Kushiel's Dart (Phedre's Trilogy #1)

Kushiel's Dart (Phedre's Trilogy #1) Page 55

Once I understood the gravity of this law, I understood somewhat of the sin of Hyacinthe's mother. Not only had she allowed her body to be defiled, to become vrajna and unclean, but she had fouled her very bloodline. She had lost her laxta., all her worth as a Tsingano woman.

But they did not know this, the Tsingani en route to the Hippochamp. They knew only that Hyacinthe spoke and thought as one of them. If a D'Angeline fineness illumed his features, that keen, cutting beauty that is our blood-right, they saw in it only that he was a fine specimen, a veritable Prince of Travellers.

And so he was, with his bright, fine clothes, rich brown skin, his gleaming black ringlets, the merry light that danced in his dark eyes. When he called out that he was seeking the kumpania of Manoj, they laughed and called back, pointing. Manoj was there, the old patriarch, already a-field. Surely he would welcome Hyacinthe, blood of his blood, and all his uncles and cousins and aunts he had never met.

That was his dream, the old dream, and it bode well to come true. I saw it as we rode, drawing nearer, in the eagerness that marked him, the white grin that flashed out without warning.

It was a simple enough dream and a homely one: to be accepted, to find a family. I prayed for his sake that it would come true. Hyacinthe had risked much to come on this journey, and truly, that and that alone was the reward he sought. But Joscelin and I fell together as we approached, riding side by side and handling the pack-mules with the ease of our long, silent practice, and I saw the reserve in his blue eyes. He who had taken a simple vow knew well enough how things can twist and change.

We reached the Hippochamp.

It is a field, nothing more; a broad, green field, even now, so early in spring. A vast expanse of green, the grass new and tender, alongside the great Lusande River that burrows the length of Kusheth. We had timed our arrival well. A great many Tsingani kumpanias had already arrived, setting up wagons and tents and paddocks against the new green field; but a great many were still to come, and we found ourselves a space easily enough, staking it at the corners with the bright ribbons Hyacinthe had brought for that purpose.

And everywhere, there were horses: ponies, carriage-horses, palfreys and hunters, massive drays, and even war-horses, broad-backed and arch-necked, mighty enough to carry full mail, but long-legged and swift in battle. There were yearlings, gangly and slab-sided, and the early crop of foals, some of them still staggering drunkenly on teetering legs quick to tangle.

In the center of the field, where the most powerful of kumpanias had established themselves, was a common area set around a fire. Already a good-sized group of Tsingani had gathered to play music, sing and dance. I thought at first that it was a fete, but Hyacinthe said no, it was only their way. There were smaller gatherings too, in the outlying areas where we had made our camp.

As sunset drew nigh, cooking odors filled the air, rich and savory, making our staples—flatbread and cheese, nuts, dried fruit and meat—seem duller than usual, for all that they were bought with the Queen's coin. Hyacinthe, ever with a keen eye to chance, bartered with our nearest neighbors, trading a skin of passable wine for three bowls of a game stew spiced with fennel and last-year's carrots, with the assurance of meals to come.

It was wisely done, for we made a friendship over it, in the quick and easy way of Travellers. Our neighbors were a young family, not yet established as a proper kumpania; Neci was the tseroman, or headman, and introduced us to his wife, Gisella, her sister and brother-in-law, his cousin, who had thrown in his lot with them, and a passel of children, who ranged in age from still-suckling to ten or older. They wed young. The women all came forward to give me the kiss of greeting; the men nodded their heads, dark eyes gleaming with curiosity. I've a good ear for languages, and had begun to be able to follow the thread of D'Angeline that laced the Tsingani dialect. Hyacinthe had told them what we'd agreed upon, that I'd been gotten in a brothel by a Tsingano half-breed, adding—needlessly, to my mind—that his mother had taken me in out of pity when she found me taking to the streets.

Then he introduced Joscelin, who bowed, making his cloak swirl with a subtle riot of color. Neci's family laughed, and the children gazed wide-eyed.

After that, they invited us to join them around the nearest fire, where Gisella's brother-in-law—his name, I think, was Pardi—would play the fiddle, which we did.

