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

TWENTY-ONE

In AN hour's time, I told the story all over again to the King's Consul, Nicola's husband.Ramiro Zornín de Aragon was a minor lordling of the House of Aragon, and a drunkard in the bargain. For all of that, I rather liked the man. He was good-natured and harmless, and capable of flashes of passion when prodded to it.

The rumor of Carthaginian slave-traders in Amílcar did just that.

I have no doubt Nicola would have urged him had it been necessary, but Lord Ramiro needed no prompting. Whether he liked a life of ease or no, he knew full well where his country's alliances lay, and knew too that his wife was cousin to the Queen of Terre d'Ange and his sons—two boys whom I never met—were half-D'Angeline themselves. By the time I'd finished the tale, he was already shouting for Count Fernan and the Captain of the Harbor Watch to be summoned.

It was rare, I gathered, for Ramiro to exercise the full authority of his role as King's Consul. He did it now, his narrow cheeks flushed with emotion, brown spaniel's eyes alight. Nicola watched him with affectionate pride; it had surprised me, when I first met him, that there was genuine fondness between them. In Terre d'Ange, she had spoken only of his shortcomings, but the bond went deeper than I had reckoned. Nicola was D'Angeline, after all, and no matter what the politics involved, none of Elua's children were likely to linger overlong in a loveless union.

And love takes many forms.

We had a hasty meal before the Count and his Captain of the Watch arrived, and then Fernan was there, black-bearded and broad- shouldered, slow to ire, but clearly unhappy at being summoned thusly by a man he regarded as the King's tame Consul. I saw him rethink the wisdom of it upon being introduced to me, and twice-over to meet Joscelin and Luc, the sons of Verreuil. Joscelin's cool Cassiline bow, crossed vambraces flashing, would have given pause to any man of sense, and Luc . . . bless his Siovalese heart, was an earnest specimen of all that is good and true in the old lines of D'Angeline country nobledom, with his wide-set blue eyes and his father's courtesies on his lips in hard-learned Aragonian.

In time, between us, we roused the Count to full-blown anger. It took some doing, for he was a large man and stolid with it, secure in his holdings and misliking this sudden insistence on the part of the King's Consul. But he was a proud man, too, and the implications of our news cut him to the quick.

"Carthaginians," Count Fernan rumbled, switching to Caerdicci, a tongue we all held in common. "What do you say, Captain Vitor? Do we harbor Carthaginian slavers in Amílcar?"

Vitor Gaitán, Captain of the Harbor Watch, shrugged his shoulders. He was a lean man, with cheeks pitted by a childhood pox. "The lady's Tsingani may say so, but Tsingani lie. Give me your leave, my lord Count, and I will tell you ere daybreak."

"My leave." Count Fernan pounded one massive fist on the table. "My leave! By Mithra, you have my leave to turn Amílcar upside down!"

So it was done.

We rode out, that night, to see it done. Nicola, reckoning it folly to observe the rude proceedings, would have no part in it—and I did not blame her. It was an unpleasant business. Still, I had set it in motion, and I felt I should bear witness to it. Let us see, I thought grimly, how much bitter truth there is in the words of the lady's Tsingani; mayhap the Aragonians will not be so quick to condemn Hyacinthe's folk one day. We went with Lord Ramiro and an escort of his guards, as well as Jean-Richarde and Donan, the men-at-arms of Verreuil.

It was a night streaked with torchlight and steel, the air filled with the tang of salt water and the protests of desperate men. Captain Vitor's troops were ungentle, travelling in mass, rousting ship after ship in the harbor, turning out the inhabitants of dockside inns and flophouses and putting them to question at sword's-point.

I sat astride my steady mare, shuddering as three members of the Harbor Watch took to clubbing a poor Carthaginian sailor about the head and shoulders with the pommels of their swords on suspicion of lying. "My lady!" he shouted with a blood-reddened mouth, catching sight of me. "Gracious lady, I cry you mercy!"

Would that I had not understood the pidgin Aragonian he spoke— but I did. My ear was good enough for that. I turned my head and looked away, murmuring to Lord Ramiro, "Can they not question him more gently?"

To his credit, the King's Consul looked ill, though not so ill as Luc. "I've invoked Count Fernan's aid, Comtesse. I must let him pro ceed as he sees fit." He raised a silver flask and took a healthy swig of brandy, then passed it to me. "Here. It helps."

So we watched, and the methods of Captain Vitor and the Harbor Watch, brutal though they were, proved effective. One rumor, gasped from a split-lipped Carthaginian mouth, led to another. Under duress, an unspoken code of silence crumbled. Members of the Watch con verged from every vector, bearing blood-stained scraps of gossip and hearsay. There was a man—no, two men, or three—who rented lodg ings in the mean alleys, Carthaginians, yes, of a surety, eking out rent in copper coins, known to have met with the Menekhetan slaver Fadil Chouma, yes, known to buy opium in significant amounts . . .

