Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [57]
None of it made a damn bit of sense.
Of course, I had been gone for a long while. For all I knew, there had been some new incident that had Vralia in an uproar against D’Angelines or the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn, and I was paying the price.
It seemed unlikely, though. There were no great, shape-shifting magicians like Berlik left to my people, and I could hardly imagine thoughtful, steady-minded King Daniel of Terre d’Ange allowing a diplomatic outrage to take place on his watch. No, if anything, he was overly cautious. The only outrageous thing he had ever done in his life was marry Jehanne.
Despite everything, the thought made me smile.
Few folk had ever understood that match, but I did. Daniel’s first wife, the one who died, had been the love of his life, gracious, noble, and kind. To this day, he grieved deeply for her. He had allowed himself to love the fickle, tempestuous courtesan that was my lady Jehanne because she was nothing like her predecessor—and Jehanne knew it full well.
That’s why he tolerates my foibles, she had told me once. We’re unfaithful to one another in different ways.
It was true, but not wholly so. Deep down, Jehanne was a great deal wiser and kinder than she pretended. I knew, because she’d let herself show it to me. And for all her fears and uncertainties, I didn’t doubt that motherhood would bring out the best in her.
I only hoped I’d have the chance to see so for myself one day. Rattling my chains ruefully, I remembered gentle Checheg lying exhausted and calm in the aftermath of giving birth, assuring me of just that thing as she described my glad return to Terre d’Ange with Bao at my side—and little Sarangerel telling me that Jehanne’s babe would be as big as her bright-eyed, toddling brother, Mongke, already creating mischief.
It had seemed possible then.
Now…
I fought down a wave of despair, stroking the blue silk scarf that Checheg had given me. I wore it knotted around my throat.
That, and one jade bangle the color of the dragon’s translucent reflecting lake were all that were left to me of the tokens I had collected along the way, reminders that I had been loved once.
Everything else was gone.
My yew-wood bow, gone, left behind in Batu’s ger. My ivory-hilted dagger, gone or taken. Also left behind, my battered canvas satchel that held items of little value to anyone but me. There was the Emperor’s jade seal, which I’d stashed there for safe-keeping. That, I supposed, might be bartered for a considerable amount. The same was not true of the other items. Not the signet ring my mother had given me, proof that I was a child of Alais’ line.
Not the square of cloth embroidered with flowering bamboo by Bao’s half-sister, Song.
And surely, surely, not the little crystal vial of perfume that Jehanne had given me to remember her by.
No one but a D’Angeline would know what that was worth.
It shouldn’t have mattered so much; they were only things, after all. But they were things that had given me comfort.
And there was no comfort here.
None at all.
TWENTY
We began to pass through villages.
I had some mad idea that I might find help or allies within them. I called out to the staring villagers in the Tatar tongue, rattling my chains plaintively, clasping my hands and pleading, doing my best to convey that I was a captive in need of rescue.
They looked away.
Ilya spoke to them in his deep, sonorous voice, and they nodded in understanding. Some turned and spat as I passed. One little boy stooped, picked up a rock, and hurled it at me, his face contorted with disgust. He had good aim and a strong arm; although I jerked away, the rock grazed my brow in passing.
“What are you saying to them?” I asked in fierce frustration.
He eyed me sidelong. “God wills this.”
God.
God.
God.
Oh, how perishing sick I was of hearing it! Why? It nagged at me.
If the answer didn’t lie in the distant past, nor the recent past, mayhap it lay in the immediate