Kushiel's Justice (Imriel's Trilogy #2) 00

We crossed the bridge and made our way to the tannery. The stink of half-cured hides grew stronger the closer we got. It seemed to be a thriving little business. As we approached, a tall man came out to meet us in the yard, wiping his hands on an apron and eyeing us with open curiosity. He greeted us in the Flatlander dialect, sounding pleased and quite incomprehensible.

All the Cruithne looked at me.

"Gud morgen," I said awkwardly. "Wir jäger sind…wir sind jag ein mann. A man, we're hunting a man." I beckoned to Kinadius. "Lend me your drawing, will you?”

I dismounted and showed it to the tanner, who nodded vigorously. "Ja, ja!" he said. "Der Bär-Mann!" then added a swift burst I couldn't understand. The tanner laughed and laid his hands on my shoulders. "D'Angeline, ja ? “

"Ja," I said. "D'Angeline.”

He turned and shouted toward the complex of buildings that made up the tannery. A woman emerged, hurrying toward us. Like the tanner, she was of middle years, with a face that must have been pretty before work and care took their toll. The tanner said somewhat about her— his wife, he called her—in a proud voice. She beamed at me, clapping her hands together in obvious pleasure.

"A D'Angeline!" She bobbed a curtsy. "How we may help you, my lord? Fine leather? Maybe for boots? Or very fine, maybe for gloves?”

Her accent was thick, but her D'Angeline was more than passable. I smiled at her in relief. "Not today, my lady. We're searching for a man…or mayhap a bear." I showed her the drawing. "Have you seen him?”

Her eyes widened. "That one! Yes, he was here.”

My heart lifted. "Here?”

"Yes, yes." She nodded. "A pelgrim, with the others.”

I shook my head. "No, not a pilgrim. This man.”

"This man, the bear-man." She took the drawing from me, tracing the incised claw-marks. "Yes, he was here." She turned to her husband and they exchanged a quick flurry of words. "Come," she said to me. "I show.”

Urist and Kinadius dismounted to join me. The tanner and his wife led us into a warehouse filled with piles of cured hides in varying levels of quality. He rummaged in one and brought forth a luxuriant armload of fur, presenting it to me with a smile.

A bearskin robe.

I caught my breath, lightheaded and sick. Beneath the pervasive stench of the tannery, I could smell rank musk and sour berries, the scent of the Maghuin Dhonn. Urist and Kinadius exclaimed in Cruithne, the words suddenly as alien to my ear as Skaldic. My healing wounds burned. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and my knees nearly gave way beneath me.

It was Urist who led me out of the warehouse. In the yard, I sat beneath a linden tree and lowered my head, taking deep breaths until the worst of the dizziness passed. The tanner's wife pressed a cup of cool water into my unsteady hand, her face worried. I drank it and thanked her.

"I am sorry," she said. "He is your friend, this man?”

"Friend!" I laughed bitterly. "Elua, no!”

The tanner's wife frowned. "But he is Pict, like them.”

"He killed my wife," I said shortly.

Her mouth hung open in shock. She turned to her husband. Another exchange, low and murmured. The tanner, the bearskin robe draped over one shoulder, looked troubled. "I do not think it is the same man," his wife said at length, a stubborn reluctance settling into her voice.

I leaned my head against the trunk of the tree. With careful hands, I undid the buttons on my shirt. Kinadius knelt beside me, grave as an acolyte, and undid the knots on my bandages, helped me unwind them and lay bare the gouges that angled across my torso, raking furrows of pink flesh and a patchwork of lingering scabs.

"His work," I said. "The bear-man's." The tanner's wife pressed the back of her hand to her lips. I held her shocked gaze. "Please, my lady. Will you help us find him?”

She nodded. "All right, yes.”

While Kinadius rewound my bandages, the tanner's wife told us that Berlik had arrived at the tannery some days ago—three weeks, she thought, or mayhap a little more—in the company of a group of Yeshuite pilgrims. There had been a good many of them in recent years, seeking passage to the distant north; beyond Skaldia, where it was rumored they were building a kingdom. There had been ten or twelve of them, she thought. Two families, and Berlik. They had an ox-drawn wagon and two horses. They had stopped at the tannery to purchase leather and twine to repair a broken harness. Berlik had offered to trade his bearskin robe in exchange for this and other supplies. It was a good bargain.

