I sank onto my narrow bed, unwinding my head-scarf and shaking my shorn hair loose, weary of playing games. “Forbid him my company if you fear for him so.”
Her voice dropped. “I dare not.”
“Why?” I glanced at her. “God’s judgment?”
She looked away from me. “It is a test and a trial. Aleksei’s, not mine. I should not even speak to you.”
“Do you fear I’ll seek to seduce you instead?” I asked wryly, giving my chains an enticing jangle. “I’m willing to try, but I’m not at my best.”
Valentina shook her head. “Even if I were inclined to such depravity, do you think I would not know it for a lie, old and haggard as I have grown?” Unexpectedly, her voice cracked. “Do not mock me.”
“I’m not mocking you.” There were tears on her cheeks and the pain in her voice tugged at my heart, making me relent. “I’m sorry, my lady. I’m alone, scared, and desperate.” I paused, addressing her in a more gentle tone. “Who was he? Did he break your heart?”
She didn’t pretend not to understand. “Aleksei’s father?”
I nodded.
“Just a man.” Valentina dabbed at her eyes. “He was a young D’Angeline diplomat in Vralgrad. I was a young bride wed to an elderly groom, a match meant to bring prestige to the Rostov family.”
“This man tempted you?”
Her shoulders rose and fell. “I let it happen. I wanted it to happen, wanted him. All that youth and unholy beauty. Aleksei’s father told me no lies, made me no false promises. Nonetheless, I fell in love and broke my heart against him.”
“Men can be careless,” I murmured, thinking of Raphael de Mereliot, thinking of Bao and his Tatar princess.
“Yes, they can.” We regarded each other.
“Give my brother whatever he wants,” Valentina said softly. “He is not given to making idle threats. I don’t know how much time you have.”
“Will you not help me?” I asked. “Please?”
She shook her head from side to side, slow and deliberate. “I am sure of nothing. I have made mistakes. Forgive me, Moirin. God has decreed your person a battleground. I dare not intervene.”
“My lady Valentina!” I called after her as she made for the door. She paused, raising her brows in inquiry. I smiled at her, a genuine smile. Even though she had refused me, I could not help but pity her. “Not so very old, nor so careworn that I do not see the beauty your young D’Angeline diplomat saw in you. Careless or no, he must have accounted himself a fortunate fellow.”
Tears shone in her velvet-brown eyes, and she gave a harsh laugh. “I’d rather you weren’t kind.”
I shrugged. “That is your burden to bear.”
That afternoon, the Patriarch of Riva returned to hear my continuing confession.
I dreaded it.
I didn’t want to speak of Jehanne to him. Against all odds, it had become one of the purest and best things in my life.
He would taint it, of that I was sure.
He settled into the straight-backed chair, settling his portable writing desk on his lap. His dark eyes gleamed at me, his pen hovering over the virgin pages.
“So,” he began in a conversational manner. “Tell me of the whore-queen, Jehanne de la Courcel.”
I held back only what I dared. The Patriarch did not know how early in our acquaintance Jehanne had seduced me—no one did, save the Dowayne of Cereus House. He knew what the rest of the world knew, that Jehanne had stolen me away from Raphael de Mereliot at a dinner party.
“You became her…..” He glanced at his notes. “Royal companion? Tell me of this practice.”
“It was a jest of sorts at first between us,” I said candidly. “I was all wrong for it. A royal companion is meant to be someone older and wiser. Skilled in Naamah’s arts, aye, but willing to offer loyalty above all else.”
He studied me. “And you come from a long line of these….. royal companions, is that not true?”
“Yes.” My palms were itching and sweating. “The tradition began with my great-great-grandmother, who served as royal companion to the Dauphine Sidonie. My father served as royal companion to the Duc de Barthelme.”
“Fascinating,” the Patriarch murmured. “Is a royal companion always of the same sex as his master or her mistress?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
He stroked his beard. “Very cunning. So Naamah’s Order seeks to corrupt and debauch the flower of D’Angeline nobility from a youthful age, enticing them into unnatural perversions.”
