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"There are some, my lord." I felt like a child next to him; my head came no higher than the pit of his arm. "Didimus Pontus at the University of Tiberium translated Skaldic phonetically into the Caerdicci alphabet some forty years ago," I added.

I felt his gaze from above. "Truly?" he asked, startled. "I’ll have to find those. Gunter did not say you were a scholar, Fay-dra. A witch, perhaps. It is beyond them to understand more."

"I am a slave, my lord," I murmured. "Nothing more."

"You are a very well-trained slave." I thought he might say somewhat more, but his pointing finger moved over the books, "Have you read this? It is a D’Angeline book."

It was a Caerdicci translation of the Trois Milles Joies; I might have wept. I had read it under Cecilie’s tutelage, of course. It is one of the great erotic texts, and required reading for every adept of the Night Court. "Yes, my lord," I said. "I have studied this book."

"Ahhh." He shuddered with the force of his sigh, plucking the book out from the shelf and smoothing the cover. "I learned Caerdicci from this book," he said, eyes bright with amusement and desire. "My tutor was a grizzled old Tiberian mercenary who had a fancy to see the northlands. I bribed him to stay here and teach me, when I was nineteen years old. It was the only book he had. He said it kept him company on cold nights." His long fingers stroked the cover. "I paid dear to keep it. But I have never found a woman who knew of such things." He set the book down and tipped my face upward. "You do."

"Yes, my lord," I whispered, helpless under his touch and hating him. Still he did not act, but searched my face with his gaze.

"Gunter says you are gifted by your gods so that any man must please you," he said. "That it is marked upon your eyes. Is this so?"

I could have lied to him, but some spark of defiance made me answer the truth. "I am marked by the gods to be pleased by suffering," I said softly. "That, and no more."

He touched my face with surprising delicacy, running the tip of one finger over my lower lip, watching intently as I drew in my breath sharply and my pulse grew faster, the inevitable tide of desire rising. "But I am causing you no suffering," he said gently. "And I see you are pleased."

"Does my lord say so?" I closed my eyes, willing my voice to be steady. "I am a free D’Angeline enslaved. Do not speak to me of suffering."

"I will speak to you as I please." He said it matter-of-factly, not intending to hurt. It was a simple truth. Releasing me, he tapped the book he had set upon his desk. I opened my eyes to look at him. "I would know what it is to be served by one trained to please Kings in this manner. You will begin on page one."

Bowing my head, I knelt in obeisance.

That is how one begins.

In the morning, Waldemar Selig had a sleek, satisfied look about him. There were the inevitable murmurs and jests, which I ignored. Joscelin took one look at my shadowed eyes and asked no questions, for which I was grateful.

I had pleased him, at least; that much was sure. Unlike Gunter, his ardors were not untutored, at least in his mind. Waldemar Selig had had a dozen years or more to pore over the finer points of D’Angeline love-making. He hungered for sophistication that Gunter never dreamed existed.

Selig had been married once; I didn’t know it then, but learned it later. From what I gathered, she’d been nigh a match for him too, a quicktempered and passionate Suevi chieftain’s daughter. He used to read some of the Trots Milles Joies aloud to her, and they would experiment together, laughing and falling over one another in his great bed. But she got quickly with child, and it was a breech birth; the child lived only a day, and she took septic and died.

Perhaps he would not have been driven to conquest, had she lived. Who can know such things? It is my observation, though, that happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others. I like to think it might have been so.

Despite the pervasive aftermath of too much mead, the Skaldi encampments were beginning to break up that day. Waldemar Selig rode hither and thither, speaking to one and all. He cut a splendid figure atop a tall dark-bay horse, gold gleaming on the fillet that bound his hair and the tips of his forked beard. I don’t deny him that. Clear-eyed from having abstained from overindulgence, he went efficiently about his business, arranging for the swiftest rider from each steading to stay encamped, setting in place a network of communications.