Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3)

"When he turned eight." Brother Selbert nodded. "The Lady Mel isande wished to see him. I swear to you, I protected his identity to the fullest of my ability. If anyone learned it, it was not through my carelessness."

"Huh." I was hard-put to imagine it was through Melisande's; and yet she had taken a risk, having him brought to her. A risk, I thought, that she had not seen fit to mention. "What about the boy? Did he know?"

"No." The priest's denial was firm. "Imri believed himself an or phan, that his parents had died of a Serenissiman ague aboard the ship that brought me home to Terre d'Ange, and bequeathed him to me as a ward of the sanctuary. No one ever had cause to doubt it."

"No one would doubt the word of a priest," I said. "Melisande counted on as much. She used you to her own ends, Brother Selbert."

"So she believed," he murmured. "And I, I believed Blessed Elua used me to his. Mayhap I was a fool. If so, I am punished for it now."

"Did Imriel not think it strange to meet his mother in La Serenissima ?" I asked him.

"He never knew." Brother Selbert shook his head. "He was told she had been a wealthy noblewoman, a friend of his parents, who would stand as his patron when he grew to manhood."

"Still," Joscelin observed, breaking his silence. "He would boast of it. He was a boy! You lied to your colleagues, brought him to La Serenissima, and introduced him to this, this fantastic patron . . . what did you do, my lord priest? Bid him keep it a secret? A boy of eight? You may be sure of it, he told his friends the minute you returned."

"Not Imri." The priest smiled his enigmatic smile. "You didn't know him, Messire Verreuil! He believed the lady he met would be in danger if he breathed a word of it, and true enough it was. Ah, no." He shook his head again, his long braid stirring. "Imri would have gone to his grave with it, after that. Eight or no, he had that, that ..." he searched for a term, "that streak of rash nobility which is the heritage of House Courcel."

I thought of Ysandre de la Courcel riding between two narrow ranks of the Unforgiven, parting the rebellious army of the Duc de Somerville, her chin raised, eyes fixed on the City of Elua. I knew what he meant. "And if he had half his mother's wits, my lord priest, he would have guessed his patron's identity."

"He might have," Brother Selbert allowed, "if he had known the story. But we had not yet reached current histories in our studies, and I was careful to keep that knowledge from him."

So the boy had truly grown up unfettered and free, believing himself a true orphan, Elua's child, attuned only to the gentle rhythms of life and worship within this sheltered valley. I sighed. Somehow it made my task all the more poignant. "When would you have told him?"

"Sixteen." The priest watched me. "That was the age on which we had agreed."

Sixteen. It seemed a long way off. "Brother Selbert," I said, gath ering my thoughts. "I am sorry to put you through this once more, but if I might speak to the other clergy and your wards—most especially the children—it would be helpful."

"Yes, of course." He rose, smoothing his robes, then hesitated. "You never said if it was the Queen who sent you."

"The Queen," I said, "is aware of my visit. But, no. It was Melisande."

SIXTEEN

THE shadows in the valley grew long, we watched the chil dren herd the goats down from the mountain. Once, there had been five; now, only four. They travelled in pairs, a brown-robed acolyte with both groups as they emerged from invisible plateaus to converge upon the narrow trail. Their voices rose clear and high-pitched in the thin air. The shaggy goats, brown and white with bells strung about their necks, wound their way down the track, picking their way surely on cloven hooves while the children scrambled behind, scarcely less agile. They fanned out as they reached bottom, long sticks in hand, prodding and deftly herding their charges across the wooden bridge that arched over the river. The acolytes followed behind at a slower pace, serene and watchful."And this is how it was the day Imriel disappeared?" I asked Brother Selbert.

"No," he said quietly. "Not entirely. We let the children go on their own, then, and the older ones might go alone, if they wished, to seek higher pasturage. Now, we forbid them to leave one another's sight, and an acolyte travels always with each group."

I raised my eyebrows. "Imriel would have been considered one of the older children?"

The priest's high, austere cheekbones flushed with color. "He . . . not exactly. But he was impulsive. Cadmar and Beryl are the eldest."

I picked them out by sight as they eased the milling goats into their paddock. A tall lad with hair that shone like flame in the slanting sun light, and a dark-haired girl garlanded with flowers. The other two were younger, a boy and a girl who looked to be about the ages of Ysandre's daughters.