“No.” I rubbed my palms on my dress. “It is only because a royal companion is meant to be a friend, and it is easier to forge a friendship with someone of the same sex, especially at a young age. Men and women take different paths to adulthood.”
Pyotr Rostov scowled. “It is a pretty argument to hide an ugly, sordid truth.”
I shook my head, unwilling to relent. “My lord, I have not lied to you. Loyalty is the most important aspect—the ability to give them one person they can trust without fear, one friend who will keep all their confidences. That is the one gift I had to offer Jehanne, and the one gift she accepted from me.”
He wetted his pen, tapping it on the edge of the inkwell. “But it was part of your job to service the queen in a sexual manner, was it not?”
Give my brother whatever he wants.
He would not listen; he would never listen. These Yeshuites accused me of closing my ears to God, but at least I was trying to understand what they wanted and why. The Patriarch of Riva would never hear aught but what he wanted to believe from my lips. To service, gods! As though anyone in their right mind wouldn’t rejoice at the chance to share Jehanne de la Courcel’s bed, as though anyone could consider it a job, and not an honor and a privilege. It was an ugly, sordid term to describe something lovely.
“Yes,” I said wearily, leaning back on my stool and resting my scarf-wrapped head against the wall. “It was part of my job.”
The Patriarch’s pen skated avidly across the page. “How?”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured impatiently at me. “These are sins against nature, child. You must confess them in full. What acts did you commit?” He lowered his voice. “I have heard that D’Angelines sculpt vile semblances of a man’s generative organ through art and artifice. Did you play the man’s role with her? Or did you take turns at it?”
I closed my eyes, remembering Jehanne in Cereus House, showing me the ivory aide d’amour, cradling it in her palm and promising with a wickedly sweet smile to demonstrate all its uses to me. It had been one of the only times. “Not usually, no.”
“Did you perform unclean acts on her?”
“Unclean acts?” I opened my eyes.
The hectic sheen had returned to his gaze. “Did you pleasure her with your mouth?”
“Oh.” It wasn’t a topic that had arisen before. I wondered if it was because the act of the languisement was less unclean when performed on a man, or if the confession of fornication had sufficed, or if the Patriarch had been saving the accusation for the moment when it would hurt me the most, knowing my grief was still fresh. All three, mayhap. “That, yes.”
He muttered to himself in Vralian, recording my confession. “How many times?”
“Many. But it is not listed among the things that God finds an abomination, my lord,” I observed. “Why is it reckoned unclean?”
His head jerked up, outrage written on his features. “Need you ask?”
I shrugged. “Apparently so.”
Pyotr Rostov’s face darkened, and he leaned forward in his chair. “God gave you lips and a tongue that you might give praise to him, Moirin. Not that you might pollute them by placing them where the body’s foulest excrescences emerge. It should be obvious. Is it so hard to understand?”
I flinched away from him, my chains rattling.
Give my brother whatever he wants.
I couldn’t, not this. “You speak of the very font and wellspring of life, my lord,” I whispered, tears stinging my eyes. “And no, I do not understand.”
My memories blurred.
There was my lady Jehanne, lying indolent and languid in the bower she’d had created for me, her arms stretched above her head, her thighs parted so I could kneel between them, her pink nether-lips already glistening with desire. She had smiled at me, her eyes sparkling with unremitting delight, the overhanging ferns painting intricate green shadows on her oh so fair skin. And Checheg, grunting and straining in the ger in the throes of labor, the babe Bayar’s head crowning, tearing delicate flesh. It was all part and parcel of the same thing.
My voice shook. “How is that not a sacred thing to worship?”
The Patriarch did not answer, not right away. He sat very still, gazing at me with fixed intensity, until I had to look away. “It is not your fault that you were born into sin, Moirin,” he said at length. “But your actions are your own. If you cannot learn to acknowledge them for what they are, I cannot help you.”
“I am trying!” I said in frustration.