Among all of us, I daresay it was Joscelin who bore the investigation with the most composure. While I averted my eyes and Luc leaned over his mount, retching, and the men of Verreuil breathed hard and grew pale, and Lord Ramiro gulped at his flask, Joscelin's features were set with Cassiline stoicism.

I had seen him look thus in the early days, when he escorted me to assignations.

By the time dawn broke sullen and grey, the smiling dolphins breaching in the harbor, blowing spume from their blowholes, Captain Vitor Gaitán had his answer. He grinned like a wolf as he led his men through the twisting alleys, his eyes gleaming above his pock-marked cheeks. A blowsy woman emerged on a second-story balcony, shrieking protests and imprecations as his men lent their shoulders to the door below. The Harbor Watch ignored her, heaving to with all their muscle. The lock burst, flimsy wood splintering around it.

We sat our mounts in the alley, watching as two Carthaginian men were shoved out into the grey light of dawn, blinking with shock and dishevelment, shackled half-unawares. Captain Vitor strode toward us.

"My lord," he said in Aragonian, bowing to Ramiro. "My lady.”

He turned to me, and I saw in his fierce, pitted face a father's fury. "You will want to see this."

Needing no translation, I slid down from my mount, Joscelin an unthinking half-step behind me, following with his hands on his daggers as I raised my skirts and stepped across the threshold.

Inside, it was dark, and stank of cabbage and near-spoiled meat. There was a table and chairs, a few personal effects in the front room, an empty jug of wine tipped on its side. A member of the Harbor Watch sidled past me, a torch raised high. I saw the back room it illuminated, shrouded in darkness, reeking like a kennel. Two pairs of eyes, low to the ground, reflected the torchlight. I gasped, unable to help myself.

They were children, two of them, their fine-boned features marking them clearly as D'Angeline. A boy and a girl, ten or twelve at most. They clung to one another, scrabbling in the urine-fouled straw given them for bedding, pale-skinned with lack of sun, the irises of their eyes swallowed in the vast, dilated blackness of their pupils.

Behind me, I heard Joscelin utter a curse like it was a prayer.

Ignoring him, I knelt slowly, letting the skirts of my riding gown fall heedless over the filthy straw. "Agnette Écot?" I asked softly, keep ing my gaze on the girl's face. I had seen, in her hollow eyes, her hungry cheekbones, an echo of the dairy-crofter's wife.

Pushing herself into the corner as hard as she dared, the girl nodded slowly; once, twice. Yes. The boy, younger, sought to press himself behind her, ducking his head, a tangle of hair like autumn oak-leaves falling over his brow.

Whoever he was, he was not Imriel de la Courcel.

"Agnette," I said in steady D'Angeline. "My name is Phèdre. I was sent to find you. These men are your friends." Sitting on my heels, I extended one hand to her. "You're safe now. Will you come out?"

A pause, then a flurry in the shadows, two heads shaking, lank hair flying, scrambling fear and mistrust. Joscelin took a step past me, squat ting in the straw, the torchlight gleaming red on his polished vambraces. "Do you see these? No one will harm you further," he said, his voice flat and dispassionate. "In Cassiel's name, I swear it on pain of death."

With a sound like a sob, Agnette Écot flung herself at him, burying her face against his chest, slender limbs clinging to him monkeylike. Joscelin rose, straightening, with the girl in his arms, his head brushing the low rafters as he carried her out.

"Come," I said to the strange boy, my heart breaking at his wide eyed terror at being left behind. He took my hand in a death-grip, letting me lead him from the Carthaginians' lodgings. No sooner had we reached the grey dawn-light of the alley than Luc stepped forth, his face haggard and drawn, and the boy fixed on him with a wordless cry, catching him about the waist, seeing somewhat he recognized in his kind, Siovalese features.

I stood in the street, my arms empty.

"So." Captain Vitor Gaitán sat his own mount, looking down at me. His men had the Carthaginians well in tow. "It is done. You have the children." He spoke Caerdicci with a sibilant Aragonian accent. "And the Count. . ." his gaze flicked toward Lord Ramiro, ". . . has his answer."

"An answer." Ramiro Zornín de Aragon drew up his cloak and his dignity. "We will not rest until we have a full accounting of how this came to pass."

Three children. The Tsingani had seen three. I met Joscelin's eyes, above the head of the girl he carried. "Agnette," I said gently, brushing her tangled locks. "Was there another? Was there a third with you, another boy?"

She muttered fitfully, turning her head. It was the other who an swered, the other boy, whimpering in Luc's comforting arms. "Imri!" he whispered, jerking restlessly. "Imri!"

One of the Carthaginian prisoners said somewhat to the other, who laughed harshly, spitting on the packed earth of the alley. Although I did not understand the words, I heard the name Fadil Chouma spoken.