Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [55]
"I am sorry," he said, "that we could not give you the answers you sought."
"You have given us what you had, my lord priest." I inclined my head to him. "For that, I am grateful. It may be that the Queen will summon you to discuss your role in Imriel’s disappearance from La Serenissima. I will speak on behalf of your intentions."
Brother Selbert swallowed, his throat moving visibly. "I never meant for the boy to come to harm. I thought... I thought he could grow up freely in Elua's grace, his spirit untrammeled by the machinations of politics."
"I know," I said.
"Tell them who he was." Joscelin adjusted the buckles on his vambraces, checking and settling his weapons. "It will help them make sense of it, Brother Selbert. And they should know that not even Elua's grace renders them invulnerable to the ill in men's hearts." He looked up at the priest. "Or the follies of pride."
"I will tell them." Brother Selbert returned his gaze unflinching. "Do not be quick to judge me, Cassiline. Can you claim to know the whole of Elua's will?"
"No," Joscelin said quietly. At the far end of the courtyard, the young acolyte Liliane emerged from the arch of the stableway, craning her head to smile at the morning sun, our mounts and pack-mules trailing after her like ducklings following their mother. "There are mysteries no one can fathom."
"Even so." The priest nodded. "And there are purposes too deep for us to grasp.”
I could have sworn, from the sleek condition of their coats, their renewed reserves of vigor, that our animals had spent a month rather than a day basking in the sunlit paddocks of Elua's sanctuary. My mare frisked like a filly crossing the bridge, dancing and shying at the hollow echo of her hoofbeats on the wooden planks.
"Did you know Liliane was my mother's name?" I asked Joscelin.
"Really?" He looked surprised. "You never told me."
"It was."
So began our wanderings through the mountains of Siovale. We gained the lower pastures, where Beryl and Ti-Michel pointed us toward the rockfall of which they had spoken, a narrow ledge along a chasm, dangerous with overhanging crags. After making our precarious way past the cleared rockfall, we ascended to the further pastures, flat areas where the tall grass grew, perfect for spring grazing and fall harvest. There was nothing to see, but it gave us our starting-point.
We had marked the towns and villages searched on our map, and Brother Othon had left markers of his own along the mountain trails, scratching Elua's sigil onto rocks and trees in areas already combed. He was right; the search had been thorough. For two days, Joscelin and I rode in broadening arcs, keeping a keen eye out for Othon's signs. It reminded me of travelling along the Tsingani routes, searching for chaidrov, the secret markers with which they indicated their passing. We met a few folk along the way, shepherds mostly, who shook their heads, able to tell us nothing.
After two days, we ceased to find Othon's scratchings and I had begun to suspect that our search was fruitless. Still, we continued, until I was heartily sick of making camp in mountain meadows and bathing in icy streams.
"There's a village . . . here." Joscelin glanced up from the map, watching as I struggled to draw a comb through my hopelessly tangled tresses. "We could make it by nightfall, and be in Verreuil by midday tomorrow."
"Let's do it." The comb stuck. I drew it out with a muttered curse. "I'm not going to see your family looking like I've been sleeping in a bird's nest."
He grinned at me. "You look like a maiden out of legend, fresh-tumbled by Elua."
"I feel like I've tumbled fresh out of a hedgerow," I retorted.
Joscelin laughed. "You still look beautiful. Come on, then. Thevillage by nightfall, and we'll beg lodgings if they don't have an inn. I wouldn't mind a hot bath, either."
We made good time in the morning, reaching the deep divide that led southward to Aragonia—and then lost time in conversation with the merchants of a trade caravan, who had no news of any errant children matching Imriel's