"He seemed …sad and kind," the tanner's wife said, wondering. "So big, but gentle. There was a child with them—" She glanced at my face and fell silent.

"Did they say where they were bound?" I asked.

She shook her head. "They went east, along the Voorwijk. They didn't say where. But if they follow the pilgrims' route, they go to Maarten's Crossing to ask Adelmar of the Frisii for passage across Skaldia.”

"Adelmar?" I asked.

Urist cleared his throat. Although he had difficulty with her accent, he recognized the name. "He's the one petitioned the Cruarch for trade rights," he said in his clumsy D'Angeline. "Holds the western border, I believe.”

"Yes." The tanner's wife nodded. "A good man, a man of peace. A friend to pilgrims.”

"I see." I felt slow and stupid. We were little more than three days' ride from the northern border of Terre d'Ange, and yet I knew less of my surroundings than Urist, who was a good deal farther from home. As always, I had a lot to learn. I rubbed my face. "Thank you, my lady. You've been a great help.”

"I wish you well." The tanner's wife wrung her hands, restless. Strong hands, work-worn and thick-knuckled, yellowish from a lifetime of handling oak-tanned hides. I wondered at her fluent D'Angeline, at the pride in the tanner's voice when he spoke of her. There was a story there I'd never know. She gazed at me with deep concern. "But I think…I think this man, the bear-man you hunt… if he has truly done such a thing, I think he is sorry for it. There is great sorrow in him.”

"There always was," I murmured. "But he did it anyway.”

"That is a great pity," she said.

"Yes." I pushed myself to my feet, eyeing the bearskin robe her husband yet held. The sight of it no longer sickened me, but I detested its existence. "My lady, I wish to purchase that robe. I mistrust its magic, and you would be better off without it.”

Urist nodded approvingly.

At least it was familiar ground for everyone. We haggled. In the end, I made them a good bargain; more than fair. They deserved it, the tanner and his wife. We rode away from the tannery, following a course eastward along the bank of the Voorwijk River, with Berlik's bearskin robe stowed in our baggage, carried by an unnerved pack-horse.

I didn't blame the horse. The scent made me uneasy, too.

"What do you mean to do with it?" Urist asked as we rode.

"Destroy it," I said.

He smiled. "Good.”

That evening, we made camp along the banks of the Voorwijk. After picketing the Bastard, I sat down with Berlik's robe and set about slicing it into strips, pausing periodically to hone my daggers. The fur was dense and thick, rippling in my hands. A smell of musk clung to my skin. I ignored it, working methodically. Strip, strip, strip. It was hard work. Kinadius joined me, raising an inquiring brow. I nodded. He beckoned. Others came, cutting the strips into smaller scraps. Urist gave quiet orders, and several men set about gathering wood. A massive bonfire was built, fire roaring heavenward. It was the largest fire I'd seen since the Feast of the Dead.

When we had finished cutting it to shreds, we burned the bearskin robe, piece by piece. Everyone took an armload of scraps. We fed them into the fire, one by one. The fur sizzled and stank as it flared and crisped, leaving bits of hide to curl and slowly char.

I didn't know if Berlik's robe held any enchantment, not for sure. Morwen hadn't needed one, and I'd seen her body shift and change in the darkness. I'd seen her pry loose a boulder that two strong men wouldn't be able to lift. Mayhap the robe was meaningless, nothing more than a badge of office, indicating his status as a magician of the Maghuin Dhonn. Or mayhap it wasn't. If he'd crossed the Straits as a bear, the robe had crossed with him somehow. And yet, if it was charmed, why would Berlik have traded it for some leather goods and supplies?

In the end, I didn't care. It was his, and there was a tremendous, irrational satisfaction in destroying it. All of us felt it.

Once it was done, we let the fire burn down low, slowly collapsing in on itself. It was too late to cook, so we ate cold rations that night. Urist passed around a skin of uisghe he'd held in reserve, and we all had a few swallows, watching the fire.

"One step closer," Kinadius murmured. "Feels like it, anyway.”

