Kushiel's Justice (59 page)

He sighed and lay back on the snow, folding his arms behind his head. “It’s not as though she’s blameless. I know. But the truth is, I was an ass. Far, far too much of the time. I just . . .” He scrunched his shoulders. “I was jealous of you. And I don’t know, I wanted her to
need
me in a way that she didn’t. Is that so wrong?”

“Not everything is a matter of right or wrong,” I said.

“I suppose so.” Maslin gazed at the dark sky, snow falling gently on his face. “My mother always said that my father liked being with her because he was a complicated man and she was a simple woman. He never told her any of his plans, she was innocent. She said it nearly broke her heart.”

“At least you had the solace of knowing he did the right thing at the end,” I offered.

“And died a hero.” His tone was wry. He sat up, shaking off the snow. “Did you ever meet her?”

“Your mother?” I asked.

“Yours,” he said.

“Twice.” I took a swig of
starka
. “The first time, I was eight years old. Brother Selbert, the head priest at the Sanctuary where I was raised, took me to see her. I didn’t know who she was. He told me she had been a friend of my parents. I thought she was wonderful. She was the most beautiful lady I’d ever seen, so kind to me, and her voice was like honey. I could have sat at her feet and listened to her for hours. The second time . . .” I took another swig. “I wanted to spit in her face.”

“I think I would have,” Maslin said.

“You know, she’s still out there.” I waved one arm. “Somewhere. That man who took a spear for me in Lucca, she sent him to watch over me. He told me so, and then he died and took her secrets with him.” I contemplated the wineskin and took one more gulp before passing it to Maslin. “If there’s one good thing about being stuck out here in the wilderness, it’s that I’ve finally outrun her reach.”

“True,” Maslin said. “But you’re going back.”

“Not to her,” I said.

He shrugged. “As you say, she’s still out there.”

S
IXTY-TWO

S
EVERAL DAYS LATER
, we reached Miroslas.

The evening before we arrived, Maslin did me a kindness for which I truly will remain grateful to him. The days had grown so short that we were forced to spend many long hours idling around our campsites, unable to travel in darkness. Still, we made good progress during the daylight hours, and I knew we were getting closer.

After wrestling with the issue in my mind, I was resolved to stop there if we came upon it. If we missed it, I would press onward. But I felt somehow that I owed the Rebbe honesty. I would aim for Miroslas and let fate decide.

Maslin didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue the matter. After all, when all was said and done, he wasn’t guilty of anything but trying to protect me, knowing full well that I was innocent of espionage. I was the one who had killed both the Tarkovan guards.

And Berlik.

During the lengthy nights, I told Maslin, bit by bit, what had passed between us. There were parts of the tale that confused him, but when I spoke of the difficulty of killing Berlik, he was more understanding than I would have reckoned.

“Nothing’s ever as simple as it seems, is it?” he said.

“Not in my experience,” I said.

“Imriel . . .” He hesitated, then nodded at the bag containing Berlik’s head, tied to a tree-branch. “I understand better why you’re reluctant to do what Urist recommended. But you’ve got to do somewhat about it.”

I shuddered. “I know, I know.”

Maslin was silent a moment. “I’ll do it.”

“It’s my duty,” I said.

“I know.” He rose decisively and began packing one of our pots with snow. “But . . . name of Elua, man! Haven’t you seen enough horror? I might not have come here for good and honorable reasons, but I’m here. At least let me make it meaningful.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it. “Thank you.”

It was a long, ugly job. It took the better part of an hour to get a full kettle of snowmelt boiling. I made myself look when Maslin fetched the bag and removed Berlik’s head. It was frozen solid as a rock, and it had frozen so swiftly that it was perfectly preserved. His bloodless skin was as pale as frost, save for the woad markings. His eyes were closed. He still looked peaceful. In a way, Berlik looked happier in death than I’d ever seen him in life.

“Kushiel’s mercy on you,” I whispered.

Maslin jerked his head. “Now go away.”

I went some distance from the campfire and sat under a tree. I didn’t watch as he lowered the head into the boiling water. I’d fetched Hugues’ flute from my pack. I played it with my eyes closed, low and quiet. I thought about the harpist Ferghus, who had walked out of the gloaming to sing for his supper at Innisclan, summoned by his half-breed son Conor. I tried to remember the song he had played for us, the story of a magician of the Maghuin Dhonn and how he had sacrificed himself to save his people from Tiberium’s conquest. I did my best to play it, until my fingers grew too cold to feel the flute’s holes and I had to cease and don my mittens.

It took a good deal longer than that, of course.

Hours.

I had to return to the fire to warm myself. “You play well,” Maslin murmured. “I didn’t know.”

I hugged my knees, shivering. “I practiced a lot in the past year. Dorelei liked it.”

He gave me a curious glance, eyes reflecting firelight. “You really did care for her.”