"Treat them gently, my lady Phèdre," Brother Selbert said. "Imri's disappearance frightened them badly, all the more so when Melisande's men came asking harsh questions." He watched gravely as they filed inside the sanctuary walls, laughing and chattering. "You see Honore," he said, pointing to the youngest girl, no more than six. "For a month, she refused to tend to the goats, for fear that whatever took Imriel would take her. And Cadmar... he puts on a brave face, but he will go near neither cave nor crag, staying only to the center of the trail. Ti-Michel has only just stopped waking in the middle of the night, crying for Imri, and Beryl, ah." He sighed. "Beryl blames Elua for letting it happen. I worry about her the most."

"You should tell them," Joscelin said shortly. "Tell them the truth. Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean."

"Mayhap you have the right of it, Cassiel's servant," the priest murmured. "I will think on it. Come, we will assemble for dinner."

In the Sanctuary of Elua, meals were a common affair, held in the great hall with its high stone arches. It was simple fare, but good—a pottage of lentils and onions, stewed greens and fish caught fresh in the river, with brown bread smeared with sharp goat's-milk cheese. The acolytes, of whom there were half a dozen, took turns at cooking and whatever chores were needful. Brother Selbert dined at a table with eight others, priests and priestesses alike, ranging from an elderly woman with a face so kind it made one ache to lay one's head in her lap to a young man whose vows had scarce left his lips.

Throughout the course of the evening, I spoke to all of them, and learned nothing of merit. I learned that Imriel had been a beautiful child, with blue-black hair and skin like ivory, eyes a deep and starry blue; his mother's son, though no one put the words to it. I learned he had been proud and kind and a little wild. I heard the story of his disappearance a dozen times over, and while the details varied slightly in the telling, the events remained unchanged. If their stories had been identical, I would have been suspicious. So it had been, when I had questioned the missing guardsmen of Troyes-le-Mont, who had concealed the fearful secret that Percy de Somerville had helped Melisande escape from that fortress. Ten years ago, in La Serenissima, the sameness of their story had given the lie to it. Here, it was obvious the denizens of the sanctuary were telling the unhappy truth.

From Brother Othon, the young priest, I learned how they had searched the mountains for days on end, finding no trace of the boy. Born and bred to Landras village, he had led the search himself, and his grief at his failure was writ clear on his features.

"How certain are you, Brother Othon?" Joscelin asked him in a gentle tone. "I do not fault your diligence, but the mountains are vast. I am Siovalese myself, and I know there are nooks and crannies of my childhood home of Verreuil that not even my brother Luc and I man aged to explore."

"It is possible." The priest turned his failure-haunted gaze on him. "It is always possible. I still search, thinking to find his body lodged in some crevice where the lingering snows of spring have retreated at last, hoping to find him. But if he went of his own accord ..." He shook his head. "He may have gone for days before harm befell him. We were slow in widening our search, sure that he was near. I cannot say."

And so I listened, and grew no wiser. They knew who we were, of course, priests and acolytes alike. I saw it in the sidelong glances, heard it in the hushed murmurs when they thought I was not listening. They are learned folk, Elua's priesthood; they knew well enough that Phèdre nó Delaunay was Kushiel's Chosen, the Queen's confidante. If they had not known before that their Imri was Imriel de la Courcel, son of Melisande Shahrizai, I daresay most of them had guessed it by now. But here, in Elua's sanctuary, no one spoke of it. And that, I thought, was wrong. Their silence was a canker of omission, blighting the serenity of this sacred place.

The only exception was the young acolyte Liliane, whose sweet smile fell like sunlight on all it touched; Liliane, and the children. I spoke to the latter after we had dined, when the wards of the sanctuary would have taken their studies in the library halls.

"The Lady Phèdre and her consort Joscelin want to hear about Imri," was all Brother Selbert told them before leaving us alone.

"Why?" the lad Cadmar asked bluntly when he had left, eyeing me with all the dour suspicion of his twelve years. "Who are you?"

"I am a friend of the Queen's," I said.

"The Queen cares what happened to Imri?" It was the girl Beryl who spoke, her voice sharp with disbelief. I looked gravely at her. She was the eldest among them by a year, budding into young womanhood, with black hair as fine and straight as silk, the tender beginnings of breasts and green eyes that held only scorn. I wondered if she was Brother Selbert's get. It was not uncommon for priest's children to end as wards of their sanctuary.

"Yes," I said. "She does."

The child Honore had clambered onto Joscelin's knee. He held her loosely, looking amused; I swear, I do not know why children adore him so. Most adults have the sense to find him distant and off-putting. "Imri taught me to climb trees," Honore announced, settling herself with a proprietary bounce. "He got me honey after Beryl told him not to. He was stung seventeen times and Sister Philippa put mud all over him."