Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [72]
“No—” I remembered Marbas.
Rostov was quick to seize on the slightest hesitation, the slightest opening. “Aha! What did they offer you?”
I met his gaze. “The gift of shape-shifting, the gift the Maghuin Dhonn Herself withdrew from us. I refused it.”
He studied my face, looking for the lie, then gave a slight, genuine smile when he did not find it. “Well done, child.”
Gods help me, I found myself grateful for his praise.
The summoning of spirits was a matter of great interest to the Patriarch of Riva, and he went back and forth over it, demanding that I relate each incident in ever-increasing detail. I obliged, talking myself hoarse while his pen hovered and scratched over the paper, recording my every word.
He didn’t know about the gift Marbas had given me, the charm to reveal hidden things. I did not offer it. If there were any small secrets he was unable to exhume, I meant to keep them to myself.
Thus far, it was Marbas’ gift, and the fact that I had bedded a coach-driver.
It wasn’t much comfort.
“My lord?” I inquired when he paused to dip his pen. I raised my hands, chains dangling from my wrists. “It seems to me that these chains are very like the silver chain with which we attempted to bind Focalor, only they were wrought without flaws. Tell me, how is this not witchcraft?”
The Patriarch frowned. “Because it is done in the service of God’s will and with the intention of saving your immortal soul. It is not even remotely the same.”
“No?” I let my hands fall into my lap, chains rattling.
“No.” He didn’t like that question, I could tell. He began to gather up his things brusquely. “That is enough for today. We will resume your confession on the morrow.” He hesitated, taking on a more compassionate tone. “What we must discuss will be difficult for you. But it is necessary, I assure you.”
My chest tightened, and I looked away. “You mean to make me speak of Jehanne.”
“I know it seems cruel,” he said gently. “But you must make your confession in full, Moirin.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of it, knowing the covert pleasure he’d taken in telling me of her death, and that grief yet raw. “And if I don’t?”
“God is patient, and so am I,” Pyotr Rostov said. “I am prepared to wait a long time. And yet I am only mortal. If, in the end, you prove intractable…” He gave a sad, weary shrug. “If you do not repent, you will be stoned to death for your sins.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“I fear that is the punishment God demands,” he said to me. “I do not wish to administer it, but I will. Think on it.”
TWENTY-SIX
Aleksei began reading Yeshua’s tale to me.
It was clear he took pleasure in it. I did my best to appear to listen attentively, all the while scheming ways to engage him. With the Patriarch’s threat hanging over my head, it had become more urgent than ever.
All I had to guide me was Naamah’s gift and my own instincts. I developed a finely honed sense of Aleksei’s reactions, and the response of Naamah’s gift within him.
So long as I looked away from him, he could not resist stealing glances at me. Swaddled in a shapeless woolen dress and draped in chains, a long scarf wrapped around my cropped hair, I hardly felt at my most alluring.
Still, he was a young man with a young man’s appetites surging beneath his efforts to suppress them, and I found ways to tempt him. If I angled my body just so and clasped my hands in my lap in a demure pose, the chains that ran from the collar around my neck to the cuffs at my wrists pressed the fabric against my skin, showing the shape of my breasts beneath the prickly wool.
When I smoothed the fabric over my knees in another seemingly absentminded gesture, it pulled it taut for a moment, revealing the line of my thigh; and when I tilted my head a certain way, the trailing end of the woolen scarf fell away to bare my throat.
Such small enticements! And yet, to a starving man, they held all the promise of an extravagant banquet.
Once again, I thanked him