Emmanuelle was a child made for love’s sake by the previous Lady of Marsilikos, Lorianne Mereliot, and her Shahrizai consort whose passion was to introduce that city to the sharper pleasures. If ever she had a place in the succession of her mother’s duchy it was purely notional: there was only one proper sphere for a little girl who displayed such a preternatural talent for making little boys cry. And so Emmanuelle Mereliot became Emmanuelle Shahrizai.
The Salon de la Rose Sauvage was still in its infancy and an experiment only, lacking in history and cachet. Emmanuelle at the age of ten was dispatched to Mont Nuit as a novice of Mandrake House, with the understanding that one day she’d bring all that skill and prestige home to her father’s house in her mother’s city. This she duly did, returning to Marsilikos at eighteen a fully marqued Mandrake, to serve Naamah in the Salon de la Rose Sauvage whilst pursuing her studies in chirurgy at Terre d’Ange’s finest academy for healers. It was a natural choice for a Mandrake courtesan with Eisandine blood, to put the qualities that made her an outstanding exemplar of her canon — the dexterity, the patience, the already considerable practical as well as theoretical knowledge of human anatomy, the fondness for sharp objects — at Eisheth’s service as well as Naamah’s.
During these years she bore a daughter, named Dorimène, who was fostered at the Dome of the Lady amongst her Mereliot kin until she was accepted into Cereus House.
The latter arrangement was made during one of Emmanuelle’s regular visits to the City of Elua to succour an important patron there, who could never quite let her go. This person shall remain nameless but is understood to be tied to the capital by certain responsibilities.
In 1291, after five years at the Rose Sauvage and the completion of her studies in chirurgy, the 23-year-old Emmanuelle was named Second of the salon. She took her position as seriously as one would expect, and became notorious for how hard she came down on any young Thorn suspected of looking at a Rose the wrong way. Not touching, mind you: just looking could be enough. The especial bee in her bonnet was that the Rose Sauvage’s standards of care for its patrons and their desires, and for the Valerians under their roof and thus their protection, should never for a moment fall beneath that of Mont Nuit itself — should, if possible, exceed it. Theirs was a smaller house: the personal touch could go further and do more.
In 1294 she passed the baton to the best of her fellow Thorns and took a year’s sabbatical from the Rose Sauvage to pay a long visit to Kusheth. She came south again in the new year, with some sort of cousin in tow: a Shahrizai lord who pledged his life to the beautiful Mandrake chirurgeon who’d just saved it after a terrible dueling accident left him bleeding almost to death. He has been somewhere in her vicinity ever since, making puppydog eyes and fetching the tea and doing Kushiel only knows what tricks.
They passed through Elua, en route to Marsilikos and the Rose Sauvage — at least, that was Emmanuelle’s official intention, but somehow she never got farther south than Mandrake House. This could easily be put down to Kusheline ambitions being best sated in the capital.
Later that year she gave birth to her second daughter, Justine; two years later a son followed, Lysander. They are both novices of Mandrake House and share the family vocation.
While other, younger courtesans retired from Naamah's service and went their various ways Emmanuelle remained on Mont Nuit and rose higher up its (metaphorical) slopes, burnishing her reputation as an imaginative, subtle creature with a severe yet boundlessly compassionate nature. Of course she had more confidential assignations than otherwise, as is the way of her canon: there's no telling how many of the great and the good in Terre d'Ange have submitted themselves to her will over the past quarter of a century, or what of their secrets she might hold… Her few unashamed publicly-known patrons are apt to describe her attentions as extraordinarily purifying.
Over time her focus shifted to teaching. She became Mandrake House’s Second, with particular responsibility for training, and then crowned her career with several years as Dowayne.
In 1310, then, the Dowayne of Mandrake House announced her retirement from Naamah’s service. The arrangements were handled with absolute discretion: one day Emmanuelle reigned as usual and the next she’d simply vanished from Mont Nuit, replaced by her carefully-groomed successor without a single ripple in the house’s operations. Mandrakes don’t see why anyone else should know their business.
After an absence from public view somewhat greater than that required simply to travel south from Elua to Eisande, Emmanuelle reappeared in Marsilikos.
It’s no secret among the courtesans of that city and their patrons that Edouard Shahrizai is now well into his sixties and his health isn't what it was. Emmanuelle was absent in Elua when her mother died in 1300, so perhaps it’s understandable that she might wish to keep a filial eye on him during however many years he has left. Many, one hopes.
No doubt old ties and her father’s business will draw her into some sort of arrangement with the Rose Sauvage, but for now she’s simply, for the first time in her life, a lady of leisure.