The virtue of silence served me best there; I sat by Hyacinthe's side and listened while he spoke with Neci, struggling to filter meaning out of the Tsingani dialogue. In the background, to my surprise, I heard Joscelin spinning a tale in D'Angeline, and doing it fairly well. Gisella, her sister and all the children were listening, a small group that grew somewhat larger as the tale wove onward, through the skirls of fiddle-playing and nimble tambors.

"... and I said to the Skaldi princess, my lady, although you are more beautiful than the moon and all her stars, I cannot oblige you, for I am sworn to Cassiel. And she said to me, well, then, if you will not wed me, you must fight my brother Bjorn, for no man may refuse me and live. Now this Bjorn was a mighty warrior, who had once defeated a witch, and she gave to him a great magic in exchange for her life, a bearskin that had the power to transform its wearer into a bear ..."

I shook my head, turning my attention back to Neci and Hyacinthe. A Cassiline turned Mendacant; truly, no one would believe it possible.

"If it is true that you are the grandson of Manoj," Neci was saying—or something very close to it, "then you must seek him out. The baro kumpai, the four mightiest kumpanias, are there." He pointed toward the great fire at the center, where the staked territories were vast, encompassing impromptu paddocks filled with many horses. "But if you are only seeking Tsingani and khushti grya to travel west and trade . . ." Neci shrugged, stroking the tips of his elegant mustache. "Perhaps we would be interested, if there is c^okai in it. Perhaps enough to make our lav as a kumpania."

"There is gold enough to make the name of whoever succeeds with me," Hyacinthe said noncommittally, switching to D'Angeline and glancing at me for corroboration. I nodded solemnly. "I have many important friends in the City of Elua. But none so important as blood, yes? I will see Manoj first."

"Well," Neci said, and grinned. "Do not see him tonight, rinkeni chavo, for the old Tsingan Kralis is a gavvering hellion when he drinks, and he's like to knock your dandos out with a kosh-stick if you go claiming to be Anasztaizia's son. So see him tomorrow, and remember who gave you good advice, hey rinkenti"

"I will." Hyacinthe clasped hands with Neci, Tsingani-fashion, at the wrist. "Thank you."

Neci wandered away to reclaim his wife and dance with her. They made a striking couple, bold and handsome. "What's a gavvering hellion?" I asked Hyacinthe, watching them dance.

"You followed that?" he asked, and didn't answer for a moment. "I don't know. It doesn't translate. Strict. Belligerant."

"And khushti grya? Rinkeni chavo? Tsingan kralis?"

He eyed me sidelong. "Delaunay taught you to listen too well," he sighed. "Grya are horses. Neci says he has good horses to trade, khushti grya. Rinkeni chavo . . ." Hyacinthe looked wry. "Pretty boy. I didn't tell him I was half D'Angeline."

I waited, then asked again. "And Tsingan kralis?"

Hyacinthe shifted his gaze toward the central fire, where the tents stood tallest, the wagons were brightest, and the finest horses in the paddocks. "King of the Tsingani," he said finally, his thoughts elsewhere.

"You mean he really is?" I was startled, and the question came out rudely. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He shot me a quick glance. "I wasn't... I wasn't sure myself, until Neci said it. I always believed it, but..."

"I understand." I smiled ruefully and stroked his black curls. "Prince of Travellers."

Somewhere behind us, Joscelin's story continued. He was acting it out now, giving the bear-warrior's terrible roar. Shrieks of terrified glee answered; the children loved it. The old Prefect would have died of mortification. One of the young Tsingani women, long hair still uncovered, approached Hyacinthe to invite him to dance. He looked apologetically at me, rising. I understood, of course; it would have looked peculiar if he'd declined. Unless we were a betrothed couple—and if I were no longer a vrajna bond-servant, still, as a half-breed's by-blow, I had no claim to laxta, to being a true Tsingani woman.

Which made me unfit for the grandson of the Tsingan Kralu.

It is a strange thing, how pride may run the strongest among a people despised, as the Tsingani had been in so many lands. I thought about that, as I sat alone near the fire, watching the dancers, watching Joscelin spin his first-ever Mendacant's tale. It made no difference to our mission.

But it made a difference, I thought, to me.

SIXTY-THREE

In the morning, we went to see Manoj.

