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

"Be quiet, Honore," Cadmar muttered. "The lady doesn't care about that."

"Why not?" I asked, leaning forward and propping my chin on my hands. "I like honey. And I want to hear about Imriel."

"Imriel," Honore sang, bouncing on Joscelin's knee. "Im-ri-el! He made Cadmar angry, because he said he liked Beryl. Cad-mar likes Ber-yl!"

"Be quiet!" The lad flushed red to the roots of his fiery hair.

"Is this real?" Sturdy little Ti-Michel stretched his arms above his head to tug at the hilt of Joscelin's sword. "Can I see it?"

"Hush." Joscelin drew him onto his other knee, holding both of the young ones in place. "I'll show you later, if you like. Michel, what do you know about Imri? Were you there the day he went missing?"

"Ti-Michel came to find me, Lady Phèdre," Beryl interrupted him. "I was with Honore, in one of the lower pastures. We fetched Cadmar, and he and I looked as far as we dared, while the little ones watched the goats. When we couldn't find him, we went back to tell Brother Selbert."

"Did you go past the rockfall?" I asked her.

She paused, then shook her head. "Not then. It's a narrow ledge, and dangerous. There'd been another fall, we couldn't pass. Brother Othon worked to clear it that night."

"Cadmar was scared!" Ti-Michel slid down from Joscelin's knee, forgetting his distress, chin raised in challenge.

"So were you!" the older boy retorted. "You ran for Beryl!"

"Cad-mar was sea-red!" Honore sang, bouncing, then added, "Imri wasn't scared of anything."

"Is that true?" I addressed my question to Beryl.

"No." She gave me a cool look of appraisal. "Of course not. No body's afraid of nothing. But he was brave, for a boy." Her lip curled. "Braver than Cadmar. Imri liked to take risks, to see what would hap pen. And when he got hurt, he never complained. He was afraid, though. He was afraid of anyone seeing him cry."

"One time," Ti-Michel said, "one time I fell in the river, and Imri—"

"Oh, shut up," Cadmar said in disgust. "You could have walked out, if you'd stood up and stopped flailing around. It wasn't so deep."

"Imri taught us how to swim." Honore climbed down from Joscelin's knee and came over to stare into my face, clutching my skirts absentmindedly. "We took all our clothes off. I like to swim. How come you have a red spot in your eye?"

"Because," I said, touching her nose. "I was born with it. Why do you have freckles?"

The child looked cross-eyed at her own visage and giggled.

The words that followed were spoken in a half-whisper. "Mighty Kushiel, of rod and weal, late of the brazen portals, with blood-tipp'd dart a wound unhealed, pricks the eyen of chosen mortals."

I raised my head, looking at Beryl, who had gone pale and defiant.

"I know who you are," she said. "Brother Selbert thinks I'm too young to know, but I'm not. I hear them whisper. They are always whispering, since Imri disappeared. I see the books they study when they think we're not paying attention, the scrolls they hide. I know who you are. Why are you here? Why do you want to know about Imri?"

Joscelin and I exchanged a glance. "Beryl," I said gently. "What I have told you is true. I am the Queen's friend, and she does care about Imriel. If harm had befallen any of Blessed Elua's children, her majesty would want to know how and why. If there is more to it..." I shook my head. "It is not my place to tell you what Brother Selbert will not. You must ask him yourself. But if there is any knowledge you have that would help me to find Imri, I pray you tell me. I promise you, I seek only to aid him."

"No." Her shoulders slumped. "He's just gone! And Elua, Elua did nothing to protect him." A spasm of bitter grief contorted her features. "Brother Selbert says we are all in Elua's hand! Where was Elua when Imri needed him?"

In the silence that followed, Honore began to sob methodically, more upset by Beryl's anger than any true sense of divine injustice. Ti- Michel's lower lip quivered, and Cadmar set his jaw and looked sullen. I had done a poor job of heeding the priest's wishes. Joscelin moved to sit cross-legged on the floor, drawing Honore onto his lap where she soon quieted.

"Beryl," I said. "Elua cannot prevent ill things from happening. He can only give us the courage to face it with love."

"It's not enough!" she cried.

"It is," I said. "It's all we have."

Who was I, to teach theology to the wards of Elua's priesthood? And yet Joscelin had been right. It is a hard truth that lies at the center of faith. I watched Beryl measure that truth against the half-lies and omissions that had surrounded the disappearance of Imriel de la Courcel, and brace herself against it, drawing strength from its acceptance. Slowly, her shoulders squared and she sat a little straighter, fixing me with a direct regard. "And if I pray for him? Do you believe still that Elua will hear my prayers?"

"I do." I said it firmly, as if I had never doubted myself. Whether or not it would aid the missing Imriel, I did believe it would help Beryl.

