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

Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3) Page 25

"No one knows mountains like the Euskerri," Mahieu observed, raking his forelock back from his brow. "And they're cunning enough to throw us off the scent by abducting a second child." Like his sister, he was of a scholarly bent, well versed in the history of the area.

"No." She frowned. "The Queen would have heard by now. Tsingani, mayhap. I've read accounts of D'Angeline children being stolen by Tsingani. Elua knows, there are enough of them that travel the passes between here and Aragonia. Tinkers and horse-traders, they say, but who knows what they might hide in those wagons?"

"No." The sharpness of my own voice surprised me. I sighed, apol ogizing. "My lady Jehane, forgive me. But it is not Tsingani."

"As you say, Comtesse." Jehane looked at me with composed in terest. "Near-sister, I should say. I must confess, you're not what I expected."

"Oh?" I raised my brows.

"No." A corner of her mouth curved in the familiar hint of a smile. "I expected a keen wit and a strong will. Joscelin wouldn't have fallen for less. And I know what you are. Still, I didn't expect you to ride out of the backlands of Siovale looking like one of the more delicate blossoms in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers."

I flushed. Jehane laughed.

"Jehane!" Her father, already closeted with Luc and Joscelin, laying his plans for the search, turned to give her a look of reproach. "Be courteous."

She merely smiled, rose and stooped to kiss his cheek before turning back to me. "They'll be at it for hours. Shall I show you to your quarters? You look as though you wouldn't mind a rest before dinner. With your permission, Mother," she added.

"By all means." The Lady Ges, abstracted, gestured with one hand, counting on the other. "I'll be busy till nightfall trying to figure out how the larder's to provision this undertaking."

I followed Jehane through the rambling corridors of Verreuil to the rooms in which Joscelin and I had stayed before when we visited, clean and airy, with massive timbers supporting the ceiling and a window that looked out onto the mountains. It held, touchingly, some few items of Joscelin's childhood—a Caerdicci primer with a cracked binding, a book of verse by the warrior-poet Martin Leger, a child's miniature hunting-horn. Jehane lingered, picking up the horn and examining it.

"I gave this to him," she murmured. "For his ninth birthday. I had to beg the money from Luc to do it. I knew he'd only have a year to use it, before he was sent to the Cassilines. Does he speak of his time there?”

I sat down on the bed. "Not often."

"I missed him the most, I think." Jehane set down the horn. "Ma-hieu was too young, and Luc . . . Luc never said it, but I think he was glad it wasn't him. You know Father was furious that Joscelin broke his vows for you? It nearly killed him, when he learned Joscelin had been convicted in absentia for the murder of your lord Delaunay. He didn't believe it, but it nearly killed him all the same."

Joscelin and I had been enslaved in Skaldia when that had happened, betrayed by Melisande Shahrizai, though no one could have known it. It had been the logical conclusion, I suppose, when Anafiel Delaunay and his apprentice Alcuin were found slain in their home, while Delaunay's anguissette and her Cassiline guard had vanished. I remember how it grieved Joscelin, on the eve of battle, to think his father might have believed it. "I guessed as much," I said. "But he never said it to my face. He was always courteous."

"Courteous." She pulled a wry look. "Yes. Father is that. Well, he had the sense to realize that fate will out in the end, after Troyes-le- Mont. Mother was glad, though. She always mourned losing her middle son to the Cassilines." Jehane cocked her head at me. "You do love him, don't you?"

"Yes." I nodded. "More than I can say."

"Good." She dusted her hands, then wiped them on her skirt. "Keep him safe, will you?" She gave a self-conscious laugh. "It sounds foolish, I know. He with a sword at his back and daggers at his belt, knowing more ways to use them than I can count, and you . . . well. But he was my younger brother, once, and he's given his heart into your hands."

"I understand, my lady."

Jehane left, then, and I lay down on the bed. She was right, I was weary; more weary than I had known. Of a surety, travel takes its toll, but this was a weariness of the soul more than the body. The crofter's revelation had dealt me a blow. In all my careful efforts to unravel the mystery of Imriel's disappearance, it had never occurred to me that it could prove out to be a senseless crime. It was the last, the very last, thing I had expected; that anyone might have expected. All my wits, all my second-guessing and plotting, went to naught. Now it fell to Millard Verreuil and his compatriots to search out the truth by might of numbers and main force. If I was relieved to be free of the burden of responsibility—and I was—still, it left me feeling bereft and directionless, and very, very tired.

