Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [108]
"Nesmut." It was Joscelin who changed the topic, a deliberate note of inquiry in his voice. I looked at him with gratitude, knowing full well he sensed my thoughts. "Why did the jeweler Karem turn over his work when we entered his shop?"
"Oh, that." The lad grinned. "Gracious lord, Karem makes . . . how did you say? Cameos? Portraits, yes, carved of Pharaoh's Queen for her admirers. For one of such beauty as my lady to gaze upon them . . ." He clicked his tongue and snapped the fingers of one hand. "The stone would crack with envy."
"Ah." Joscelin shot me an amused glance. "I see."
"It is well known," Nesmut offered helpfully, "that such things happen."
By this turn of the conversation, I gauged it time and more that we returned to Metriche's inn to confer with Amaury Trente. Indeed, Nesmut was filled with plans and ideas for undertaking his quest, and nothing loathe to part company for the day. We settled our account with the proprietor and Nesmut led us out the door of the beer-shop . . . only to stop dead in his tracks, one slender, brown hand flung into our path.
"Skotophagotis!" he hissed, flattening himself against the wall of the shop and urgently gesturing for us to do the same. Joscelin's daggers rang free of their sheaths and he went into an automatic crouch. Caught behind the two, I peered over their shoulders.
At the end of the street, which intersected a canal, a lone figure stood, clad in loose black robes, illuminated in the slanting afternoon sunlight. The sunlight glinted oddly upon his head, though I could not make out why; either his skull was shaved and oiled, or he wore some manner of curious cap. He paused, glancing this way and that, before proceeding, picking his way with a long steel-shod staff topped with an obsidian ball.
Nesmut sighed and relaxed as the figure moved out of sight, lowering his arm.
"Skotophagotis?" I said quizzically, even as Joscelin straightened and sheathed his daggers. It was Hellene, but no word I knew. "Eater-of-darkness?"
"Gracious lady." Nesmut shuddered all over. "Do not ask me. These things are known. Do not look on the Queen's portrait, lest the stone crack for envy. Do not cross the shadow of a Skotophagotis, lest you die before sunrise. Come, I will take you to Kyria Maharet's."
It must be, I thought, some priest of Serapis, the god of the dead. They are much obsessed with death, the Menekhetans, and spend a good deal of their lives in preparation for it. It was a cleverness of the Ptolemaic Dynasty to unite this worship with that of Dis, the Hellene deity. Now, I daresay, not even the ruling descendants of Hellas knew where one began and the other ended. They have become more Menekhetan than they reckoned, the Ptolemies. How not, in a thousand and a half years? But I, I had endured the mysteries of the Temenos on the isle of Kriti, and I knew some little bit about the living worship of its eldest scions.
Well and so; mayhap Serapis was like unto my lord Kushiel, who once maintained the brazen portals of hell for the One God of the Yeshuites. If it was so, I thought guiltily, I owed him a prayer. Only I was still wroth with Kushiel, the pattern of whose justice I had yet to decipher. If there was a greater purpose at work, I could not discern it.
With such thoughts did I occupy my mind until we returned to the Street of Oranges, and Nesmut remanded us unto the hospitality of the lady Maharet, or Metriche, as she would have it. He left us with promises to return in the morning, and with that I had to be content, wondering if my lord Delaunay had felt the same misgivings when I departed, full of cheer, to some violent assignation.
I'd have felt the same with Hyacinthe, if I'd known where the Lungo Drom, the Long Road of the Tsingani, would lead him. But I had been younger then, and more ignorant.
"You know who he reminds me of?" Joscelin asked as Nesmut took his leave, his quick grin flashing in the gathering twilight.
"Yes," I said softly. "I know."
"Well." He regarded me. "We need to talk to Amaury Trente."
At the dinner-table