"Then I will," she said.

Thus, for better or ill, was our encounter with the children of Elua's sanctuary. They were subdued when we took our leave, and I did not think Brother Selbert would be pleased, but there was a spark of new resolve in Beryl's green eyes, and I did not think it was entirely ill- done.

It was not until Joscelin and I were alone in our humble guest- chamber that I gave vent to my own frustrations.

"Name of Elua!" I hurled a down-stuffed pillow at the stone wall. "Brother Selbert, the priesthood, the acolytes, the children . . . they're telling the truth, aren't they?"

"Mm-hrnm." Joscelin prudently moved the oil lamp on the bedside table out of reach of my swirling skirts. I paced the chamber in disre gard.

"They're telling the truth," I said, ticking them off on my fingers, "L'Envers is telling the truth, Melisande's spies . . . Melisande, for love of Kushiel! Melisande is telling the truth. What am I missing, Joscelin? I cannot see the pattern here! Where's the lie? Who are we over looking?"

"La Serenissima?" He fetched the rolled map from our travel-bags, spreading it on the narrow bed. "Selbert took the boy to see Melisande. Someone could have guessed."

"Severio would have told me if he'd gotten wind of it." I pondered the map, tracing a semicircle north of Landras. "If they'd made for Marsilikos, someone would have seen them along the way.”

"Mayhap they didn't." Joscelin traced a ragged route southward. "Mayhap they stuck to the mountains."

"And crossed into Aragonia? L'Envers searched there." I thought about it and shrugged. "We could ride south, and inquire. We'd pass near to Verreuil, Joscelin. We could visit your family."

His eyes shone briefly in the lamplight, then dimmed. "I'd not want to take time from our errand. If we stop anywhere, it ought to be Montrève."

"It's no time to speak of. We'd need to take lodging somewhere." I got up and retrieved the pillow I'd thrown. "And Montrève's not on the way. Verreuil is."

"As you wish." He smiled with unalloyed pleasure, rolling the map.

I was glad I could make someone happy.

SEVENTEEN

WE SAID our farewells to Brother Selbert in the morning, standing in the courtyard."I am sorry," he said, "that we could not give you the answers you sought."

"You have given us what you had, my lord priest." I inclined my head to him. "For that, I am grateful. It may be that the Queen will summon you to discuss your role in Imriel’s disappearance from La Serenissima. I will speak on behalf of your intentions."

Brother Selbert swallowed, his throat moving visibly. "I never meant for the boy to come to harm. I thought ... I thought he could grow up freely in Elua's grace, his spirit untrammeled by the machi nations of politics."

"I know," I said.

"Tell them who he was." Joscelin adjusted the buckles on his vambraces, checking and settling his weapons. "It will help them make sense of it, Brother Selbert. And they should know that not even Elua's grace renders them invulnerable to the ill in men's hearts." He looked up at the priest. "Or the follies of pride."

"I will tell them." Brother Selbert returned his gaze unflinching. "Do not be quick to judge me, Cassiline. Can you claim to know the whole of Elua's will?"

"No," Joscelin said quietly. At the far end of the courtyard, the young acolyte Liliane emerged from the arch of the stableway, craning her head to smile at the morning sun, our mounts and pack-mules trailing after her like ducklings following their mother. "There are mys teries no one can fathom."

"Even so." The priest nodded. "And there are purposes too deep for us to grasp.”

I could have sworn, from the sleek condition of their coats, their renewed reserves of vigor, that our animals had spent a month rather than a day basking in the sunlit paddocks of Elua's sanctuary. My mare frisked like a filly crossing the bridge, dancing and shying at the hollow echo of her hoofbeats on the wooden planks.

"Did you know Liliane was my mother's name?" I asked Joscelin.

"Really?" He looked surprised. "You never told me."

"It was."

So began our wanderings through the mountains of Siovale. We gained the lower pastures, where Beryl and Ti-Michel pointed us toward the rockfall of which they had spoken, a narrow ledge along a chasm, dangerous with overhanging crags. After making our precarious way past the cleared rockfall, we ascended to the further pastures, flat areas where the tall grass grew, perfect for spring grazing and fall harvest. There was nothing to see, but it gave us our starting-point.

We had marked the towns and villages searched on our map, and Brother Othon had left markers of his own along the mountain trails, scratching Elua's sigil onto rocks and trees in areas already combed. He was right; the search had been thorough. For two days, Joscelin and I rode in broadening arcs, keeping a keen eye out for Othon's signs. It reminded me of travelling along the Tsingani routes, searching for chaidrov, the secret markers with which they indicated their passing. We met a few folk along the way, shepherds mostly, who shook their heads, able to tell us nothing.