Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

Jareth Moran, the Dowayne of Cereus House, tearing at his hair in frustration.
    “If we have sunk four thousand ducats into an apprentice’s marque and training, my lady,” he said carefully, “and he or she is found unfit to serve, we must have a way of recouping our investment! Elsewise we will be bankrupt.”
    “Then choose more wisely, my lord Dowayne,” I said remorselessly, “or have more care with your adepts. For those who are reckoned unfit have no way of recouping their lives.”
    Jareth glared, but made no retort, mindful of my history. I had been a child in Cereus House, reckoned unfit to serve by virtue of the scarlet mote in my eye. It was my lord Anafiel Delaunay who knew it for the sign of Kushiel’s Dart and bought my marque, training me in the Naamah’s Arts as well as the arts of covertcy. And with the gifts of my patrons I earned my freedom, inch by inch, paying the marquist to etch its progress on my skin. For each assignation, I paid, and my marque is complete. It rises from the base of my spine to the nape of my neck, a briar rose wrought in black, accented with drops of crimson.
    If it signifies that I am Naamah’s Servant, it also announces that I am a free D’Angeline, with no debt owing to be possessed by another. It is hard-won, my marque, and I have used the stature I have earned along with it to enact changes. No more were the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court allowed to set marque-prices for children sold into indenture, such as I had been. Now, it was all apprentices, or such children as were born into the Night Court and freely raised therein. Anafiel Delaunay would not be able to buy my marque today as he had when I was ten.
    That was my doing, too, and I reckoned it well-done. For all that my lord Delaunay owned my marque, he had been the first to teach me that it was wrong to treat people as chattel. He did not permit it, in his household. All Naamah’s Servants must enter the bargain of their own accord, but I do not think the choice was made so freely in the Night Court as in Delaunay’s household. Now, it is. The Queen herself, newly a mother when I proposed the reform, backed it wholeheartedly.
    And I do not think the ranks of Naamah’s Servants have dwindled for these measures; indeed, if anything, they have swelled since I rose to prominence.
    “Naamah lay down in the stews of Bhodistan with strangers that Blessed Elua might eat,” said the priestess of the Great Temple of Naamah with considerable amusement. “Not to fatten the wallets of the Dowaynes of the Night Court, my lord Jareth. We find this proposal meet. If an apprentice is reckoned unfit to serve, it is meet that the Dowayne of his or her House provide a means for them to serve out the terms of their indenture in the time allotted. No more, and no less.”
    “You ask us to find employ for persons unfit for Naamah’s Service?” the Dowayne of Bryony House inquired. “It is unreasonable. We do not have the means to serve as a referral agency for failed adepts.”
    “Will you tell me Bryony House cannot find a half a dozen suitable clerkships for a trained apprentice?” I asked cynically; everyone knows the financial acumen with which Bryony’s adepts are instilled. “I am saying that the system of indenture as it exists is imperfect. It allows legal means whereby an apprentice may become a virtual slave to his or her House.”
    There was a silence, at that; D’Angelines like to reckon themselves better than the rest of the world, for we are closer than others to our nation’s begetting. Even the meanest peasant among us can trace his or her ancestry to Elua or one of his Companions, who gave us many gifts. We have not practiced slavery since Blessed Elua trod our soil. Love as thou wilt , he bade us; slavery by its very nature violates his Sacred Precept. And owing a vast debt against one’s marque is almost as bad as being a slave, when one is prevented from receiving patron-gifts.
    I have a