Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [148]
The room reeled in my vision; I saw a red haze, and in it Delaunay, Alcuin, everyone I had loved, and behind it the face of Naamah, compassionate and giving, and the stern bronze features of Kushiel, in whose hand I dwelt. "I don't know." My own voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Ask Joscelin what he meant, if you haven't killed him."
"Ah, no; you've warned him, my dear. A Cassiline would sooner die than betray his oath," Melisande whispered, so close I could feel her lips move. I closed my eyes and shuddered. "And anyway, I would rather ask you."
THIRTY-NINE
It was the jolting of the cart that woke me.
My first impressions were purely sensory, and none of them pleasant. It was cold and dark; I lay atop straw, prickling my cheek, beneath rough-spun woolen blankets, and from the incessant lurching motion and the sound of hooves, it was a cart in which I rode, lashed over with a canvas tarpaulin. That much I apprehended, before a wave of nausea gripped my belly. I, who had never known a sick day in my life, scarce knew what it was. It was pure instinct that sent me crawling across the straw to the farthest corner of my confines, where I promptly spewed up the meager contents of my stomach.
Afterward the sick feeling gripped me less urgently. Shivering with cold and lightheaded, I made my way back to the nest of blankets in which I had awoken, seeking the measure of miserable comfort they offered. It was then that I saw the second figure half-buried under the woolens, blond hair blending into straw, dim grey clothing rendering him nearly invisible in the faint light that filtered around the lashed edges of the canvas above us.
Joscelin.
Memory returned in a relentless surge.
I barely made it back to the corner in time to vomit bile.
This time, the noise of it woke him. I wrapped my arms around myself and huddled shivering, watching him glance around the darkened interior of the cart, frowning. A good Cassiline warrior, he took stock of his weapons first. They were gone, daggers and sword both, and the steel vambraces from his forearms. Then he saw me.
"Where . . .?" Joscelin's voice cracked. He paused and cleared his mouth, drug-dried, working his tongue and swallowing. "Where are we?"
"I don't know," I whispered, not sure if it was true. Outside, hoof beats; a team of four? There were too many beats, steel-shod and martial. Soldiers rode with us, a dozen at least.
"Melisande," he said remembering. "Melisande Shahrizai."
"Yes." That, too, I whispered. Memories crowded my mind, beating like dark wings. I had never, until that awakening, known what it was to despise the very nature of what I am. Even now, in cold and pain and misery, I could feel the residual languor of my body's infinite betrayal.
Naive as he was, Joscelin was no fool; he was young enough to learn, and he had served a time in Delaunay's household, where even a fool might gain some measure of wisdom. I saw understanding dawn on his clear-cut features. "Did you give her Rousse's message?" he asked quietly.
"No." I shook my head as I said it, and couldn't stop, shaking and chattering, huddling in onto myself. "No. No. No."
This was beyond his ken. Alarmed, Joscelin reached out for me, drawing me back to the warmth of the blankets, piling them around me and at last, when my shaking continued unabated, wrapping his own arms around me and rocking me to stillness, murmuring meaningless sounds.
It was true.
Everything, everything else she had desired of me, every betrayal flesh could afford, she had had. Numb and heartsick and broken, I had yielded it all.
But not that.
I think, at the last, she even believed it. I remembered her relenting, lifting up my drooping head by a clutch of hair, that beautiful face and merciless, gentle smile. I had pleaded my voice raw; I could