“Not hard enough.” He took his line of questioning in a different direction. “Let us move forward in time. You spent a great deal of time travelling with the Emperor of Ch’in’s daughter. Did you serve as a royal companion to her?”
It caught me unaware, and I felt the breath go out of me. Pyotr Rostov’s lids drooped and his lips curved in the beginning of his creamy look, sensing he had landed a blow.
A cold, hard anger settled over me. He could tell himself whatever he liked, but deep inside, this confession he was forcing from me titillated him.
“Yes,” I said coolly, watching his creamy look deepen. “I had the honor of serving as her confidante on several occasions.”
That drove the smirk from his lips. “That is not what I asked.”
“It is exactly what you asked, my lord,” I retorted. “You were not listening when I spoke of trust and loyalty.”
His brows rose. “You deny a physical relationship with her?”
“Physical?” I shrugged. “Not entirely, no. I offered such comfort as she would accept. The princess suffered from night terrors, memories of her bridegroom’s death. When it was very bad, when she would awaken shaking and trembling, sometimes she would let me hold her until she fell asleep.”
The Patriarch studied me with a hooded gaze. “But that is not the whole truth, is it, Moirin?”
“It is!” I protested.
His lips curled. “Do you think you can lie to me? I am a servant of God, and I hear the lie in your voice. I see it festering on your soul. Tell me, did you debauch the Emperor’s daughter under the guise of giving comfort to her?”
Gods, I hadn’t been prepared for this. Too much of my life was an open book. I’d known I couldn’t protect my memories of Cillian, of Raphael such as they were, of Jehanne, or Bao when it came his turn. I’d conducted my affairs in far too public a manner.
But it should have been different with Snow Tiger, my fiercely private and reserved princess.
What had passed between us in the beginning at the dragon’s insistence, neither of us had chosen—and only Bao knew about it. What had passed between us at the end was another matter altogether. She had blushed to the tips of her ears when she had asked me to invoke Naamah’s blessing for her, charming me beyond words. She knew how deeply she was wounded, but she was proud and it had not been easy for her to ask.
And Naamah….. Naamah had granted her blessing when I prayed for it, placing words in my mouth that took the fear away, every last bit of it. Snow Tiger had laughed out of sheer wonder—laughed, and kissed me. I had laughed, too, pulling her down atop me.
I wasn’t willing to give up that memory, either. The Patriarch was merely guessing in his ungodly perceptive way, probing at my vulnerabilities. I couldn’t bear to have him sully it with his vulgar accusations. He didn’t know. No one knew, except mayhap a few discreet servants who loved their mistress too well to gossip. I had gladly given the princess every ounce of pleasure I had to offer, gladly accepted it in return, delighting in the healing she found in it, delighting in her.
But I had not sought it out.
And I hated the Patriarch for trying to make it something vile. He awaited my answer with infernal patience.
I remembered how the fallen spirits had tricked the Circle of Shalomon over and over, finding loopholes in the commandments given them even as they obeyed to the letter, and I parsed my words with care.
“You are asking if I seduced her, and the answer is no.” I met his gaze steadily, my anger a cold blaze within me. “Do you need to hear truth in my voice, my lord? Very well, I will swear to it.” I uttered the sacred oath of the Maghuin Dhonn, each word precise. “By stone and sea and sky, and all that they encompass, by the sacred troth that binds me to my diadh-anam, I swear I did not seduce the Emperor’s daughter.”
My chains shivered, the sigils and inscriptions etched on them flaring briefly. This time, it was the Patriarch who flinched.
“Witch!” he hissed.
The spark of my diadh-anam was undiminished. Although I had pared it to the bone, I had spoken the truth. “It is the sacred oath of my people,” I said coldly. “The one Berlik the Cursed broke. I do not swear it lightly.”
Pyotr Rostov mastered his unease, resuming his study of me. “And yet you are angry,” he observed. “Angrier than the question warrants. Even under oath, you withhold the greater truth.” His creamy look returned. “You say you did not seduce the princess, but you do not deny making the attempt.”
