"Will her husband challenge me, do you think?" he asked.
"What?" I glanced at him. "Who?"
"Lady Osmont's husband," Eamonn said patiently. "Like Fionn mac Cumhaill, when Diarmuid stole Grainne from him; my mother was named for her, you know. He hunted them without mercy. I wouldn't mind if he did; challenge me, that is. But I don't want to marry her, that's all."
I looked blankly at him. "I wouldn't worry, Eamonn. The lady knows her mind. And this is Terre d'Ange, not Alba."
"Eire." He sighed. "It's an Eiran tale, Imriel." Across the ballroom, a horologist called the hour. It was later than I had guessed. Eamonn heaved himself to his feet. "Ah, now! I owe the little princess a dance. I'd best claim it, hadn't I?"
"I'll go with you," I said. "I asked as much of Sidonie."
He chuckled. "Mind you don't get chilblains."
It was somewhat to behold, Eamonn and Alais. He was twice her height, and her small hand was lost in his brawny grip. To his credit, he was gentle and kind. Knowing full well he danced poorly, he deferred to her, letting her lead him in subtle ways. I smiled to see it, then turned to Sidonie and bowed.
"Shall we dance, Dauphine?" I asked her politely, conscious of Maslin's watching gaze.
She raised her chin. "All right. Why not?"
Although she was skilled, it could not have been less like dancing with Roshana. Sidonie's hand was cool in mine, almost impersonal. She held herself at a distance and I touched her lightly, scarce letting my right hand rest on the small of her back, formal and proper. I wanted to think of her as a sister, as I thought of Alais; and yet I couldn't. We were kin, but we were strangers to one another.
"You dance well," she said grudgingly.
"Phèdre taught me." I smiled, whirling her into a complicated turn. She followed it with ease, her dark eyes watchful. "You know, you can trust me, Sidonie. I'm not your enemy."
Her throat moved as she swallowed. "I'd like to believe it."
"Who says otherwise?" I asked.
As I watched, her glance slid sideways. Who did it seek? Ysandre, her mother? Maslin? Duc Barquiel L'Envers, clad in Akkadian finery? "It doesn't matter," she murmured.
I tightened my grip on her hand, feeling the small bones shift. "It does to me."
"Imriel." Something flared behind her mask; stubbornly, she held her ground, continuing to follow my lead with effortless grace. "You're hurting me."
I was, and I knew it, and ah! Elua help me, it felt good to draw a reaction from her. Even as the musicians ended their tune, I loosed my grip, turning her free. "Forgive me," I murmured, bowing. "It wasn't my intent, Dauphine."
Sidonie shook out her hand and eyed me with infuriating composure. "You're not exactly your own best advocate, are you, cousin?"
First it stung me, and then it made me laugh. "No," I admitted. "Not exactly."
She smiled a little. "I do want to like you, Imriel. You've been good to Alais, and I'm grateful for it. It's just…" She shrugged, looking very young and lonely. "I can't afford to make any mistakes."
I nodded. "I know."
"How could you?" she asked simply.
"I hear the whispers," I said. "I know what some of the peers say."
"Cruithne half-breed." Sidonie gave a bitter laugh. "And then they look at you and your pure D'Angeline blood, and they wonder."
"Sidonie." I steered her off the dancing floor. "I swear to you, I have no designs on the throne." On impulse, I dropped to one knee, taking her hand. "Sidonie de la Courcel, Dauphine of Terre d'Ange, in the name of Blessed Elua, I give you my oath of loyalty. For so long as I live, I will uphold your honor as my own and lay down my life in your defense."
She stared at me, lips parted in shock. "Are you mad?"
I grinned at her. "Mayhap. Do you accept my oath?"
"I… yes. All right." She steeled her spine. "I do."
"Good." I rose, then bowed and kissed her hand. "Now I'm going to go get drunk and usher in the Longest Night."
I succeeded in both goals.
