Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [246]
She couldn't have been any older than Ravi. I wondered if she'd been born in Vralia. She led me through a narrow maze of streets, carrying the toddler.
"Here," she said outside a wooden stoop. "Ethan's home.”
"My thanks." I inclined my head and hoisted the bucket. "And yours …?”
"No, no!" She shifted her child, snatching the bucket. "It is not needed.”
Well, and so. I watched her hurry away down the streets of Kargad, carrying her child and her bucket, then raised my fist and knocked on the wooden door.
The woman who answered my knock didn't look surprised to see me. A Habiru woman, although by virtue of her rounded cheeks and the stray locks of reddish-blonde hair escaping her kerchief, I daresay there was some Flatlander blood there, too. She stood silently in the doorway, regarding me.
"I'm looking for Berlik of Alba," I said humbly. "I bear a message for him.”
"Ja." She studied me for a moment without saying anything further, then opened the door wider. "We have been expecting you. Come in.”
It wasn't a response I'd been anticipating, but I kept my mouth shut on that fact and entered. The house was a tiny one-room affair, divided by a hearth in the center that was the sole source of heat and, at the moment, light. There were beds built into niches in the walls. A young boy sat on the upper bunk, swinging his legs and staring at me with wide, dark eyes.
"Go fetch your father, my heart," his mother said gently to him. "You know where he is? Working on the cow-byre with Uncle Nisi?" The boy nodded vigorously and scrambled down the ladder on short, sturdy legs, leaving the door ajar in his haste. His mother smiled after him, closing the door in his wake.
"A good-looking boy," I ventured.
"He takes after his father," she said. "But it was Berlik saved his life.”
"Oh?" I kept my tone neutral.
"Ja." She pointed to the area beyond the hearth, where a table and chairs stood. "Please, sit. Ethan will be here soon. There is pottage if you are hungry, or I can make griddle-cakes.”
The thought of hot food made my mouth water. "No thank you, my lady." I set down my pack and took a seat. "How did Berlik come to save your son's life?”
"You should eat. You have come a long way." She withdrew a bowl from a neat little cupboard and ladled a serving of pottage into it, setting it before me. "We were crossing a bridge over the Voorwijk when the harness broke. The cart tipped. A great deal happened at once, and we did not see that Adam had fallen into the river." She placed a tin spoon beside the bowl. "Berlik was travelling the road behind us. He saw. He plunged into the river and rescued him.”
I took a bite of pottage. "That must have been terrifying.”
"It was." She sat opposite me and offered nothing further. I ate in silence. The sound of my spoon scraping the bowl seemed loud.
"Thank you, my lady," I said, finishing. "How shall I call you?”
"Galia," she said briefly.
"Galia." I nodded. "I am Imriel.”
"Im-ri-el." She said it slowly. "The eloquence of God.”
There was a noise at the door; her husband entered, stooping low to cross the threshold, his son on his shoulders. A whiff of cow-dung entered with them. He swung the boy down and set him on his feet. I rose in acknowledgment. "So you have come," Ethan of Ommsmeer said gravely. "As Berlik said you would.”
"What did he say?" I asked.
He didn't answer right away. "Will you sit and drink a cup of beer?”
I shrugged. "If it would please you.”
He didn't answer that, either, but went to wash his hands at the basin. I wondered if he was stalling for time. Galia fetched a pair of porcelain cups, filling them from a small keg in the corner, then took the boy and went into the front portion of the house, sitting beside the hearth and sewing quietly. Ethan took the seat opposite me at the table, and I sat again.
"Berlik is a good man, I think," he said at length. "A good man who