Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [244]
I nodded. "Yes, my lord.”
He said somewhat in a rapid spate of Rus. I shook my head, perplexed. Prince Tadeuz Vral reached across the table and took my chin in his hand, slapping my cheek lightly with easy familiarity. I was so startled, I didn't have time to take offense at it. "Your people are born long ago from angels, eh? So Micah says. Very nice. You make believers.”
"In Terre d'Ange?" I asked, bewildered.
"Here. Yeshua's blood, yes? The Rebbes say angels walk the earth and talk to chosen people. Very beautiful like you. Maybe God sent you, too. I pray it is so." He beckoned to an attendant, who stepped forward and opened a sizable purse. Vral took a careless handful of coins from it and bestowed them on me, then made a shooing gesture with both hands. "Go, go! Go explore. Is a bad time, with my brother. Come back. We talk.”
I went.
I didn't know what to make of Tadeuz Vral. There had been a warmth there; somewhat human. I'd thought to find him more like the Mahrkagir. He'd had a head full of odd prophecies, all right. And they'd damn near come true. If it weren't for Phèdre, they would have. Angra Mainyu, and ten thousand years of darkness. This felt very different.
I took my leave of the palace and made my way to the wharf, my battered saddlebags slung over my shoulder, the hunting bow and four arrows lashed to the strap.
I was alone.
I was well and truly alone, for the first time …well, since Daršanga, really. There had been isolated moments in Tiberium, but they were only moments. It felt strange.
There was a small market at the wharf. I bought strips of salted beef, hard biscuits, and dried fruit for the journey; staples that wouldn't spoil. There was a vendor selling luck-charms; pendants with flared crosses. I noticed a number of sailors wearing them. I purchased one, an inexpensive affair of painted wood and cheap gilt. With a twinge of guilt, I strung it around my neck. The vendor nodded in approval. I glanced toward the city, where the spires of the temple were visible.
"Forgive me, Yeshua," I murmured. "I mean no blasphemy.”
There was no reply, no sense of presence. I wondered what Yeshua ben Yosef, the Habiru prince who had been the One God's son incarnate on Earth, would have made of these new followers of his.
I found passage to the southeast with a handful of taciturn fur-traders led by a fellow named Jergens. It was a small ship, smaller than the one that had brought us to Vralgrad, but when I pointed and asked, "Kargad?" they beckoned me aboard. They had room, having sold their goods in the city, and I reckoned the rivers wouldn't be as dangerous as the sea.
We were three days on the Volkov before we reached the Ulsk tributary. When we first cleared the wharf, Jergens surreptitiously tossed somewhat over the side of the railing, muttering under his breath. He caught me watching him and glared.
"You not tell," he said, pointing to my cross pendant.
"Tell what?" I asked.
It took a while before he could make himself understood, and Jergens wasn't a talkative man, but there wasn't much else to do on a small ship. It had been an offering to the vodyanoi, the water-spirit of the Volkov; a piece of superstition banned by Tadeuz Vral. People were not punished for keeping the old faiths, at least not overtly, but it was discouraged. If it became known that Jergens and his fellows did, merchants in Vralgrad would be reluctant to buy their next shipment of furs.
I thought about that on our journey. Thought about the speed with which Vralia was changing, and the way Vralia was changing the face of Yeshuite faith. About Alba and the Maghuin Dhonn, and how they had feared the old ways would be lost. About the vision of my son, Dorelei's and my son, who would have brought about that very thing.
And I wondered for the first time…if I were Berlik, if I had seen that future stumbling toward inevitability, what would I have done?
It was a chilling notion.
Still, I thought, change is not always bad. Of a surety,