Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [52]
"You should tell them," Joscelin said shortly. "Tell them the truth. Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean."
"Mayhap you have the right of it, Cassiel's servant," the priest murmured. "I will think on it. Come, we will assemble for dinner."
In the Sanctuary of Elua, meals were a common affair, held in the great hall with its high stone arches. It was simple fare, but good—a pottage of lentils and onions, stewed greens and fish caught fresh in the river, with brown bread smeared with sharp goat's-milk cheese. The acolytes, of whom there were half a dozen, took turns at cooking and whatever chores were needful. Brother Selbert dined at a table with eight others, priests and priestesses alike, ranging from an elderly woman with a face so kind it made one ache to lay one's head in her lap to a young man whose vows had scarce left his lips.
Throughout the course of the evening, I spoke to all of them, and learned nothing of merit. I learned that Imriel had been a beautiful child, with blue-black hair and skin like ivory, eyes a deep and starry blue; his mother's son, though no one put the words to it. I learned he had been proud and kind and a little wild. I heard the story of his disappearance a dozen times over, and while the details varied slightly in the telling, the events remained unchanged. If their stories had been identical, I would have been suspicious. So it had been, when I had questioned the missing guardsmen of Troyes-le-Mont, who had concealed the fearful secret that Percy de Somerville had helped Melisande escape from that fortress. Ten years ago, in La Serenissima, the sameness of their story had given the lie to it. Here, it was obvious the denizens of the sanctuary were telling the unhappy truth.
From Brother Othon, the young priest, I learned how they had searched the mountains for days on end, finding no trace of the boy. Born and bred to Landras village, he had led the search himself, and his grief at his failure was writ clear on his features.
"How certain are you, Brother Othon?" Joscelin asked him in a gentle tone. "I do not fault your diligence, but the mountains are vast. I am Siovalese myself, and I know there are nooks and crannies of my childhood home of Verreuil that not even my brother Luc and I managed to explore."
"It is possible." The priest turned his failure-haunted gaze on him. "It is always possible. I still search, thinking to find his body lodged in some crevice where the lingering snows of spring have retreated at last, hoping to find him. But if he went of his own accord ..." He shook his head. "He may have gone for days before harm befell him. We were slow in widening our search, sure that he was near. I cannot say."
And so I listened, and grew no wiser. They knew who we were, of course, priests and acolytes alike. I saw it in the sidelong glances, heard it in the hushed murmurs when they thought I was not listening. They are learned folk, Elua's priesthood; they knew well enough that Phèdre nó Delaunay was Kushiel's Chosen, the Queen's confidante. If they had not known before that their Imri was Imriel de la Courcel, son of Melisande Shahrizai, I daresay most of them had guessed it by now. But here, in Elua's sanctuary, no one spoke of it. And that, I thought, was wrong. Their silence was a canker of omission, blighting the serenity of this sacred place.
The only exception was the young acolyte Liliane, whose sweet smile fell like sunlight on all it touched; Liliane, and the children. I spoke to the latter after we had dined, when the wards of the sanctuary would have taken their studies in the library halls.
"The Lady Phèdre and her consort Joscelin want to hear about Imri," was all Brother Selbert told them before leaving us alone.
"Why?" the lad Cadmar asked bluntly when he had left, eyeing