Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [350]
"Yes," I said. "I am."
For the second time that day, there were tears in Phèdre's eyes. "Elua! It's such a short time for you to have grown so much, Imriel."
Joscelin touched her hair. "Love?"
She shuddered and slid into his arms, burying her face against his shoulder. He held her for a moment, then let her go. She gathered herself and rose.
I stood up. "I'll go. I should sleep."
"Not on my account." Phèdre lifted one hand to my face, her touch lingering. Not quite a mother's touch; not a lover's either. Hers, and hers alone. "We'll talk later. About this, and about the other things, too." She smiled at me, the crimson mote of Kushiel's Dart floating on her dark iris. "There's time. Right now, I'm just happy you're home and safe."
I bent and kissed her cheek. "So am I."
Once Phèdre had gone, Joscelin got up and stirred the fire until it crackled merrily. He sat back down, drawing up one knee, his fingers laced around it, and fixed me with a steady regard.
"All right," he said presently. "I'm willing to cede you Bernadette de Trevalion. Not the rest. How bad was it?"
I thought about the Valpetran soldier with his jaws agape, the bloody length of spear visible between them. "Bad enough."
Joscelin nodded. "It always is."
"What…" I hesitated. "What was it like for you the first time?"
"Hard." He leaned his head against the back of the couch. "It was in Skaldia. One of Gunter's thanes. Evrard, Evrard the Sharp-tongued, they called him. He challenged me to the holmgang. I didn't want to kill him. I barely knew him."
"You knew his name," I said softly.
"Yes," he said.
"Do you ever dream of him?" I asked.
"I dream about them all." Joscelin lifted his head and looked steadily at me. I remembered him in the festal hall in Daršanga, a ring of corpses rising around him. He might have known the name of the first man he'd killed, but I doubted he could even number those who followed. A leopard among wolves, they had called him there. "And so will you."
"Does it…" I swallowed. "Does it get easier to bear?"
"It shouldn't." His mouth twisted. "But it does. The Cassiline Brothers have a prayer for the slain. It helps. Do you know it?"
I shook my head. "Will you teach me?"
"Of course."
We knelt together, Joscelin and I, before the dying fire; heads bowed, hands clasped. He spoke the words of the prayer in a low, firm voice. To my surprise, he spoke in Habiru.
"Mercy, mercy, mercy, o lord of lords! Grant this soul swift passage, and forgive me my need that dispatched it to your keeping. "
"A Yeshuite prayer?" I asked.
"A Cassiline prayer," Joscelin corrected me.
"But…" I said helplessly.
"Imri." Joscelin touched my face, much as Phèdre had done. "Anathema or no, I am Cassiline. If you're asking whether I believe everything they taught me, the answer is no. But some things are ingrained too deeply to be removed."
"Like Daršanga," I murmured.
"Yes." He knelt quietly, sitting on his heels. The low firelight flickered over his austere, beautiful features. "You'll find your own way, Imri. Your own words, your own prayers. You've already begun."
I shrugged. "Even a stunted tree reaches toward the sunlight."
"You're not that stunted," Joscelin said in an unexpectedly acerbic tone. "Name of Elua! When it comes to melodrama, you're as bad as Phèdre."
"I am not!" I laughed. "I brood, that's all. That's what Eamonn says." I shifted to sit cross-legged, hugging my knees. "Did I tell you I saved his life?"
Joscelin raised his brows. "Oh did you?"
I told him about it in hushed tones; about the battle-fury, the ringing in my ears. About flinging myself into the fray, heedless and unthinking. About my enemies being reduced to mere obstacles. Joscelin knew; Joscelin understood. He listened to me with a complicated expression on his face, all at once rueful and horrified and proud.
"Ah, love!" he said when I was done. "I didn't teach you to fight to—"
"Be like you?" I asked.
"No." Head bowed, he regarded his hands, resting loosely on his thighs. "Not for that."
"You think I am, then?" I asked. "Like you?"
"No." Joscelin