Urist grunted. "But why pilgrims? Doesn't make sense." He slewed his gaze around at me. "Who are these pilgrims? Some sort of mad D'Angelines?”

"Yeshuites," I said. "And no, it doesn't make sense.”

"What's a Yeshuite?" he asked.

At least what knowledge I possessed wasn't totally useless. I told them about the One God of the Habiru—the god whose angel Rahab had once bound the Master of the Straits—and how he had sent his son Yeshua ben Yosef to earth during the time of the Tiberian Empire. How the Habiru had hailed him as their savior, their mashiach. How the Tiberians had feared an uprising and convicted Yeshua, hanging him on a criminal's cross. How Blessed Elua was born of his blood, mingled with the tears of his beloved, Mary of Magdala, nurtured in the womb of the earth.

"But you said they weren't D'Angelines," Selwin said, bewildered.

"They're not," I said. "We share a point of origin, but little else." And so I explained how while Blessed Elua wandered the earth, causing rebellion in heaven, and came to be joined by his Companions and founded Terre d'Ange, the Habiru reckoned him misbegotten and followed their own course, revering Yeshua, and came to be known as the Yeshuites. Like the Tsingani, they had no fixed realm of their own. Unlike the Tsingani, they aspired to one. "There's a prophecy in their sacred books that says Yeshua will return to raise his people to greatness," I said. "And that they should make a place in the cold lands to await him.”

"Reckon it's true?" Kinadius asked.

"I don't know." I propped my bedroll against the Bastard's saddle and reclined, easing my sore body. I thought about Morit and the scholars who had visited Terre d'Ange, spending so many hours in Phèdre's salon discussing these very matters. They came from distant Saba, where the lost Tribe of Dân maintained the old ways of the Habiru. They'd reckoned the entire notion madness, and of a surety there was great power and wisdom held in trust by their priests. But then, they knew little of Yeshua. "The wisest Yeshuite I know, a man named Eleazar ben Enoch, said some passages suggest it's true, and others do not. The Yeshuites themselves are divided on the matter.”

Urist snorted. "You see? That's the trouble with trusting to written words.”

I smiled. "You have a point.”

It was growing late. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what else Eleazar ben Enoch had said. He was a scholar and a mystic, a good man, gentle and kind. Phèdre admired him greatly. Something about believing that the mashiach spoke in parables, that the cold land was the empty places of the human heart. I didn't share his faith, but I could appreciate its beauty when he spoke of it.

All of that was true. And I could imagine it might be true of Berlik, too. I would be unwise to let my grief and hatred blind me. I couldn't imagine that he would ever forsake his own faith any more than I would, but he had struck me as a man who thought and felt deeply. I didn't believe he'd acted out of malice. I understood what the tanner and his wife had seen in him, and I was willing to believe he was filled with sorrow at what he perceived was the necessity of his actions.

It didn't matter. He had done it anyway. If the Maghun Dhonn had spoken openly of their visions, mayhap it all could have been different. Mayhap there was somewhat that could have been done. If I'd known they'd seen Dorelei's death in childbirth, I could have insisted that she be attended by a trained chirurgeon. Mayhap that alone would have been enough. But the Maghuin Dhonn hadn't trusted us with their truths. They'd simply tried to alter fate on their own. Berlik had slain Dorelei in cold blood, slain our unborn son in the womb. And for that, I would kill him. Kushiel's justice demanded it. The gods are merciful, but they are just, too. There was no repentance, no atonement that could ever suffice.

All of that was true, too. And I daresay in his heart of hearts, Berlik knew it. He was a murderer, and forsworn. There was no redemption for him, not in this life.

So what in Elua's name was he doing travelling with Yeshuite pilgrims?

Chapter Forty- Six

Urist came up with a theory the following day.We rode east along the Voorwijk River, stopping to make queries at farmsteads along the way. The drawing of Berlik elicited blank stares and shaking heads, but pelgrims got cheerful ja, jas. Everyone had seen pilgrims passing. In fact, we saw a group ourselves, travelling with a canvas-covered wagon. Their olive-skinned features stood out among the fair Flatlanders, as distinctive as Tsingani or Cruithne.

"Cover," Urist said simply. "Disguise.”

"He's a big man, Urist," Kinadius said doubtfully. "With tattoos.”