At midnight, Night's Crier entered the ballroom, sounding his bronze tocsin. We all fell silent and watched as the vast hall was plunged into near-total darkness. Phèdre had spoken truly; it was an ancient ritual, unchanged since before the coming of Elua. It was all done by players' tricks, but in ancient Hellas the theatre was sacred. We do not forget. I gasped with the others when the false mountain crag in the musicians' grotto split to reveal the Winter Queen hobbling on her blackthorn staff. I cheered with the others when the ballroom doors were flung open to admit the Sun Prince in his chariot. He pointed his gilded spear at the Winter Queen and her rags fell away, revealing a beautiful maiden.
In a rush of oil-soaked wicks, the light returned.
"Oh, Imriel!" Eamonn sounded dazzled. "It's so beautiful!"
"Yes," I said softly. "It is."
I found Phèdre then, and asked her for the first dance of the reborn year. Like light after darkness, she was impossibly beautiful, luminous as a pearl. I held her as close as I dared, and mayhap it was the joie, but it seemed we floated together over the polished parquet, both of us clad in ivory white. People stopped their revelry to watch us, and my heart swelled with pride and love.
"Thank you," I whispered. "Always, for everything."
Phèdre shook her head, the brilliants in her hair scattering myriad points of light. "When darkness shattered our lives, you made them whole, Imri. There is no need for thanks, now or ever." She touched my silken mask with tenderness. "Only be happy. It is all I want for you."
"I am," I said honestly. "Tonight, I am."
And I was. I drank cup after cup of joie, until my mouth felt numb and I was untethered from my being. I danced with a great many women that night, their masked faces swimming in my sight. I do not even remember the last one, only that Mavros and Roshana introduced us, laughing. She must have been from Kusheth. She was an undine; a water-nymph. I remember her drawing me into the shadows of the colonnade. By that time, some of the lamps had been extinguished and the shadows were alive with the half-glimpsed couplings, the heady whispers and gasps of love. I remember her mouth, hot and devouring on mine. I remember struggling with her attire, my hands seeking her smooth flesh beneath layers of frothing silk.
I remember her freeing my erect phallus from the confines of Baldur's tight breeches, and her face above me, gone soft with pleasure behind its mask.
I remember the feel of her buttocks, taut and yielding beneath my urging fingertips.
"Joy!" she gasped. "Oh, yes!"
Holding her braced against a column, I closed my eyes. Behind my lids, I saw too much. It was better open, staring into the face of masked anonymity. "Joy," I echoed, feeling the leap of desire in my loins, as urgent and mindless as a salmon surging upstream. With a vast sense of relief, I spent myself, and shuddered. "Joy."
"Ah, Elua!" With a breathless laugh, my masked companion slipped away from me. I stayed there for a moment, gazing at the lights and revelry, feeling the familiar aftermath of melancholy threaten. I thought about Joscelin, kneeling beneath the frozen stars, and the careless oath I had sworn to Sidonie. And then I pushed away such thoughts, and left the shadows.
So passed the Longest Night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The days following the Midwinter Masque were filled with gossip and hearsay. To be honest, there was little else to do in the City during the dead of winter. I found myself growing weary of it, feeling cooped and cloistered.
The Game of Courtship recovered from whatever blows were dealt it on the Longest Night and continued apace, but I held myself back from it. There were young women I liked well enough among my friends, but it was a tame emotion, fond and easy. I listened to my friends' protestations of heartbreaking passion, and measured them against what I knew of love, which was all at once terrible and wondrous and cruel. I could not imagine any of them surviving what Phèdre and Joscelin had endured.
I could play at pleasure, but not love.
Since it seemed unfair to play the game while my heart wasn't engaged, I didn't. There was pleasure to be found elsewhere. When Eamonn and I weren't continuing our respective studies, we went often to Night's Doorstep, accompanied by Montrève's none-too-reluctant retainers. It was still the fashion for daring young gentry to do so, but we were more welcome than most. There were more Tsingani than ever in Night's Doorstep, and they had not forgotten what Phèdre had done.
I liked it there, as did Eamonn. There was an honesty and a spontaneity present that was lacking in mannered Court life. We sat for hours, talking and arguing over jugs of wine or tankards of ale, joined by folk from all walks of life. And too, Naamah's Servants plied their trade in Night's Doorstep. They were of a less rarefied ilk than the adepts of the Night Court, but they took their calling no less seriously.