So thinking, I drifted into sleep and did not wake until someone shook me. I opened my eyes to find slanting gold rays of sunset filling the room and Joscelin seated on the edge of the bed, smiling down at me.

"You're not going to sleep through dinner, are you?" he asked. "I wouldn't blame you if you did—it's seven kinds of mayhem down there—but there are a few members of the family would be mortally disappointed."

"No." I yawned and sat up. "I'm coming."

Joscelin hadn't exaggerated. The dining-hall of Verreuil was nigh overflowing, full not only with his considerable family and their offspring, but the estate's eight men-at-arms and almost a dozen others, crofters and shepherd's sons in plainspun clothing, seated elbow to el bow with the minor nobility of Siovale. Millard Verreuil had wasted no time and stood on no ceremony. For all his formal courtesy, he was an egalitarian at heart.

All the talk was of the expedition to be launched in the morning. Yvonne had already departed with a delegation to the Marquis de Toluard, begging his assistance. Mahieu and Jehane had been busy in the library, gridding the region to be searched and copying maps, recruiting a number of the older children to aid in the endeavor. The Lady Ges and Marie-Louise had spent the afternoon supervising the harried kitchen staff, assembling packets of provisions for each of the parties. Small wonder, I thought, that dinner appeared to have been cooked in haste, the mutton roast charred without and rather too red on the inside.

Still, no one seemed to mind. I picked at my food and let the conversation wash over me, being gracious to those around me and ignoring covert stares from the newcomers. Jehane's sons begged per mission to accompany one of the parties and were granted it; Luc's eldest daughter begged the same, and was sharply denied, for which I was glad. The lads were fourteen and fifteen, old enough to fend for themselves. The girl was scarcely ten.

"We'll leave at dawn," Joscelin said to me, his voice pitched below the clamor. "Mahieu and Jehane have established rendezvous points for the parties to meet on the third day, so if anyone's learned anything, we can proceed from there. Either way, we'll send a runner back to the manor. There ought to be word from the Marquis by then, and you'll be kept informed here."

"What?" I stared at him. "Are you mad? I'm going with you."

"Phèdre." His face hardened, white lines forming alongside his nose. "No. You'd only slow us down." He held up one hand, forestalling my outburst. "Listen, these men are born and bred to the mountains, and they know how to travel quickly and surely. I'm not even leading a group, I'm travelling with Reynard's party because I don't know the territory as well, I've been away too long. And you . . . you're staying at Verreuil."

"Slow you down?" I asked incredulously. "Joscelin, I crossed the Camaelines in the dead of winter with you!"

"Yes." His voice was taut and low. "Because we had to. This is different. Name of Elua, Phèdre! I don't have that many chances to keep you out of unnecessary danger. Won't you let me take this one?"

I opened my mouth to retort, and remembered Jehane, reminding me that I held her brother's heart in my hands. I sighed. Joscelin was right; there was no real reason for me to accompany them. If I wouldn't slow them down—and I might, a bit, it was true that he was better in the mountains than I—I wouldn't contribute much either. "All right," I said, giving way with ill grace. "I'll stay."

"Thank you," he said, meaning it.

NINETEEN

MORNING DAWNED fair and bright over the mountains of Siovale, although the manor was awake and bustling long before. I felt displaced and underfoot with no role to perform. Joscelin was in the stables with Mahieu, seeing that all was readiness. Wandering down to the kitchens, I found Marie-Louise staggering toward the dining-hall with an immense pot of porridge."Here," I said, reaching for it. "I'll take that."

"Are you sure?" She rolled her eyes. "It would be a help. We've got every hand in there cooking, and no one to serve at breakfast. Mind, it's heavy."

"I've got it." I cradled the pot in my left arm, settling it on my hip. I learned how to serve at the table before I left the Night Court, and it is not the sort of thing one forgets. It made me smile, seeing the startled looks on the men's faces as I circled the table, ladling generous dollops of porridge into their wooden bowls. There is an art to table service; proper balance, unobtrusive approach, an elegant line. Out of practice as I was, I caught myself making a child's bargain in my head— if I make it around the table without spilling a drop, without a clink of the ladle, it means they will find them, Blessed Elua let it be so ...

I was concentrating so hard I didn't see Joscelin enter and pull up a chair at the table, and startled at his amused features, inadvertently slopping porridge over the edge of his bowl. "Sorry! I didn't realize it was you."

"I didn't expect to see you here, either." He grinned and deftly spooned up the spilled porridge. "A fine send-off. Food that will stick to our ribs, and service fit for a king."