Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [205]
"No." Even as I spoke, Imriel spat at me and darted away, running pell-mell for the fortress.
"I'll go after him," Joscelin said quietly, suiting actions to words. I sighed and straightened, wiping spittle from my cheek.
"I should have," I said, cutting him off. "I know. Amaury, the boy's spent the past half a year in the seraglio of a madman. Do you see these women? They've been through hell, every one of them. So have I, and so has Imriel. All of us have. So, no. I didn't tell him. Andyes, his mother sent me. Ysandre," I said, holding his gaze, "sent you. Melisande sent me."
"Melisande," Amaury repeated doubtfully.
"Yes," I said, weary beyond belief. "Melisande."
We did not stay long at Demseen Fort, only long enough to gather ourselves for the journey to Nineveh. The accommodations were rough, unprepared to handle so many refugees, and we slept crammed on pallets in the main hall. For two nights and a day, Imriel avoided me, clinging fiercely to his sense of betrayal. I let him. Joscelin, somehow exempt from his outrage, shadowed him dutifully, as did Kaneka and Uru-Azag, who had both conceived a fondness for the wayward child.
On the morning we were to depart, Imriel was missing.
"Phèdre." Joscelin found me overseeing the loading of the wounded, helping arrange cushions to bolster the leg of Ursalina, an Aragonian woman whose thigh had been laid open nearly to the bone. Miraculously, it was healing clean, the layers of muscle and skin closed in neat stitches by the hand of the Caerdicci seamstress Helena.
"Did you find him?" I asked.
He nodded toward the far crags on which the fortress perched. "He's up there. I think you should talk to him."
"How is that?" I asked Ursulina in zenyan, testing the stability of the cushions. "Better?" At her grateful nod, I turned to Joscelin. "You go. He's angry at me, and rightly enough."
Joscelin's face was haggard in the morning sunlight. "He knows about his mother," he said, watching my expression change. "Phèdre, he was bound to ask, and bound to find someone who would tell him. It wasn't gently done."
"Who told him?"
"Nicolas Vigny," he said, naming Amaury's right-hand man. "And Martin de Marigot. It's not. . . it's not their fault, either. They only spoke the truth. Vigny fought at Troyes-le-Monte; he lost a brother there. He's reason to be bitter. It was her doing, after all."
"So," I said. "Why me?"
"Because," Joscelin said steadily. "For better or for worse, you understand Melisande Shahrizai. You're the only one who can tell her son she loves him without gagging on the words."
There was so much unspoken between us.
"All right," I said, pushing tendrils of sweat-dampened hair from my brow. "I'll go."
Hoisting the skirts of my riding attire, I traversed the narrow paththat encircled Demseen Fortress and found Imriel seated on the farthest outcropping, moodily pitching shards of broken rock into the gorge below.
"Imriel," I said.
His narrow shoulders stiffened, the bones protruding like wings beneath his fine skin; too sharply, I thought, although what did I know of children? Still, he seemed too thin, too frail for his age. The foundlings in the Sanctuary of Elua had been sturdy by comparison. Even Alcuin, the brother of my fosterage, with his slender grace, his milk-white hair and gentle smile, had been hale next to this boy.
I made my way across the crags to join him, sitting without speaking. Below us, the forested gorge yawned, a light mist sparkling golden in the morning sun. Imriel kept his face averted, fiddling with a handful of pebbles.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked without looking up.
"I was wrong." I kept my tone level. "Imri, I was going to. I wanted to wait until we were safe, that's all. I didn't expect Lord Amaury to greet you thusly. It was stupid of me."
"My mother did something foolish." He drew in a wracking breath, his voice half-breaking. "That's what you told me! Something foolish! My mother betrayed Terre d'Ange to the Skaldi!" His head came up, eyes blazing at me. "She