“Very much,” I said. “You would have liked her, Maslin. She wasn’t simple, but she was uncomplicated. She deserved better from me. She taught me a lot. And if there was any way I could undo this and give her back her life, I would. No matter what the price.”

“I knew her a little from Court.” He watched the kettle. “She had a nice laugh.”

My throat tightened. “She did.”

A log in the fire shifted. The kettle lurched. A little water spilled, hissing onto the embers. The aroma emanating from the simmering pot smelled like stew. The bile rose past the lump in my throat, choking me.

“Go,” Maslin said, pointing.

Once more, I went.

I know what he did that night; what had to be done. Once Berlik’s head had thawed and his flesh softened, Maslin had to fish it from the pot. Carve the flesh from the bone, remove the scalp and its coarse, shaggy hair. Prod within the nasal cavities with a sharpened stick, trying to loosen the brains housed within. All that I’d avoided, he did. Once he went to vomit, walking away from the campfire, returning and wiping his mouth. Twice he set the head aside and dumped the contents of the pot some distance from our site to begin anew, melting fresh snow.

It was a long night, longer than most.

In the end, it didn’t smell like stew. It didn’t smell like much of anything except hot iron and scorched water. When it reached that point, I returned permanently from my vigil beneath the tree and slept restlessly beside the campfire.

By daybreak, the water in the pot had boiled away and there was nothing left of Berlik’s skull but clean bone, eyeless and grinning as it never had alive. Maslin, who looked bleary-eyed, had done a good job. I told him so and thanked him again.

“It was easier for me,” he said in a tired voice. “I never knew him.”

When we struck camp that morning, we returned Berlik’s skull to the leather bag and left the cooking-pot behind. It was a lucky thing we had a spare, since I wasn’t sure I could have borne using it again. I laid it on its side, thinking that mayhap some woodland creature would someday use it for a nesting place. It was the sort of thing, I thought, that would have pleased Berlik. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did.

Maslin watched me with bemusement. “You’re a very odd young man, Imriel de la Courcel.”

“I’ve been accused of worse,” I said.

He laughed. “True.”

We rode in companionable silence that day. After the first few hours, the horses began pricking their ears and quickening their pace. They had a better sense of direction than I did, and like my long-bolted mount, Miroslas was the last warm stable they remembered. I kept an eye on the mountain-peak, but I gave my mount its head. When the shadows began to grow long, a suggestion of blue dusk arising beneath the trees, we took a chance and pushed onward a little longer.

We reached Mirsolas a bit before nightfall.

The sight of it was as unexpected as the first time, a hidden gem tucked away in the woods. Indeed, with the warm glow of lamplight shining from its windows, casting squares of yellow on the heavy snow, it looked more welcoming than I could have imagined.

“You’re sure about this?” Maslin asked. He was shivering a little and his tone suggested he hoped very much that I was. It was late to retreat and make camp.

“I’m sure,” I said.

We must have been spotted, for one of the silent brothers was there to receive us at the door. He looked to be Habiru, and he inclined his head when I greeted him in that tongue, although he made no reply.

At his gesture, Maslin and I stabled our grateful mounts, helping ourselves to feed and water. To my pleasure, I discovered that the horse I’d stolen in Tarkov had indeed returned safely as Maslin had said, though it looked shaggy and thin yet. There was another horse stabled there tonight, just as shaggy but well-fed. I was curious about it and wondered to whom it belonged. I didn’t have the impression the priests here kept mounts for their own usage, nor that they had many visitors; at least not at this time of year.

“I’ve no idea,” Maslin said crossly when I speculated aloud. “Elua! Does your mind never stop chewing over every last little question?”

I smiled. “Far more often than Phèdre would like, believe me.”

Inside, it wasn’t long before we learned the answer, or at least a portion of it. We’d arrived at the regular dinner hour when all the brethren of Miroslas were served. The silent guide showed us to a chamber where we might leave our gear, then escorted us to the hall. There was no sign of the Rebbe, but the long tables that had been empty when I’d first dined there were filled with rows and rows of men of all ages, Vralian and Habiru alike. The only thing they shared in common were their sober black robes and their silence, although it was a charged silence, and our presence rendered it all the more so.

There was one fellow who was different. We were seated beside him at the end of one table. He wore some sort of soldier’s livery; a heavy red tunic over black breeches and boots. There was a flared cross in black worked on the breast of his tunic, over his heart. He was hunched over a steaming bowl of meat dumplings, but he glanced up when we sat, his blue-grey eyes widening with an undefinable emotion.

“It is a sign,” he murmured in Rus.

“Of what, my lord?” I asked quietly.

Our Habiru escort placed one finger against his lips and shook his head, motioning us to silence. His face looked troubled. I wondered why. Was it us or the rider?