The horse-fair at the Hippochamp lasts for three days, and this was officially the first. The first day is for looking, the Tsingani say; the second for talking; the third for trading. While this is true, it is also true that by the third day, a handful of canny gadje nobles would have gotten word that the horse-fair was ongoing and come to buy, so the greater part of the trading would be all but concluded by the third day.

Hence, the deceptively casual undertone to the browsing and conversation, which was in fact deadly earnest. To see Manoj, we had to take part in it, for Hyacinthe was not so naive as to present himself and expect a welcome.

Instead, we strolled around the paddock surveying the horses. Joscelin, who had been entrusted with our funds—Mendacant or no, anyone wearing Cassiline daggers was the least likely target among us—had brought out the necklace Hyacinthe had provided. I knew it well, for it had been his mother's, an elaborate affair of gold coins strung together.

It provoked not a few whispers, that a Didikani woman would dare sport a Tsingano gall—I understood those words quickly enough, for "half-breed" and for coin-wrought jewelry—but it achieved its purpose. One of Manoj's many nephews spotted us in short order, and came over to lean on the woven saplings of the paddock fencing to talk with Hyacinthe. When he learned of our desire to contract horses and men alike to travel west for a lucrative trade, he brought us to meet with Manoj.

We met with the King of the Tsingani in his tent, which was brightly striped and well appointed. I'd been expecting another ancient, like Ga-nelon de la Courcel, I suppose, but I had forgotten how young the Tsingani wed. It was hard to gauge his age—they weather quickly, on the

Long Road—but I think him not much over sixty. He had fierce, staring dark eyes, iron-grey hair and a resplendent mustache.

"You want to take my people and my horses west?" he demanded. "Who are you to ask such a thing? What is your kumpania?"

Those are not, of course, the words he used; like the rest, Manoj spoke in the Tsingani dialect. Some of it, I could follow. Some I gathered from the general nature of the exchange. Some I did not understand, and Hy-acinthe translated later. What I recount now is as I recall it, woven out of whole cloth like a Mendacant's fable, only closer to the spirit of memory.

"I seek a handful of brave men and good horses to make a great bargain, Kralis" Hyacinthe said smoothly.

Manoj beckoned one of his nephews near and whispered in his ear, then shooed him away. "Tell me of this trade."

Hyacinthe bowed. "The Queen's Admiral and his fleet are docked at the Pointe d'Oeste. I have knowledge that they will be in need of horses."

It was true, actually; if Quintilius Rousse was going to take a single ship across the Straits, he would need to have a handful of men well armed and mounted to ward the remainder of the fleet and secure their beachhead. Kusheth was neutral territory at best. But none of us would divulge these details.

"I have not heard this," Manoj said dismissively. "Who are you to come by this knowledge? You have not given me your name or your kumpama."

"I come from the City of Elua, and I know many people there and hear many things." Hyacinthe held the patriarch's gaze. "I am Hyacinthe son of Anasztaizia. I am born to your kumpania, Grandfather."

A middle-aged Tsingano woman dropped an earthenware cup in the corner of the tent. It fell with a dull thud, unbroken. Otherwise there was no sound. Manoj blinked wrinkled eyelids under ferocious brows.

"Anasztaizia's son?" he said slowly, wondering. "Anasztaizia had a boy? A son?"

"I am her son," Hyacinthe said simply.

After that, pandemonium broke loose. It began with Manoj shouting for one of his nephews, a nervous man of around forty, who ran into the tent and threw himself upon his knees before the Tsingani patriarch. It ended with cries and embraces and Manoj weeping openly as he drew Hyacinthe up to kiss him on both cheeks.

I pieced the story together later, for it was at this point that I lost the ability to follow what was being said. It seemed that the nephew Manoj had summoned—Csavin, his name was—had run afoul of a Bryony House adept the one and only time the kumpania of Manoj had entered the City of Elua.

Bryony is the wealthiest of the Thirteen Houses, for wealth is their specialty, in all its forms, and there are those to whom nothing is more titillating than money. If one stripped the staff of the Royal Treasury, one would find a full half of them bear Bryony's marque, for her adepts' acumen is legend.

Bryony is also the only House whose adepts are willing to wager for their favors.

And they almost never lose. Not even to Tsingani.

