Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [218]
He gave a deep bow. "My lady, it shall be done."
"Well," said Joscelin when he had gone. "You've done what you could."
It didn't feel like enough.
SIXTY-THREE
"WHY CAN'T you come home with me?"
It was inevitable, I suppose; the only wonder was that Imriel had waited until we were a day's ride from Tyre to broach the subject. I sighed, trying to find the words.
"Imri ... I made a promise, a long time ago. It's not one I can break."
He lifted guileless blue eyes to mine. "If he loves you, wouldn't he understand?"
"He might," I said, thinking of Hyacinthe, who had never dreamed that the dark road I would travel would prove so very dark indeed, with so many branching forks. "It doesn't matter. That's not the point."
Imriel rode for a while in silence, then, "Do you love him more than Joscelin?"
"No. Imriel, listen. If someone had taken your place in Daršanga, if. . . if Beryl had gone in your stead," I said, recalling the name of the eldest girl in the Sanctuary of Elua, the one who had recited the verses about Kushiel's Dart. "If Beryl had taken your place, and you had the chance to free her, could you go home instead?"
His black brows, straighter than his mother's, knit in thought. "No," he said finally, reluctant. "But..."
"But what?"
"Why do you have to love him so much?"
I smiled. "Why? I don't know. I've known him since I was, oh, younger than you. Whenever I was upset, or scared, or angry... it was always to Hyacinthe that I ran. There was a time, Imri, when he was my only true friend; a long time."
"Was he like me?" he asked. "When he was a boy?"
I considered him. "No. Not much.”
"I want to go with you." The words were so soft I could scarce hear them. "With you and Joscelin, to Jebe-Barkal."
"You can't," I said. "Imri, we've talked about this. You've a life awaiting you in Terre d'Ange, and the Queen herself anxious to meet you, to make you a member of her family; of House Courcel, into which you were born."
"And people who want me dead." His mouth was set in a hard, unchildish line.
"Yes," I said. "And that. But Lord Amaury won't let that happen, and neither will Queen Ysandre. And when it comes to it, they're a great deal more qualified for the job than I."
Imriel gave me a look that went clear to the bone. "But you are the only one who is my friend, my true friend."
We made camp that night a few miles outside Tyre, and it was Joscelin who broached the subject while Imriel slept, sitting cross-legged on his blankets before the opening of our tent and massaging his arm with the Eisandine chirurgeon's balm. The bindings and splint had at last come off, and despite his best efforts squeezing rocks and the like, his left arm was pallid and puny, his grip on his dagger feeble at best.
"It's a long way," he said quietly. "And we've been a long time from home. Phèdre . . . I'm not saying we shouldn't go, eventually. But. . . look at me. I'll not be much use, if there's trouble. And you . . . Elua, love! If ever there was a time you needed to heal, it's now."
"I'm fine," I said.
Joscelin merely looked at me.
"All right," I said. "I'm not fine. But I'm well enough to travel, and so are you. Joscelin . . . there's a part of me, a big part, that would like nothing better than to see Imriel restored safely, to deliver a warning in person to Ysandre, to go home. But if we do?" I shuddered. "I'm not sure I can face leaving it again. And I can't live knowing that there's somewhat I might do to win Hyacinthe's freedom. Mayhap ..." I swallowed. "Mayhap it would be best if you went with Imriel."
He flinched. "You don't mean it."
"I don't know." I put my head in my hands. "It's—it's like you said, it's what you trained all your life to do. Not trail around after luckless whores on half-mad quests."
"Phèdre." There was a sound in his voice almost like laughter, although with no levity in it. "If you can't go home while Hyacinthe remains cursed, how can you possibly imagine I could endure letting you go to Jebe-Barkal alone?”
"So you'll go?"
"I swore it to damnation and beyond." He flexed his left hand,