Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey [79]
“Yes,” I agreed. “So he was.”
“By you.”
“No, not exactly.” My moment of private mirth faded. This was another trap I hadn’t seen coming, one I didn’t begin to understand. Gods, it seemed there was an unintended sin lying in wait around every corner of my life! Once again, my palms were sweating. “It was Master Lo Feng’s doing. He was grieving. He gave his life to restore Bao’s, and required my magic and half my diadh-anam to do it, although I did not know what he was asking at the time.” I shook my head. “And if you are asking me to tell you how it was done, I cannot.”
“I am asking nothing.” The Patriarch’s expression had gone stony. “I am telling you it cannot have been done.”
“But it was,” I said, bewildered.
“No.” He raised one finger. “Only Yeshua ben Yosef rose from the dead, and lived. No other. You are mistaken.”
“I do not claim to explain it, my lord,” I said. “But I assure you, Bao was dead. I felt for a pulse myself. There was none.”
His face was implacable. “You are mistaken.”
“For over an hour!” I shook my head again. “No. I tried to suck the poison from his flesh, tried to breathe life into his lungs. Bao died, and lived. Believe me, my lord, he was none too happy about it.”
“You are mistaken.”
Why it mattered to him so deeply, I could not begin to guess; I could only see that it did. He demanded truth from me, but only when it agreed with his beliefs, and I did not understand the intricacies of his faith. All I knew was that I would not win this argument; I would never win this argument or any argument with the Patriarch of Riva.
Never, ever, ever.
There are ways and ways of betraying memory, of betraying the truth. I hadn’t expected this one. In my mind’s eye, I saw the amusement fade from Bao’s face. The fierce determination and stubborn pride lingered. Bao would not care what lie I told, what truth I betrayed, so long as I lived.
Tell the stunted old pervert what he wants to hear.
I took a deep breath. “Mayhap… mayhap I was mistaken. Mayhap I let my fear master me. And Bao was never dead, only stunned.”
The Patriarch smiled his creamy smile, his eyelids drooping with satisfaction. “Yes. Yes, indeed. Good girl.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
I had begun to think the hellish cycle of confession would never end, but the next day, the Patriarch surprised me.
He came in the morning, instead of the afternoon as he was usually wont to do. I wondered if it meant Aleksei would not be reading to me anymore, but I was reluctant to ask, wary of showing too much interest in the lad. I hoped I hadn’t driven him into a full-blown retreat the other day.
I had to own, it galled me that I’d had so little success seducing a young man at the apex of his transition to adulthood, a young man so desperately starved for love. I’d lain awake for hours berating myself for it, convinced that a skilled adept like Jehanne would have had Aleksei eating out of the palm of her hand in a matter of minutes.
Then I would remember the lice, and think again.
I’d known it wouldn’t be an easy task, but I was still struggling to grasp the scope of the damage done to him. It wasn’t just the deeply ingrained strictures of his faith. Aleksei had been raised his entire life to believe he was the product of his mother’s sinful downfall, tainted with a foul curse. He was determined to redeem them both through this trial—and, I sensed, to redeem me, too.
I was no mere mortal temptation, oh, no. As Valentina had said, God had decreed my person a battleground.
Stone and sea, it surely felt that way.
For two hours, I endured another assault as the Patriarch questioned me, exhuming another batch of sins and false beliefs.
First, it was the dragon.
Pyotr Rostov was convinced it was a demon that had possessed the princess. I could not entirely blame him, since everyone in Ch’in had believed it, too, including Snow Tiger herself. She had only believed otherwise when I had summoned the twilight and shown her the dragon’s reflection in the mirror.
I could still see the wonder on her face.
The rest of Ch’in had come to