I had believed—as Hyacinthe had—that his mother had fallen enamoured of a D'Angeline, for that was the story she had told him. It was out of love, to protect him from a more sordid truth; she had lost her virtue, her laxta, because her cousin Csavin had laid it as a wager upon the table with a Bryony adept, believing he could not lose. Tsingani know a thousand ways to cheat the gadje.

He had lost.

Not only had he lost, but in the face of the Dowayne's Guard of Bryony House, he had paid his debt with coin that was not his, deceiving his cousin—Manoj's daughter, who was young and desiring of adventure—into meeting with a patron who paid good coin to Bryony House for the pleasure of seducing a Tsingani virgin.

It appalled me as much as almost anything I have ever heard, for it hit close to home for me. If she had been D'Angeline and not Tsingani, it would have been a violation of Guild-laws; but the Guild covers only D'Angelines, leaving Tsingani and other noncitizens to their own law. It was a violation of Tsingani law, and Csavin had forfeited all his possessions and rights to Manoj, living as a pariah among them. Still, I think Bryony House is liable for heresy, for what was done to Hyacinthe's mother violates the precept of Blessed Elua, which applies to everyone, D'Angeline or no. Naamah's service is entered willingly, or not at all.

As for Hyacinthe's mother, she was Tsingani, and bound by their law. She was vrajna and outcast, in sorrow and tears, never to be redeemed.

But now there was a son, Hyacinthe, and even if he was a Didihani half-breed, he had been raised as a true Tsingano, and he was the son of Anasztaizia, whose loss Manoj had never ceased to mourn, his only daughter, his only child, his precious pearl in the swarming mass of children his brothers and sisters had begotten, whose mulo had beseeched him on the winds since her death a month gone and more.

Prince of the Tsingani. Prince of Travellers.

The remainder of the day passed in a whirlwind as our campsite was struck and our things brought to join with Manoj's kumpania, where trade and celebration blurred into one. Joscelin and I trailed in its wake, bewildered and half-forgotten as Hyacinthe was drawn into an extended reunion with cousins and great-aunts and uncles he'd never known existed.

Manoj kept Hyacinthe close by him, drawing out the tale of his childhood and youth in Night's Doorstep, eking out the details of his mother's life. He was proud to hear of her fame as a fortuneteller, pounding his chest, proclaiming that no one had ever had the gift of the dromonde as Anasztaizia had had it, among all the women of her line.

I understood enough of this to raise my eyebrows at Hyacinthe, who shot me a fierce warning glance, shaking his head. It was true, what De-launay had said: The dromonde was the province of women only. For a man to practice it was vrajna, forbidden.

When night fell, the fires blazed, and the Tsingani drank and played, their music rising in wild skirling abandonment. Hyacinthe joined them, playing his timbales, dancing with the unwed women; there must have been a dozen of them vying for his attention. I sat on the outskirts and watched his white grin flash in the firelight.

So I sat, when an old crone hobbled over to me, wizened as one of last winter's apples, bent under the weight of the gold-bedecked galbi she wore.

"Good evening, old mother," I said politely.

She looked at me and cackled. "Not for you, is it, cftavi? For all you've the evil eye to give, with that red mote you bear. Know you who I am?" I shook my head, bemused. She pointed to her chest with a gnarled forefinger.

"Abhirati am I, and I was Anasztaizia's granddam. Her gift comes through my blood." She turned her pointing finger on me, taking me back to Hyacinthe's mother in her kitchen. "You've no drop of Tsingani in your veins, chavi, for all the lad may claim it. Don't you know the dromonde can look backward as well as forward?"

"What do you see, then?"

"Enough." The old woman laughed wickedly. "Pleasure-houses, indeed. The lad spoke that true, didn't he? Your mother was a whore, sure enough. But you're no by-blow, no, not you."

I watched Hyacinthe surrounded by his newfound family. "Better if I had been, mayhap. My father had a name, but he didn't give it to me. My mother sold me into servitude and never looked back."

"Backward, forward, your mother had no gift to look either way."

Abhirati said dismissively. "His mother did." She nodded at Hyacinthe. "What do you suppose she saw, eh? The Lungo Drom and the kumpania, eh, or somewhat else, a reflection in a blood-pricked eye?" She gave another cackle. "Oh, what did my granddaughter see, for this son of hers? Think about that, chavi."

With that, she tottered off, bony shoulders hunching with laughter. I frowned after her.