my mother, framing her between himself and the wall of the salon. I saw her yearn toward him, even as she pressed herself against the wall, and he smiled.
‘Will you have me wear kohl round my eyes?’ he bargained.
‘Not if you wear a falcon’s mask.’ My mother smiled obliquely, as Favrielle began scribbling a design on a piece of foolscap.
‘No laces, no fripperies, no madcap confrontations with L’Envers?’
‘Well, love, I can hardly predict what he will do.’ Mother demurred, and father sighed.
‘Done, then.’ He turned from her toward Favrielle, leaning over her shoulder, but she nudged him away with a moue of annoyance. ‘And what will our noble Ti-Philippe be, from the Alban pantheon?’
She considered a moment, but only as though she could not recall a name. ‘The hound. Sceolan, I think it was called.’ She huffed. ‘Such harsh words, this Alban tongue. In the legend of Sadbh, she refused the love of a druid, and he enchanted her into a deer. She ran to a sacred place, and there, the enchantment could not touch her. The king hunted her, but his hounds would not touch her.’ She tapped Philippe on the shoulder. ‘I will have drawings for you tomorrow, comtesse, and we can modify them as you see fit.’
My mother nodded, and, after a few business dealings, we retired from the salon, returning to the town house to idle away the winter hours.
- 8
- 9
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Kushiel's Pupil