Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [285]
"Name of Elua!" In the room where we stripped down, Maslin actually paled at the sight of me. "That bastard nearly tore you in half.”
"I know." My teeth were chattering. "Come on.”
He kept stealing glances at me in the bathing-room, where we luxuriated in the heat and steam, scrubbing away weeks of stale sweat and unspeakable grime. We'd scoured ourselves with icy water from the basin in Miroslas, shivering in the cold chamber, but it had been a hasty, patchwork job completed in near-darkness. I hadn't seen my own naked body for a long, long time. It seemed almost a stranger's, ivory-pale from lack of sunlight, worn down to bone and sinew and lean, ropy muscle. No artist would ask me to sit for her now. The scars hadn't faded as much as I'd thought they might. They were still angry red furrows, slashing across my torso.
I caught Maslin's eye. "Still envious?”
"It's dwindling rapidly," he admitted. "I saw you in bandages that day at the Shahrizai lodge, I knew it was bad. Not that bad. Does it still hurt?”
I prodded scarred flesh. "It's tender deep down.”
Maslin shook his head. "And you wept when you killed the creature who did that to you. That, my friend, I cannot begin to understand.”
"I'm not sure I do, either," I murmured.
We left the village of Gordhoz the following day, clean and well-fed, our stores replenished. The innkeeper's wife looked sad to see us go. The innkeeper didn't.
Our journey to Tarkov was blessedly, blissfully uneventful. The Tarkovan guards had asked after me in Gordhoz to confirm I'd passed through on my way to Miroslas, but either they hadn't bothered elsewhere, or they'd taken a more direct route and missed the villages and farmsteads where I'd found shelter. Recalling the number of times I'd gotten lost, I suspected the latter.
The temperature remained bitterly cold, but the snow had tapered off. Many days it was bright, so bright that the sunlight on the snow was nearly blinding. Maslin and I rode with our eyes half-shut, the skies overhead a deep, vivid blue. In its own harsh, rugged way, Vralia truly was a beautiful country.
Both of us noticed that the days were growing longer. We tried to guess when the Longest Night, which was long indeed in Vralia, had passed, and where we had been. I thought it might have been the night before I'd killed Berlik. Maslin thought it was later, mayhap the night he'd tended to Berlik's head. Berlik's skull, jouncing in its leather bag, tied to our spare horse's packs, offered no opinion.
We talked about our favorite memories of the Longest Night; or at least some of them. He told me how it was celebrated at Lombelon, and how much he had loved it as a child. The year before I'd met him, he'd played the role of the Sun Prince in their modest pageant; that was his favorite year. I told him about maintaining Elua's vigil with Joscelin when I was fourteen, and how infernally sick I'd gotten afterward, how it was one of the only times I'd ever seen Phèdre angry at Joscelin. Maslin laughed when I admitted that I far preferred attending the fête with Eamonn in tow. He told me that the worst time he'd had on the Longest Night was two years ago, when he'd been sent to serve with the Unforgiven in Camlach after beating Raul L'Envers y Aragon badly in their duel.
Two years ago.
I didn't tell him that was my favorite Longest Night of all. I kept the memory to myself, savoring it. Sidonie, all in gold. She'd taken my hand, tugging, and we'd darted behind the musicians' mountain. There in the darkness, I'd pinned her against the false mountainside, my heart beating so hard I could feel it thudding in my chest. Her gilded sun-mask scraping my face as I kissed her for the first time. As she kissed me back, so hungrily it made my knees weak. Even now, the memory fired my blood. After the temple, I'd ridden home barefoot through the snow, clad in rags, and never even felt the cold.
Two years ago. Elua.
"What are you smiling at?" Maslin asked, curious.
"Nothing," I said softly.
He looked dubious, but he didn't press. Mayhap he