Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [100]
The dying itself was another matter.
I wondered how long it would take, and how much it would hurt. A lot, I thought. The bones of my face ached where the Patriarch had struck me, and my cheek was bruised and swollen.
I prayed.
I cried.
I thought about all the people who would never know that I had died here and would always wonder what had befallen me. I wished I could speak to them. My mother, most of all—and Bao, a close second.
What would become of him? If I were right and I died with my diadh-anam unextinguished, he would live, condemned to wander the earth in search of the missing half of his soul, never knowing for sure.
Mayhap it would be better if I were wrong.
I thought about everything I had done here in Riva, wondering what I could have done differently. Something. Nothing. If I had not lost my temper and sworn the sacred oath of the Maghuin Dhonn earlier, mayhap the Patriarch would not have sought to bind me with it—or mayhap not. He had known of Berlik’s oath. Mayhap if I had not baited the Patriarch in the temple, the Duke of Vralsturm would have relented and aided me.
Mayhap.
Bao had accused me of being impulsive. He was right; he was usually right. But I had been patient for so very, very long; and Pyotr Rostov had already condemned me to death. I didn’t know if it would have made a difference if I had held my tongue.
I leaned my head against the wall and watched the light change in my narrow window, mellowing to an afternoon glow, fading slowly to dusk, a painful reminder of the twilight that was forbidden to me.
Come dawn…
They would gloat, those bedamned villagers. Hurling stones that broke my bones and tore my flesh, eking out a slow, painful death; oh yes, they would gloat, glorying in their almighty self-righteousness.
It was going to hurt a lot, for a long time. It was a bad way to die.
I closed my eyes, slow tears leaking beneath my lids. I wished I could be brave and defiant on the morrow, but I was fairly sure I would just be terrified. And I was fairly sure the Patriarch had granted me this day’s reprieve only that I might fully experience the depth of my terror.
No, I was sure.
When I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock of my cell door, I thought at first that I was dreaming.
I wasn’t.
My narrow window was dark. I sat upright on my narrow bed, watching a gilded wedge of lamplight enter my chamber as a lone figure slipped through the door, tall and rangy.
“Aleksei,” I breathed. “You’ve risked everything to free me after all?”
In the lamp-lit darkness, he shook his head. A silver key dangled from his fist on a chain. “Not I, no. My mother.”
THIRTY-SIX
Valentina; oh Valentina! “How?” I whispered.
Aleksei knelt at my feet, busying himself with the key, unlocking the shackles around my ankles. “My uncle takes tea after supper. From time to time, Mother puts a sedative in it to ease his rest and give the rest of us a measure of peace. A tincture of valerian. He’s never known about it.” He eased the cuffs from my ankles. “Better?”
“Yes.” I wanted to leap to my feet and dance. “But… you?”
“She stole the key and gave me a choice,” he murmured, his head bowed. “To do this myself and see you to the border, and take my own freedom. Or to let her free you, and watch her suffer the punishment for it. I chose. Hands, Moirin.”
I held them out to him. “You chose this?”
Aleksei gave me a pained, fleeting smile. “What is the fifth commandment that God inscribed on Moishe’s tablets?”
This, too, I had memorized. “Honor your mother and father.”
He nodded. “Even so.”
One shackle opened. I raised my left hand, shaking it. I didn’t feel any different yet, and a creeping fear filled me. I tried to take comfort from the spark of my diadh-anam inside me, but I was scared. What if that were the most I would ever feel? What if the damage done to me were permanent?