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

The Menekhetan slaver.

"My lord Ramiro speaks the truth," I said to the Captain of the Harbor Watch, speaking Caerdicci, light-headed with anger and despair. "We will have a full accounting. There were three children; three D'Angeline children stolen. Two, we have found. Ask these men: What have they done with the third?"

Vitor Gaitán inclined his head. "It shall be done."

TWENTY-TWO

IT WAS done.It was done in accordance with Aragonian law, which is harsh and exacting. If I had known, at the time, what I was asking, I do not know if I would have had the stomach to ask it.

Count Fernan put the Carthaginians to torture.

And this, too, I made myself witness, for this too, I had caused to be done. It was carried out in the dungeon of the Count's keep, a room of dank stone and iron.

Nicola L'Envers y Aragon accompanied me.

It surprised me, a little; but it was a different thing, to watch a controlled proceeding, than to observe the mayhem in the harbor. May hap she feared to let me observe it alone; mayhap it was only that she had seen the children's condition when we brought them to the Consul's quarters. I do not know. I know only that I was grateful to have her there.

They had names, these men—Mago and Harnapos. First one, and then the other. One was held in chains, while the other was seated on a wooden stool, his ankles in stocks, as two strong men held his arms and the Count's enforcer lowered a burning torch beneath the soles of his bare feet. So did they make their confessions, and a fourth man recorded it all on a waxen tablet, his stylus scratching without cease.

It goes without saying that they screamed, though I will say it anyway. They screamed, as their skin blistered and blackened and split, and the torch sizzled with dripping fluids and the smell of roasting meat filled their cell. It took all the strength of the Count's men to hold Harnapos, the larger of the two, for his chest swelled and his throat corded like iron as he screamed himself raw. I daresay he nearly wrenched his arms from their sockets in his struggle.

My blood beating in my ears, I watched it all in a crimson haze.

Nicola translated for me, her low voice murmuring D'Angeline my only line to sanity. If the words caught in her throat, still, she kept on without faltering, and for that too, I was grateful. I do not think I could have borne it otherwise. For all that I have played at such things throughout my life, in the end, there is little resemblance between the emulation and the reality.

I have known the latter, too. And even I do not care to remember it.

Thus the Carthaginians' story: They had met a man in Carthage, the Menekhetan slaver Fadil Chouma, and fell to drinking pots of beer in a tavern. He told them there were buyers, mysterious buyers with a dire purpose in mind, that there was a fortune to be made for any man who might procure D'Angelines for sale in foreign markets. Mago was mountain-born. He had friends among the Euskerri. He had a map. He had a plan. They would meet in Amílcar.

It was as simple as that.

And Mago and Harnapos had travelled to northern Aragonia, plying on the trade-rights Carthage enjoyed, had evaded the sparse border patrols and gone into the mountains with their map and their plan, crossing into Siovale, picking their prey with cunning. Goat-herds, cow herds, shepherd's children, picking those who would not be missed, those whose loss would be grieved in silence, abducting them in stealth—they used a leathern baton, Harnapos gasped, weighted with lead shot, to strike their victims at the base of the skull. Afterward, quick flight and a careful erasing of tracks, tactics learned from the Euskerri, and tincture of opium to keep the children compliant.

It was here that I interrupted, putting my questions, which Nicola translated, to the Count's enforcer. Where in Siovale? How many chil dren? Where had they been taken? There was a pause, as one of Fernan's men retrieved the map. Mago pointed with a trembling finger, beads of sweat glistening on his face. Here, here and here. Yes, three children, there had been a third. A boy, yes, a flawless child, fierce as a wildcat, with black hair and eyes of blue, the prize of the lot.

And where was the boy now?

Neither wanted to answer, although I think they knew, then, that death was a foregone conclusion. I was unfamiliar with the laws of Aragonia, but I knew to read faces and I saw only death writ in the expressions of Count Fernan's men, and in the grave countenance of Nicola, who was wife to a King's Consul. Still, hope is tenacious, and men will cling to it against overwhelming odds. In the corner, Harnapos whimpered, rattling his chains. Mago slumped on the stool, sweat- streaked and panting, raising his head to meet my eyes.

He was a man, only a man, thoughtlessly cruel and greedy, reduced by his folly to abject pain, his ruined feet useless as lumps of tallow. Caught in the net of Kushiel’s justice, he had walked into it of his own accord. And yet I had been in such a place, once, a terrible prison of stone, where humanity was stripped away by madness. Despite it all, despite his guilt, there was a spark of kinship between us.

One victim knows another.

What will you give me, his desperate gaze begged me, for the answers you seek? He did not speak my tongue, but he knew; he had heard my voice ask the questions.

