I stood before his avid gaze, trembling as he measured every inch of me. Pressure beat upon my ears, and I heard from afar the rustling sound of great bronze wings stirring. If Naamah had sent me, my lord Kushiel would have his due. A flush arose on my skin as Severio stared, heat rising in my veins.
"Disrobe," he said curtly.
It is a monstrous thing, to find pleasure in such treatment; tears stood in my eyes as I undid my laces and shed my gown, letting it slip from my shoulders and pool at my feet until I stood before him naked. By now he had taken my measure, and his lip curled with scorn as he realized I had, indeed, spoken truly-I pretended nothing.
""What do you wish, D'Angeline?" he asked, taunting.
"To please you, my lord," I murmured.
Severio Stregazza's eyes gleamed with the knowledge of his power. "Beg me for the privilege," he said, "and I may allow it."
To my mingled shame and relief, I did, the words coming faltering at first, and then spilling from me in a veritable torrent, until my voice grew thick with desire at my own abasement. I knelt unbidden to kiss his sandal-shod feet; there is a Bhodistani caress called "teasing the eel," a wriggling of the tongue between the toes ...
"Enough!" Severio's hand closed on my hair, yanking my head upward. "Let us see," he said, breathing heavily, "how repentant your people are." With his free hand, he twitched aside the folds of his Tiberian toga, revealing his engorged and swollen phallus.
Kneeling between his knees, I performed the languisement upon him, putting the whole of my art into the process. I daresay the young Stregazza had the benefit of his deal, that day; it had been a long time since I had served Naamah, and with lips and tongue and throat, I took him in as the fields drink in rain after a long drought, playing him for all I was worth. Twenty thousand ducats? It was a bargain. His body arched hard as he came to his climax, his hand clamped hard on my neck.
"Ah!" Severio cried out harshly, thrusting me away, his tangled grip pulling my hair loose from the fillet that bound it. I fell sprawling on the carpet as he caught up the bundle of birch rods. "Do you think I am so easily swayed to mercy?" he demanded.
"No, my lord." Gasping for breath, I licked my lips, salty with the taste of him. "I sought only to please ..."
"If you wish to make amends for your folk," he said grimly, slapping the fasces against his palm, "I require somewhat more. Do you say so, still?"
I stared at the bundle of birch-rods, supple and cruel, smacking against his palm, and my breath came short until I had to close my eyes. "Yes, my lord. Please, my lord."
"Turn, then, and place your hands behind your neck."
I did it, shivering, my eyes still shut, gathering up my unbound hair. I heard him draw a long, shuddering breath at the sight of my naked back, my marque in its full glory against my fair skin. I heard the sound of him rising, and the faint swish as he drew back the birch-rods. Even with my eyes closed, I could see the red haze spreading, and behind it Kushiel's face, stern and bronze. The bundled switches cut through the air as he swung his arm, and a crimson burst of pain slashed across my skin. I could not help it; I cried aloud in pleasure.
"Asherat!" A curse or invocation, the word exploded from Severio's lips and the birch-rods cut the air again, flailing my back. "You ... D'Angeline ..." Again, and again, his voice, breathless; the pain, sublime. Locked behind my neck, my hands clutched each other, white-knuckled. "You ..." again, "will... acknowledge ... my ... sovereignty ..." Ah, Elua, Naamah, Kushiel! I drew breath, shaking, and heard myself plead for him to stop, meaning it and not meaning it. "You like this, don't you?" Severio taunted, flogging mercilessly. "You want it to end? Ask me again ..." Again, and again, lashings of pain, bursting exquisitely over my consciousness. My vision reeled, swimming in a red fog of pain, threaded by my pleading voice and the slashing sound of the birch-rods. "Again!" His voice, harsh and panting. "Tell me again ... how you want... to please me ..."
What I said, I do not remember, only that I felt his hands on me then, shoving my knees apart as he thrust himself into me and I wept at the release of it, hanging my head until his fingers tangling in my long hair and drew my head back hard, so I was bent like a bow. "Show me," his voice grated at my ear, and I did, in a long, shuddering climax that milked the length of him as he pounded into me, my haunches thrust back hard against his loins.
