They did not call him Prince, then; his own servants. I marked that as worth remembering and glanced at Joscelin, who declined the offer courteously. Serenissiman or no, as a direct descendent of Benedicte de la Courcel, Severio was a Prince of the Blood in Terre d'Ange. It seemed his status as the Doge's grandson, while noble enough, meant somewhat less in La Serenissima.
Strange to remember how little I knew, then, of Seren issiman politics.
Another servant, higher-ranking to judge by his chains of office, entered the antechamber and bowed. "Master Severio will see you now, Contessa."
He did not meet my eyes, and I wondered what awaited me. Well, I would know, soon enough. I commended myself to Naamah's grace, and turned to bid Joscelin farewell. "Be at ease," I said softly. "I will return anon."
Joscelin nodded briefly and bowed, vambraces flashing. "I will abide, my lady." His jawline was taut and there was misery in his gaze. "Elua keep you."
Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the servant, "Lead on," I said.
FIFTEEN
What I had expected of Severio Stregazza, I cannot say; in truth, I had too little knowledge of the Serenissiman to
hazard
a guess. If I had, though, I daresay it would have been wrong.
He wore the guise of an ancient Tiberian magistrate.
It should not have surprised me, when I reflected later, from the benefit of
greater
knowledge; the structure of gov ernance in La Serenissima dates back to the glory days of Tiberíum, indeed, prior to the empire. It is the pride of La Serenissima even now that she is the sole republic among the monarchic city-states of Caerdicca Unitas. If I had known then what I know now of her, it would not have startled me in the least that this son of hers chose to remind a D'Angeline courtesan that La Serenissima was a civilized nation while we were living in thatched hovels and scratching cheerfully in the dirt. Until Elua and his Companions set foot on D'Angeline soil and called it home, bringing ichor in their veins and arts and sciences ransacked from Heaven, we were no different than the Skaldi.
Well, I did not know, then, the envy that other civilized nations held toward Terre d'Ange, although I had learned well enough the covetousness of barbarian realms. But I am Night Court-raised and trained by Anafiel Delaunay, and I do not need to be told to follow a patron's cue. When I beheld Severio Stregazza seated in an ivory chair, wearing a Tiberian toga and a laurel crown on his dark curls, I bowed my head and knelt.
"Come." His voice was resolute, hiding only a trace of uncertainty as he gestured with the
fasces
he held, a bundle of birch rods bound with a scarlet thread. I knew it, from my readings, as a symbol of the authority of Tiberium. "Ap proach the dais and kneel, supplicant."
He had had a length of carpet laid before his chair, dyed a rich crimson. I crossed it obediently, feeling my heart beat faster at laying my welfare in his hands. Truly, there is noth ing like the exquisite submission of surrendering one's will to one's patron! I sank down once more to kneel before him,
abeyante;
a supplicant's pose indeed, that I had learned as a child in the Night Court. It had been a long time indeed since I had knelt to a patron's whim, and the feeling of it was like a homecoming.
"What do you wish of me?" His voice was harsh, striving to overmaster his uncertainty. I raised my head and met his eyes.
"My lord," I whispered, not needing to feign nervousness. I must needs guess at his innermost desire, and if I guessed a-wrong, I would fail in Naamah's Service. "My lord, you have been grievously treated by my countrymen, and they fear they have incurred your displeasure. I am here to make amends."
My words and the tremor in my voice pleased him greatly; like spark to tinder, I saw the eager light of cruelty kindled in his gaze. "You are here, then, to please me?" Severio leaned back in his ivory chair and smiled unkindly, keeping his sandaled feet placed just so, as statues of Ti berian magistrates would have them; one back, one placed afore. "Well, then." He gestured with the
fasces
bundle. "Rise, then, and let me behold you."
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 wrig gling 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
languise
ment
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 pinch ing. 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 pleas ing 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. Flat tery 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 hold ings 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 Ser enissiman 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.