The Night Court, alas, was beyond our everyday means. I received an allowance from the proceeds of my estates, but most of that was held in trust until I reached my majority. I daresay Phèdre would have had it increased if I had asked, but I felt awkward. Her father had been a merchant's son, and it was owing to his feckless ways that she came to be sold into indentured servitude in the Night Court. I would sooner cut off my right hand than ask her.
As for Eamonn, he had little concept of money's value. Isolated from the rest of the world for long centuries, Alba's trade remained a fledgling industry; and the Dalriada were not at its forefront. Eamonn had arrived in Terre d'Ange with a purse of newly minted gold coin, and left to his own devices, he would have spent it until it was gone. It was Phèdre who hauled him to meet with her factor, who taught him about banking houses and shrewd investments. Eamonn had sufficient funds to live on, but it was not enough for the luxury of the Night Court.
So we made do.
For as much as I fretted at winter's confines, I dreaded spring's arrival. But as surely as dawn follows dusk, it came. Snow melted in the passes of the CamaelineMountains. In the south, the earth thawed. Dormant plants burst forth with green growth. I celebrated my natality and turned seventeen, one year closer to my majority. Along the western coast of Terre d'Ange, watchers vied for a sight of the Cruarch's flagship.
And Eamonn mac Grainne scented the air and looked toward Tiberium.
I held my tongue for days, then blurted the words. "I wish you wouldn't go."
We were drinking in the Cockerel when I said it. Eamonn was hunched over the table, a foaming tankard dwarfed in his hands. He always seemed too big for his surroundings. His coppery brows knit into a perplexed frown. "Why, Imri? You know it's what I want."
I stared at the table, tracing lines in the scarred wood. "I'll miss you, that's all. What does Tiberium offer that Terre d'Ange doesn't?"
"I don't know," he said peaceably. "That's the point." He blew foam from his tankard and sipped. "I'll miss you, too."
"Not enough," I said darkly.
Eamonn laughed. "Are we friends or lovers?"
I shrugged, picking at the scarred wood with my thumbnail. "You know the answer. You're like a brother to me, Eamonn." I paused. "What I told you in Montrève… I've never told another living soul, except for Phèdre."
"Daršanga," he murmured.
I nodded. "I trust you."
"Imriel." Eamonn covered my hand with his, stilling it. "I will take that trust to my grave, and you know it." His grey-green eyes were wide and earnest. "But you must find your own way in the world, as I must find mine." He shook his head in frustration, words failing him. "This… your friendship is a gift unlooked for. I will treasure it, always. But this thing, I must do it for me."
I clasped his hand, hard. "You won't forget me?"
"Never," he said simply.
This year, Quintilius Rousse timed his return to the City of Elua to coincide with Drustan's arrival. Ten days later, he departed with Eamonn in tow. With the Queen's blessing, the Royal Admiral would escort his unlooked-for Dalriadan son to Tiberium.
We turned out to bid them farewell. Ti-Philippe knew a couple of the City Guard on duty at the Southern Gate, and they let me mount the guard tower. From that vantage point, I watched as the Admiral's party rode toward Marsilikos. Eamonn turned in the saddle, waving. I waved back, watching until they were small in the distance and I could only pick out Eamonn by the gleam of sunlight on his coppery hair. And then they were gone.
It began a moody time for me. Although I had known it, even I failed to fully reckon how much Eamonn's unwavering cheer balanced my own brooding tendencies. My Court friends irritated me with their endless prattle. Night's Doorstep seemed a hollow pleasure without Eamonn's company. By the time we departed the City for Montrève, I was glad to leave.
In Montrève, it was a little better. As I had done before, I sought refuge in physical labor, assisting in the day-to-day business of running the estate. I worked as hard as I had played the previous summer, often laboring from dawn until dusk. It raised a few brows, but the Friote clan welcomed my assistance with good-natured tolerance.
Phèdre worried, I know.
Some weeks into the summer, she called me into her study, regarding me with concerned affection. "I didn't exactly get my Longest Night's wish for you, did I?"