Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [245]
But it hadn't happened at the point of a sword.
What I'd said to Sidonie—the words she had quoted back to me, my mother's words—was true. Blessed Elua cared naught for thrones or crowns. Those were mortal ambitions. Nor did he care for glory or power or the fulfillment of mysterious prophecies or, insofar as I knew, aught but love, desire, and the myriad pleasures with which life was filled. I understood that in a way I never had before.
I thought about Yeshua ben Yosef, too. I wished I knew more about him. I'd never read the books of his life, the Brit Khadasha. But I'd heard Eleazar ben Enokh speak of him. I didn't think that the Yeshua he worshipped, a god of forgiveness and compassion, wished to carve out a kingdom with steel and blood. Still, after a lifetime of study, even Eleazar could not say for certain what this passage or that passage had meant.
That was the problem, Urist had said, with trusting to the written word. There was a truth to his claim; but I wasn't sure trusting to the spoken word and the chain of memory, as the Cruithne did, was any more reliable. When it came to the Maghuin Dhonn, the truth that Drustan had told me was not the truth the harpist Ferghus had sung for us. We were human, mortal and fallible. We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends.
And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves.
Now that was a thought made me shudder to the bone. I wondered if it were true, and if it were, what would happen when some deity bent out of true by mortal ambition returned to set the record straight.
I wished there was someone with whom I could discuss such matters—who knows, mayhap Jergens would have taken a surprising interest—but my Rus was too poor for such heady conversation. So I sat with my thoughts in silence, huddling in my thick woolen coat when the wind blew, gnawing on salt beef, stale biscuits, and dried figs, taking a turn at the oars when we were becalmed, until we reached Kargad.
It was a pleasant little village, situated on the bank of the Ulsk. Men in fishing boats trawling for eel or trout glanced curiously at us as we headed for the narrow wharf. Habiru faces, for the most part. This was a settlement, not a trading post.
My arrival was unceremonious. Jergens didn't even bother to secure the ship, merely drew abreast of the dock, hovering long enough that I could toss my pack ashore and leap across the gap. He gave me a brief wave of farewell, and that was that. For the fur-traders it was out oars and back to the river, eager to set their traps before the snow fell. When all was said and done, I supposed I was lucky to be travelling with such an incurious crew.
I shouldered my bags and set about finding Berlik's pilgrims.
It was, in truth, a good deal easier than I'd feared. Thanks to Adelmar of the Frisii, I knew I was looking for the families of Ethan of Ommsmeer and his wife. There were several women haggling with fishermen over buckets of eels along the wharf. I took the simplest approach, and asked one of them, speaking in Habiru. I picked the prettiest of the lot, a young woman who'd been stealing glances at me since I arrived, a small toddler clinging to her skirts.
"Your pardon, my lady," I said politely. "Do you know the house of Ethan of Ommsmeer?”
She blushed. "I do.”
I stooped, balancing my pack, and picked up her bucket. "Will you show me?" I asked. "I'll carry your …" I didn't know the Habiru word for "eels." "…your long fish.”
Her blush deepened. "I will.”
Elua knows what she thought of me. I'd not given much consideration to Tadeuz Vral's words; that my face, my heritage as a scion of Elua and Kushiel, would lend credence to the mythos of Yeshua. In Terre d'Ange, as in other civilized nations, our presence is taken for granted. I imagined most Yeshuite pilgrims would know