"Again." His voice was merciless, his hands relinquishing my hair, grasping now at my breasts, squeezing and pinching. He was tireless, I had taken too much from him with the languisement. "Again!"
Despairing, I obliged.
Thus was my first assignation since my rededication to the Service of Naamah concluded, and when it was done, I felt calm and languid, my mood as soft as the warm, moist air of a summer evening after a thunderstorm has passed. So it has ever been, since I was a child at Cereus House, whipped for disobedience, a delicious languor suffusing my aching flesh.
For his part, Severio Stregazza was lamb-meek, purged of his youthful rage and full of wonder at what had transpired. Solicitous as a lover, he laid a silken robe across my shoulders, mindful of the fresh weals that marred my skin, and aided me to his couch, calling for wine.
"It is true, then," he marveled, laying a hand upon my face and gazing at my eyes, the scarlet mote in the left. "That you are an, an anguissette."
"Yes, my lord." I laughed softly. "It is true. Are you sorry to find it so?"
"No!" His eyes widened, and he took a seat at the opposite end of the couch, laughing. "No, not hardly, my lady. Tell me, are there others?"
"Not now." I shook my head. "There have been, in the past. Master Robert Tielhard, who inked my marque, heard stories from his grandfather."
"What happened to them?"
I arranged the folds of my robe about me in a more pleasing fashion. "The last living anguissette I know of was Iriel de Fiscarde of Azzalle, who went willingly into a marriage of servitude to the Kusheline Duc de Bonnel to avert war between their Houses. A matter of D'Angeline politics." I smiled at the servant who brought wine, ignoring his look askance at the deserted ivory chair and fasces bundle as he poured for us. 'Tell me, my lord," I said to Severio, sipping my wine as his servant departed. "Do you truly despise us so?"
He sighed, running his hands through his hair and dislodging his laurel crown, which sat rather askew anyway. "Yes. No." Regarding the wreath, he tossed it on the floor. "Say rather that my hide, rough Serenissiman stuff as it is, has grown thin in this regard," he said wryly. "I have been too often reminded of my inadequacies in comparison to full-blooded D'Angelines."
"I thought my lord acquitted himself rather well in comparison." I smiled, watching him flush with pleasure. Flattery is headier stuff than wine, to young men. "Who is it dares say otherwise?"
"Not honest Serenissimans." He drank half his wine at a gulp, wiping his lips. "And not anyone here, in truth; it's all looks and glances. No, if it comes from anywhere, it comes from the Little Court, in La Serenissima." He caught my inquiring gaze. "That's what they call it, you know; my grandfather Benedicte's palazzo and the D'Angeline holdings in the district." Severio's mouth twisted. "It didn't used to be as bad when my grandmother was alive."
"Your grandfather remarried, did he not?" I asked.
He nodded absently. "Elaine de Tourais, she is called; a noble-born D'Angeline refugee from the Camaeline hills. Husband, father, even her brother, all killed in the first wave of Selig's invasion. Her family had a quit-claim on House Courcel. Somewhat to do with her father taking arms at Benedicte's side in some ancient battle against the Skaldi."
"The Battle of Three Princes," I murmured; I had cause to know it well. My lord Delaunay's beloved, the dauphin Rolande de la Courcel, had died in it.
"That's the one." Severio drank off the rest of his wine. "She's all right, I suppose; it's not her fault. She even took the Veil of Asherat, to thank the Gracious Lady of the Sea for offering sanctuary where Elua and his Companions failed her." He gloated a little, saying it. "But whatever store of courage she had, I'm afraid she used in fleeing the Skaldi. I'm sorry for her losses, but all the same, she wed the old man, and now there's rumor in the Little Court that he's prepared to throw over the rest of us for a true-born heir. An heir untainted by base-born Stregazza blood, that is." He looked bitterly into his empty glass. "Did you know we trace our line back to Marcellus Aurelius Strega?"
"An honorable lineage, to be sure," I said automatically. "Your ancestors would be proud. Severio, if your father stands to inherit the Doge's throne, what do the machinations of the Little Court matter?"
