Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [130]
It could simply be that Bao had fallen ill with a lingering sickness. It had happened to my father. He’d contracted an infection in his lungs and lain ill for long weeks without my knowing.
The thought made me shudder. If Raphael de Mereliot hadn’t consented to aid me, albeit for a terrible price, my father would have died.
Raphael was ten thousand leagues away. If Bao was mortally ill, there was nothing I could do to save him even if I arrived in time.
But if it wasn’t illness or injury, what could cause his diadh-anam to gutter so low, to burn so dim? Whatever it was, it was nothing good. I’d learned firsthand that there were magics capable of constraining the divine spark of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself. Who knew what other magics existed that were capable of binding or poisoning it?
I didn’t spend all my time fretting over him, of course. I’d have driven myself mad if I did. Bao was simply too far away, and there was nothing I could do.
Still, I worried.
Riding with the Tatars, we passed more swiftly through the Vralian mountains than I had with my abductors. Vachir and his folk were travelling fairly light, having traded cattle and sheep for furs and amber, which they would trade in turn for more livestock once they reached Tatar lands. The weather was fair, and when we made camp, we slept in the open. Gers were only to be erected at more permanent campsites. We made good time, and it wasn’t long before the mountains gave way to the vast, wide-open expanse of the steppe.
“Ah!” Vachir took a deep breath as we rode from the foothills onto the grassy plain, smiling with rare effusiveness. “Home.”
I envied him; I envied all of them.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t glad to be back in Tatar lands. I was. I’d come to love the steppe despite its absence of trees, and the kindness and generosity I’d found here outweighed the sting of the Great Khan’s betrayal.
But stone and sea… home! I was so very, very far away from mine, wherever my home even was anymore. The word was every bit as painful and bittersweet as it had been when I set out from Shuntian so long ago in pursuit of the missing half of my soul. And in all that time, I’d done naught but travel in an immense circle that had brought me back to the exact same plight: setting out to cross a vast land in search of Bao.
“Stupid boy,” I muttered to myself. “Why did you have to go and wed the Tatar princess? We’d be together and halfway home if you hadn’t.”
In my heart, I understood, though. Bao had told me his reasons. Aside from the fact that one does not refuse the Great Khan, it was Bao’s way of making himself my equal in status and rank, of giving himself a choice that entailed a sacrifice to make the choice meaningful. It didn’t make sense, not really; but truths of the heart owe nothing to logic. Master Lo had laid a heavy burden on his magpie’s shoulders when he gave his life to restore Bao’s. This was Bao’s way of accepting it.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t reckoned on the consequences: the princess’ injured pride and her father’s wrath.
“Stupid boy,” I said again.
The heart is a strange thing. Bao wasn’t stupid, of course; in fact, he was quite clever. But he could be thoughtless with the feelings of others. He had a prickly sense of pride that was too easily rankled, and he was infernally stubborn. He was insulting and boastful, and he reveled in fighting.
And yet…
I loved him in a way I could never have loved Aleksei. My sweet, innocent Yeshuite boy had certainly found a place in my heart after all. I’d come to love him for his innate goodness that not even a lifetime of discipline and repression could extinguish, for the sense of wonder with which he viewed the world. But he had never made my heart soar, only ache at leaving him.
It was different with Bao.
When I tried to put my finger on the moment I knew, I couldn’t. There wasn’t one. There were myriad small moments, like the first time I’d seen the tenderness Bao extended to Master Lo. The first time he had lowered his guard with me