I felt the presence of Kushiel, bronze wings buffeting—the Punisher of God, wielder of the rod and flail, despised, irresistible; ah, Elua! It was a storm in my head. Through the blood-haze that veiled my eyes, I saw the Count's enforcer nod, the men take Mago's arms, the torch lowered to his feet.

"Wait!" The word emerged harsh; I had spoken in Caerdicci unthink ing. The Count's men knew it, and paused. "A clean death," I said, drawing a racking breath. "A clean death, if he answers it honestly."

It was all I had to give, and at that, not mine to offer. The Count's enforcer looked at Nicola. To her credit, she never paused, lifting her chin imperiously, addressing him in Aragonian. "The Comtesse of Montrève, favored of her majesty Ysandre de la Courcel, the Queen of Terre d'Ange, has spoken. The King's Consul of the House of Aragon concurs. Let it be so."

Mago exhaled, a long shuddering breath; the self-same breath, it seemed to me, that I had drawn. His hands, pinned by the Count's men, clenched and unclenched. Only a man, after all. I had no knowledge of his life, his history, the exigencies of a harsh lot that had driven him, had driven Harnapos, to commit such a vile act. His head fell forward, accepting the bargain. In a broken whisper, he told the rest of his tale.

Folly, nothing but folly. Although the Tsingani had refused them, they had procured a wagon in the end, smuggling the sedated children into Amílcar beneath the careless eyes of the Harbor Watch, who gave a cursory probe into the goods they carried. Thence to port, and the meet ing ordained—the rest was but Menekhetan treachery, smooth-tongued Fadil Chouma and a ship bound for Iskandria claiming their agreement had been for autumn, not spring. He would arrange for buyers on the other end, yes, but it was a matter of some delicacy, they must understand. D'Angeline blood will out, and Terre d'Ange notoriously ferocious in its persecution of slavers, of course . . . Menekhet is far, but Khebbel-im-Akkad holds much sway, and the Khalif s son wed to the Queen's own kinswoman . . . perhaps he might take the one, yes, that one, peerless, that face . . . aiyee! And fierce, too, stronger than he looks, but Fadil Chouma had a buyer in mind; one, only one, mind, seeking somewhat special. . . another draught of opium, perhaps? Yes, a buyer in mind, and one fit to tame a mountain hellion, no, no names . . .

So much did I gather, piecing Mago's story together, leaving me sick with despair. "And you've no idea the buyer's name? The buyer in Iskandria?"

He didn't, nor did Harnapos. The Count's enforcer made sure of it, applying the flames over my protest. As much as they screamed and writhed, they knew no more; only that the Menekhetan had paid the purchase-price for the boy, less than they had agreed, promising to return in the fall for the other two if this deal went as planned, and meanwhile Mago and Harnapos left to care for a steadily weakening pair of D'Angeline children, keeping them hidden, keeping them silent, using the dwindling reserves of their money to buy lodgings, food, the opium that kept them sedated. No, they swore, both of them in extremis, they had left the children unmolested and intact, they were not such fools as to damage valuable merchandise, nor had they beaten them, no, not unduly, only enough to make them mind . . .

"Enough." I pressed my fingers to my aching temples. "It is enough. Let them give what information they may regarding Fadil Chouma and the arrangements for his return. I have no more questions."

Nicola spoke to the Count's enforcer, and I made no effort to follow the conversation. Kushiel's presence had faded, and I felt hollow, tired to the bone and ill with what I had seen. "It will be done," Nicola said to me when she had finished. Her voice was steady, lending me strength. "Fernan's clerk will see that you receive a full transcription of the account."

"Thank you," I murmured. "And the Carthaginians?"

"Execution at dawn. It will be public," she said, "but swift."

I nodded, and looked one last time at the men in the cell. "Then let us go."

Outside, evening sunlight gilded the Plaza del Rey. The fading blue sky seemed a vast openness, the salt tang of the harbor mingling with the fresh cool breeze from the north. Nicola shuddered, filling her lungs with clean air. "Elua! I'll not need to see the likes of that again soon.”

"No," I said. "Nor I."

"It's a long way from playing with silken ropes and deerskin flog gers," she mused. An involuntary shiver ran over my skin and I closed my eyes briefly, opening them to find Nicola regarding me. "Even after that, Phèdre?" she asked simply.

"Always." I gritted my teeth. "Always."

"Ah." For a moment, she continued to look at me, our escort of Lord Ramiro's men waiting at a polite distance. "Somehow, I under stand a little better now why you chose to fix your heart on that damned Cassiline."

Unexpectedly, it made me smile. "It wasn't a question of choice."