Kushiel's Avatar - Jacqueline Carey [72]
We sat our mounts in the alley, watching as two Carthaginian men were shoved out into the grey light of dawn, blinking with shock and dishevelment, shackled half-unawares. Captain Vitor strode toward us.
"My lord," he said in Aragonian, bowing to Ramiro. "My lady.”
He turned to me, and I saw in his fierce, pitted face a father's fury. "You will want to see this."
Needing no translation, I slid down from my mount, Joscelin an unthinking half-step behind me, following with his hands on his daggers as I raised my skirts and stepped across the threshold.
Inside, it was dark, and stank of cabbage and near-spoiled meat. There was a table and chairs, a few personal effects in the front room, an empty jug of wine tipped on its side. A member of the Harbor Watch sidled past me, a torch raised high. I saw the back room it illuminated, shrouded in darkness, reeking like a kennel. Two pairs of eyes, low to the ground, reflected the torchlight. I gasped, unable to help myself.
They were children, two of them, their fine-boned features marking them clearly as D'Angeline. A boy and a girl, ten or twelve at most. They clung to one another, scrabbling in the urine-fouled straw given them for bedding, pale-skinned with lack of sun, the irises of their eyes swallowed in the vast, dilated blackness of their pupils.
Behind me, I heard Joscelin utter a curse like it was a prayer.
Ignoring him, I knelt slowly, letting the skirts of my riding gown fall heedless over the filthy straw. "Agnette Écot?" I asked softly, keeping my gaze on the girl's face. I had seen, in her hollow eyes, her hungry cheekbones, an echo of the dairy-crofter's wife.
Pushing herself into the corner as hard as she dared, the girl nodded slowly; once, twice. Yes. The boy, younger, sought to press himself behind her, ducking his head, a tangle of hair like autumn oak-leaves falling over his brow.
Whoever he was, he was not Imriel de la Courcel.
"Agnette," I said in steady D'Angeline. "My name is Phèdre. I was sent to find you. These men are your friends." Sitting on my heels, I extended one hand to her. "You're safe now. Will you come out?"
A pause, then a flurry in the shadows, two heads shaking, lank hair flying, scrambling fear and mistrust. Joscelin took a step past me, squatting in the straw, the torchlight gleaming red on his polished vambraces. "Do you see these? No one will harm you further," he said, his voice flat and dispassionate. "In Cassiel's name, I swear it on pain of death."
With a sound like a sob, Agnette Écot flung herself at him, burying her face against his chest, slender limbs clinging to him monkeylike. Joscelin rose, straightening, with the girl in his arms, his head brushing the low rafters as he carried her out.
"Come," I said to the strange boy, my heart breaking at his wideeyed terror at being left behind. He took my hand in a death-grip, letting me lead him from the Carthaginians' lodgings. No sooner had we reached the grey dawn-light of the alley than Luc stepped forth, his face haggard and drawn, and the boy fixed on him with a wordless cry, catching him about the waist, seeing somewhat he recognized in his kind, Siovalese features.
I stood in the street, my arms empty.
"So." Captain Vitor Gaitán sat his own mount, looking down at me. His men had the Carthaginians well in tow. "It is done. You have the children." He spoke Caerdicci with a sibilant Aragonian accent. "And the Count. . ." his gaze flicked toward Lord Ramiro, ". . . has his answer."
"An answer." Ramiro Zornín de Aragon drew up his cloak and his dignity. "We will not rest until we have a full accounting of how this came to pass."
Three children. The Tsingani had seen three. I met Joscelin's eyes, above the head of the girl he carried. "Agnette," I said gently, brushing her tangled locks. "Was there another? Was there a third with you, another boy?"
She muttered fitfully, turning