"The office of the Doge is an elected one," he said simply. "For a lifetime, aye, but the succession is never sure. If my father is not elected and Prince Benedicte withdraws his patronage from the Stregazza, well, I'm just another Serenissiman lordling scrabbling for position. I'll be little better
off than Thérèse and Dominic's four children, with their father slain and their mother imprisoned. Benedicte countenanced that, you know. My own cousins, and no hope of a future among the lot.”
It gave me a chill to hear it. I was responsible for that, Alcuin and I.
"Surely you have some inkling of how the election will fall out?" I asked him.
Severio shrugged. "My father is well loved among the clubs of our Sestieri, my lady, but it is no guarantee, and less for me. He must needs court the approval of Prince Benedicte, and that has been a shaky thing since Dominic and Thérèse's treachery was exposed. Meanwhile, my uncle Ricciardo plots against him, rousing the craft-guilds. It is important, therefore, that I win some regard for my family on this visit. D'Angeline trade-favor has prospered La Serenissima." He refilled his wineglass, looking rueful. "I've not made a good job of it, thus far. And a good portion of the funds my father allotted me to win favor among the nobles, well..." Gazing at me, Severio cleared his throat and flushed. "My father was very generous, but I do not know that he will consider his monies well spent."
When I took his meaning, I laughed out loud. "You bought me with your father's goodwill purse?"
"Ah, well. Not the whole of it, no." He fidgeted with a fold of his tunic. "A goodly portion," he admitted.
"Severio." I leaned forward, my eyes dancing. "Do you realize there's naught else you could have done with that money that would impress D'Angeline nobles more? They were laying odds on who my first patron would be! In one grand gesture, you have acquired a status no D'Angeline will ever hold. It is not my place to advise you, but believe me, if you make it known, you will be admired and envied by the Palace entire."
His face lit up, making him look younger and handsomer. "You truly think so?"
"I know it." I did, too. The stakes were different, when I was Delaunay's anguissette, a delightfully decadent secret to be shared among peers with certain vices. The Comtesse de Montrève was a hotly sought prize.
"Why did you choose me?" A thought struck him, and he frowned. "Was it only the money? I thought it would be. That's why I made the offer so high."
"No." I gazed at his scowling face and smiled. "I liked your anger."
"Did you really?" Reaching for me, he drew me onto his lap so that I straddled him and began to open my robe, hands laying claim to my flesh. "Do you like me still, now that I am not so angry?" he asked curiously, tugging his toga half-off. The blunt head of his rising phallus probed between my nether lips as his hands, inside my robe, slid up my welted back.
"Yes, my lord," I managed to gasp before he entered me, his nails digging into my skin.
Young men.
SIXTEEN
Severio Stregazza took my advice, although I did not hear the whole of it until I returned to court. As had been my wont in Delaunay's service, I took some few days' leisure to recover from the assignation, after being tended by an Eisandine chirurgeon.
It had been my intention to contract the Yeshuite doctor who had tended Alcuin and me in prior days, but Joscelin objected adamantly. I gazed at his beautiful, implacable face, the khai pendant gleaming silver on his chest, and gave way, too tired to do battle with his conscience. Let no Yeshuite be offended by my nature; I would be tended by one of our own. Eisandines are mayhap the most skilled healers in the world, and I had no objection on that score. Delaunay had trusted the Yeshuite's discretion; they do not gossip
about their clients. I resolved the matter by setting Fortun to contract the dourest Eisandine he could find.
Joscelin had said naught when I returned to him in Severio's quarters; I daresay only we two knew the unspoken shoals that loomed beneath the surface of our cordial greeting. He had bowed, I had inclined my head, and perforce kept from wincing as my heavy cloak brushed against my freshly-lashed skin. I have had far worse than I endured at the hands of the young Stregazza and walked away with a steady gait.
What Joscelin felt, I did not ask, knowing it well enough. The pain of the flesh is naught to that of the heart.
Severio had come forward as my first patron, and allowed the amount of the fee he paid for our assignation to be whispered in the corridors. This I learned from my chevaliers, who had it from the Palace Guard-nothing escapes the Guard's ears-and from Cecilie Laveau-Perrin, who paid me a visit during my time of recuperation.
