Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [237]
Captain Iosef was exacting in his repairs. Although the weather was growing cooler by the day, he wouldn't be rushed. Damaged planks were removed and new ones hewn to replace them. It was a mercy that the inner framework of the ship was intact. Slowly, slowly, it took shape, and I began to believe that we would leave the island.
I tended to my neglected weapons, polishing and whetting them. I began my days by practicing the Cassiline forms for the first time in long weeks.
The first time I did so, the Vralians stared in open astonishment. If anyone remembered the bow with which I'd greeted Captain Iosef so long ago in Norstock, I daresay they'd thought it was a mere homage to their hero. I ignored them, concentrating on telling the hours.
"Where did you learn that?" Ravi asked me that night around the campfire.
I smiled. "From the man who taught Micah ben Ximon.”
He laughed. "No, really.”
"It's true," I said. "Where did you think he learned it?”
"From an angel who appeared to him in a vision," he said seriously.
"No angel," I said. "Just a D'Angeline." I told him about the Cassiline Brotherhood and their training, and the story of how Joscelin had come to befriend the Yeshuite community of La Serenissima, teaching the art to a young Micah ben Ximon and others. How they had helped Joscelin and Phèdre thwart a plot to assassinate the Queen of Terre d'Ange during her visit there.
Ravi stared at me, wide-eyed. "And you know these people?”
I nodded. "I'm their foster-son.”
In all the time we'd been together, working side by side, I'd told him very little about myself. Ravi whistled through his teeth. "I thought you were just… I don't know, an adventurer or a scout sent to explore.”
"Oh yes, of course," I said, realizing he'd just handed me a vaguely plausible reason for our journey to Vralia. "That too.”
"Do you report to the Queen of Terre d'Ange herself?" He sounded awed.
"I do." Elua knows, that was true. "And Urist is in the service of the Cruarch of Alba.”
Ravi winced. "They'll not be impressed by our shipwreck. Will you tell them it doesn't happen often? It was a very bad storm.”
I glanced over at the dim hulk of the ship, still visible in the fading light of day. "Ravi, if we get off this island and Urist and I return home in one piece, I promise you, I will tell them that the courage and strength of Vralia's men is without equal.”
His young face beamed. "Well, that's true.”
I felt guilty at lying to him; to all of them. We'd grown close during our travail in the wordless way that men do working together for a common cause. Still, what could I do? Urist and I were seeking to enter Vralia under false pretenses. If there was a dangerous task to be done here on the island, I would trust Ravi or Captain Iosef or any one of these men with my life. But I didn't dare tell them we were hunting a man who had entered Vralia as a Yeshuite pilgrim, intending to kill him.
Although it wasn't we anymore.
We hadn't talked about it yet, Urist and I, but I daresay both of us knew. He was lucky to have kept his leg, lucky it was a clean break, lucky it appeared to be healing. But a broken thigh-bone was a serious injury. It would take months to mend. Urist was able to hobble about on his crutches, but he couldn't put any weight on the leg, and there was no way he could ride.
I would be hunting Berlik alone.
At least I was hale. If nothing else, I had these weeks of hard labor to thank for it. Thinner than I had been, subsisting on a diet of fish and fowl, but with lean, hard muscle on my bones. The deep gouges Berlik's claws had rent into my flesh had healed, leaving angry red scars where they'd cut the deepest. Still, they were scars. Oftentimes they ached, and when I overexerted myself, I could feel them burn and tug, but they were scars.
On