Once Maslin and I had finished eating—which took a good long while, the dumplings were as good as I remembered and I was twice as ravenous—our escort rose and beckoned to us. We followed him. The soldier watched us go, his gaze unblinking.

Rebbe Avraham ben David was awaiting us in his private chamber. It was a spare, simple room. There was a cot, a rug on the floor and a fire in the hearth, with a trio of plain wooden chairs arrayed before it. There were no adornments. He rose when we entered. He looked older than he had . . . when? Six weeks ago? Two months? I wasn’t sure.

I bowed. “Shalom, Father.”

Maslin bowed, too, but said nothing.

“Is it done?” the Rebbe asked me in Habiru.

“Yes.” I faced him without flinching.

He sighed. “By both of you?”

“No,” I said. “I was alone.”

“Sit.” The Rebbe pointed to the chairs. We sat. “How was it done?”

I glanced at Maslin. “My lord, is there any other tongue in which we might converse? One my companion might share?”

Rebbe Avraham smiled wryly. “I think not, child. I was a younger man in the Flatlands, and I speak the low tongue, Skaldic and Habiru, and I have learned Rus. Your companion was silent here before. Let him be silent now. How was it done?”

“As Berlik wished,” I said. “I sent him to his gods.”

“Ah.” He was silent a moment. “I had hoped the solace he found in Yeshua’s mercy might guide him.”

“It did,” I said. “It guided him to the center of his own heart. Father, Berlik cherished what he learned in Vralia. He kept Yeshua’s cross on his wall to remind him. He said . . .” I cleared my throat. “He hoped it was not importunate to consider a god a friend, and that if there was any god who would not mind, it was Yeshua ben Yosef, who is there for all the lost and broken people of the world. But Berlik was a leader of the Maghuin Dhonn, and a great magician. For the sake of his people, he made a bargain with their god to let his death pay the cost of their broken oath. And he believed it was answered.” I paused. “If there is a kernel of truth to what his people believe, they are old, my lord. Very old. They speak of following their
diadh-anam
, the Brown Bear, from beyond Vralia to Alba when the world was covered in ice.”

“And you believe this?” he asked.

“I believe what I have seen,” I said. “I do not know what it means.”

“I wish he had chosen otherwise. For Vralia’s sake. For the sake of
my
people. We have need of men like him to shape the future of our faith. We are not all vowed to silence. Even in this quiet place, there were murmurs about him while he was here. There was such a depth to him, such a sorrow. Before he left, there were some here who began to speculate that he was one of the sainted ones, god-touched.” He fixed me with a deep gaze. “And that a dark angel and a bright angel came to struggle for his soul.”

I looked sideways at Maslin, his pale hair bright in the firelight.

“A fanciful tale.” Rebbe Avraham snorted. “One can
smell
that you are mortal, and in need of a bath. Still, here you are.” He looked thoughtful. “Which is which, I wonder?”

“Neither,” I said. “Why did you send the Tarkovans after me?”

“I feared you were dead,” he said. “They said you were a spy. I did not believe it, but I did not believe you should kill Berlik, either. Nor did I believe your silent companion sought your life. I hoped, somehow, it all might be averted. In the end, I consigned it to Adonai’s will.”

I sighed. “Well, then, it seems it was Adonai’s will that two Tarkovan guards guilty of no crime save being too cursed stubborn and pig-headed to put down their swords and
listen
for one moment should die at my hand.”

He bowed his head. “Dire news. I am sorry.”

“You should be,” I said. “You sent them.”

“I bear responsibility for my choice, as you do for yours.” Avraham ben David lifted his head. “If you had acknowledged the truth of your quest in Tarkov, they would not have believed you a spy and sought your life. Child, I am sorry, but I face larger choices than those which concern you. A great victory has been won in Yeshua’s name.”

“Fedor Vral?” I asked.

“The winter siege broke his followers’ will,” he said. “Lean and hungry, they opened the gates of Petrovik to Micah ben Ximon. Prince Fedor managed to flee beyond the mountains with a handful of Tatars, but his cause is all but lost. Ben Ximon did not even deem it worth the cost of pursuing him, not in winter. Thousands of his followers have deserted him.” His old eyes were bright with strong emotion. “They are willing to acknowledge Yeshua as a portion of the terms of their surrender, and I do not know whether to rejoice or weep. Words spoken under duress do not suffice to change men’s hearts. Grand Prince Tadeuz Vral sends a messenger asking me to come to Vralgrad to counsel him, and I do not know whether to stay or go.”

I was silent, abashed.

While I had been engaged in my single-minded, solitary pursuit, a war had been waged and won. The fate of a nation had hung in the balance and shifted.

“Who is the Yeshua ben Yosef who holds sway in Vralia?” the Rebbe mused. “The friend who is there for the lost and lonely soul, or the warrior whose banner led Tadeuz Vral to this second victory? I do not know. And I am afraid.”