Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [254]
"Please do," I said shortly.
I didn't care about any of it. Didn't care about the quarrel between Tadeuz and Fedor, didn't care who had promised what to whom. I lay in my cell mulling over my options and doing my best to ignore Kebek.
Once again, there were no good choices. This wasn't civilized Caerdicca Unitas, where I could send a message to the D'Angeline ambassador and bring the might and wealth of Terre d'Ange to bear; and I wasn't exactly in Ysandre's good graces anyway. I thought long and hard about begging the captain to send to Tadeuz Vral himself. It might be that the Grand Prince would intervene. He had seemed well-disposed toward me and interested in Terre d'Ange. On the other hand, he might very well believe I was a spy. With Vralia at war, I daresay he'd choose to err on the side of caution. Elua knows, I would if I were him. Of a surety, he was unlikely to let me continue to wander unattended around Vralia.
I could tell the truth.
Having met Tadeuz Vral, I didn't think he was a man likely to punish me for somewhat I hadn't done. I could claim to have repented of my intentions. If I was lucky, he would simply forgive me and send me home. And Dorelei's death would go unavenged, all my efforts for naught. It was a galling thought. I wasn't willing to accept failure. Not yet.
In the end, I couldn't think of a single course that didn't involve abandoning my hunt for Berlik except waiting for Micah ben Ximon's aid, and praying like hell that he was willing to give it. If he wasn't…well. There was always the truth.
And failure.
So I waited. Another week passed, then two. The captain thought it was at least ten days' ride to Petrovik, mayhap longer.
The worst part of it was the tedium. I wonder that more men don't die of it in prison. We weren't treated badly. After the first day, they didn't bother to beat Kebek. They didn't seem inclined to kill him, either. We ate what the guards ate, twice a day. When the temperature dropped further, coldness seeping incessantly through the stone walls, they took pity on me and gave me the bedroll from my pack.
It wasn't as bad during the day when the braziers were stoked in the guardroom and one could move about, but at night, when the braziers burned low, the chill sank into one's bones. I spent half that first night wrapped in my blanket in a state of profound irritation, listening to the Tatar's teeth chatter in the darkness.
"Elua!" I said in disgust, giving up. "Fine. Come here.”
He made a questioning sound.
I patted my pallet. "Come here, you horse-thieving Tatar idiot. I'll share the blanket.”
He crawled over to me, dragging his own pallet. Crawled gratefully beneath the blanket, huddling against me. His entire body was rigid and trembling with cold. He smelled of unwashed flesh and a faint, lingering odor of horse. In the pitch black of our benighted cell, there was nothing about him to remind me of Jagun. He might have been any half-frozen young man lying beside me. It seemed to take forever before he warmed enough to relax, murmuring somewhat thankful in a sleepy voice.
"Shut up," I said to him, but I said it gently.
I daresay the tedium was worse for him. At least I was able to communicate with our gaolers, albeit in a limited fashion. I had the distraction of listening to the guards gossip outside our cell, which helped improve my understanding of Rus. And I practiced the Cassiline forms, telling the hours with empty hands while Kebek watched with a mixture of admiration and perplexity.
If nothing else, he was persistent. He asked me questions I couldn't begin to comprehend, illustrated with lively gestures. I wished he wouldn't, because any semblance of conversation between us provided fodder for the notion that I was a spy.
In truth, every now and then, I did catch a word I recognized. Elua knows, I'd heard enough of the Tatar tongue spoken in Daršanga, although I'd done my best to forget it. And after a time, much to Kebek's joy, I gave up on ignoring him. When he asked if I had a woman,