Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [202]
"You didn't." Something in his tone made me look. Joscelin sighed, dragging his good hand through his tangled, half-braided hair. "Phèdre, let it be. She died in freedom, attended by kindness. It's a better death than any she would have found in Daršanga. Let it be."
Since there was nothing else for it, I did, returning to our campsite. The caravan was waiting. A cairn of stones marked Ismene's final resting place. Imriel, kneeling behind me, turned in the saddle as we rode away, watching it diminish. "Remember them all," he said aloud, echoing my words. "Remember them all."
In the mornings there was no time, but in the evenings, when the tents were pitched, the horses and mules staked and the cookfires burning, Joscelin sought to practice his Cassiline exercises, one-armed and clumsy. All of that flowing grace, all his long discipline, was centered on symmetry and balance—the weaving patterns of his twin daggers, the crossed vambraces forming a living shield, the pivot of his twohanded sword grip. Bereft of it, his movements were awkward. His bound left arm fouled the sweep of his blows, rendering them ungainly, leaving him exposed. Time and again, he stumbled off-balance, losing his form, unable to complete the complex patterns.
It pained me to watch him.
He never complained, not once. And he never ceased trying, pushing himself harder as the bones began to knit. During the first days of our journey, his hand swelled alarmingly. I watched it closely, breathing a prayer of relief when the swelling began to recede. After that, he began to carry a good-sized rock in his left hand as he rode, squeezing it rhythmically for hours on end, trying to keep his muscles from growing slack and useless.
Ten years old, Joscelin had been when he was exiled from the loving chaos of Verreuil to the grim rigor of the Cassiline Brotherhood. I never saw so clearly how it had molded him as I did on that journey, in his unflagging resolve. So young, I thought, watching Imriel; only a boy, wearing the fragile shape of childhood. And I... I had been ten when my lord Delaunay took me from Cereus House, beginning the long apprenticeship that had made me what I was.
Imriel had Daršanga.
Remember this.
Twice, he had nightmares, awakening the entire camp with those terrible, piercing screams. The Drujani handlers nearly bolted in terror, and the Magi cringed in fearful reflex, recalling the iron chains of Angra Mainyu. Joscelin, wild-eyed, was on his feet in an instant, sword bare in his right hand, staring about for danger. The Akkadians and the women of the zenana only grumbled. I took Imriel in my arms, soothing him until he awoke and knew me. After that, the tears, and I held him while he shook with them, narrow shoulders heaving.
Joscelin sat with his sword across his knees, watching wearily.
We did not speak of what had happened in Daršanga. It was too soon, too vast. Let us get out of this alive, I had said. What was to become of us afterward, I could not say. There was love, still; that much, I knew. My heart ached at the sight of him. And Joscelin ... I heard it in his voice, saw it in his wounded gaze, felt it in his touch. Love, broken and damaged, mayhap beyond repair. I prayed it was not so. In the evenings, I watched his halting, faltering exercises, and knew fear. He had survived, and the arm would heal. Whether or not his skills would ever be the same was another matter. Some things, once broken, can never be made whole again.
I prayed we were not one of them.
Halfway through the journey, I found the jade dog, the Mahrkagir's gift, stowed in the bottom of my packs. I sat on the floor of my tent in shock, staring at it. I remembered the Mahrkagir's pleasure in making me gifts, his boyish delight. I thought I had left them all behind. I remembered the nights of anguished pleasure, the exquisite, rending pain and the sound of my own voice begging. And I remembered his eyes, black and shining and mad, filled with adoration,