"I know." Joscelin wrapped both arms around me, warm breath against my hair. "I know," he repeated.

"I know."

EIGHTEEN.

A LIGHT rain was falling when we took our leave of the ecots' household. I sat my mare, raindrops glistening on my hair while Joscelin discussed treatment of our spavined mule with the dairy-crofter. We would move swifter without it, and they would gain a pack-mule in the bargain when it healed. I could afford the cost.

Agnes ecot lingered in the doorway and looked at me with eyes starved for hope.

"We will find her," I said to her as Joscelin checked the lead-rope on our remaining mule, preparing to depart. "As Kushiel's Chosen, I swear it to you. We will find your daughter."

Joscelin mounted his gelding without comment, swinging its head toward the west and Verreuil, and thus did we make our exit.

It was nearly an hour before he spoke of it.

"You shouldn't have said that to her," he said without looking at me. "What I said last night. . . you and I know the odds. I said it to give you heart. You made her believe, Phedre. False hope is crueler than kindness." "I know." I could not explain to him that the words had come from a hollow place within me, that I had not known I would speak them until I opened my mouth and the words had emerged. "Joscelin, I had to."

He did look at me, then, but offered no reply. Soon, our trail led back into the steep crags and gorges, rendering conversation impossible. Joscelin led and I followed behind the pack-mule's bobbing haunches, guiding my mare with care and considering the strange emotion that churned within my breast.

It was anger.

All my life, I have been marked as Kushiel's Chosen-and I have suffered for it, as have others, who have born the harsh brunt of my fate. And yet even as I have acknowledged the folly of my choices, the blood-guilt I bear, I have known, too, that each of us makes our own choices, and no one is free of responsibility for his or her actions. To believe otherwise is vanity. If I have questioned Kushiel's wisdom in choosing me-indeed, if I have prayed to be freed from the burden of my nature-I have never questioned his justice.

I questioned it now.

What had a dairy-crofter's child done, to be caught up in the terrible net of retribution? Nothing. What sins had her parents committed, that their only begotten should be used as an instrument of vengeance?

Sold unripe cheese at market? I could not fathom it. Braced for intrigue, for plots within plots, I had found the last thing I expected: chance, cruel chance. If there were purpose behind it, it could only be Kushiel's doing-or Elua himself. I could not imagine a purpose so deep it justified this cruelty. And I was angered to the core of my soul.

The rain had ceased by the time we reached the top of a massif, a broad and windswept plateau, the mountains stretching below us in brown wrinkles. Joscelin paused to rest our blown horses. "Phedre," he murmured as I came alongside him. "You said it yourself. Even Blessed Elua cannot prevent the world's ills. He can but give us the courage to face them with love."

I choked on a bitter laugh. "And what did the girl say? She was right. It's not enough."

"It has to be." He looked steadily at me. "It's all we have."

"This is Kushiel's doing." I brushed the tangled hair back from my face, gazing at the vista below, the distant blue mirror of a lake that marked the estate of Verreuil. "I feel it, Joscelin. I feel it in my marrow. I was a fool not to see it before."

"Mayhap it is so." His hands rested quietly on the pommel of his saddle, and his eyes were as blue as the lake. "Even Kushiel serves Blessed Elua in the end, and even he must use mortal means to do his bidding. And you are his chosen."

"Yes." I swallowed, remembering my pledge to Agnes ecot. "Come on. Let's go."

It was after midday when we arrived at Verreuil. I had been there before, but I forgot, between visits, the atmosphere of tranquil chaos that reigned at Joscelin's childhood home. It is a beautiful estate, sprawling along the shore of the lake-Lake Verre-crumbling in its oldest parts, the lines etched clean-graven and new where the family has expanded. We emerged from the dark shadows of fir trees to find one of his nieces at play on the forest's verge. "Uncle Joscelin!" I caught a glimpse of an urchin face, smudged and wide-eyed, as the girl ran at him and heard Joscelin's laugh as he leaned down from the saddle, catching her in a hug. And then with a wriggle, she was gone, high tones setting the hills to ringing. "Uncle Joscelin, Uncle Joscelin's here!"

We hadn't ridden ten paces before the manor doors were flung open and its inhabitants spilled out into the courtyard; adults, children, a surge of barking hounds. Tears stung my eyes at the welcome. I hung back, letting Joscelin precede me.

"My lady Phedre!" Luc Verreuil came over to grin up at me, two years the elder of Joscelin, and taller by as many inches. His broad hands spanned my waist as he lifted me from the saddle, sweeping me into a crushing embrace the instant my feet touched cobblestones. "Well met!"

"And you . . . you great lummox!" The air had fair left my lungs. I wheezed, greeting his wife Yvonne, tall and willowy, with fox-slanted grey eyes. "My lady."

"Oh, Luc, do let her breathe." Stooping, she smiled and gave me the kiss of greeting.

I caught my breath and turned to greet Joscelin's parents. "My lord Millard, my lady Ges, thank you for your hospitality. Forgive us for intruding, but we'd no time to send word."

"Nonsense." The Lady Ges smiled, warm and earthy, even as her husband bowed. "You're always welcome here, Comtesse."

"Thank you." I drew another deep breath. My lungs seemed to be functioning again. "I am sorry to say it isn't exactly a courtesy call, my lady."

Millard Verreuil gave me a speculative look. He was a tall man- all the members of Joscelin's family were tall-with the same old-fashioned beauty as his middle son. What he saw writ in my features, I cannot say, but he took it seriously. "We will speak of it inside."

I nodded, and then Joscelin brought his younger brother Mahieu to greet me, and Mahieu's wife Marie-Louise, and nothing would do but that I was reintroduced to their children and Luc and Yvonne's, and then his elder sister Jehane, visiting with a pair of teenaged sons who shuffled their feet and turned beet-red in my presence, and all around us was the milling presence of dogs, great hairy creatures that stood waist-high on me, as tall as everything else in Verreuii.

Somehow, the Lady Ges got us all indoors and managed to dispense with the children and dogs, assembling the adults in the parlour with light refreshments and wine. There was somewhat of her, I thought, in Joscelin's quiet competence, for all that he favored his father and had his father's reserve. I wondered, sometimes, what he would have been like had he grown to manhood in Verreuil, instead of being sent to endure the stern rigors of the Cassiline Brotherhood at the age of ten. I wondered too if he resented it. If he did, he never said so.

There was a scuffling and scraping of chairs as everyone present drew chairs around, the better to hear.

The parlour of Verreuil had the gracious, lived-in comfort one finds in old homes. The furnishings were fine, but worn; the carpets threadbare in spots. Still, the wood was lovingly polished with beeswax and fresh flowers adorned the room.

The Chevalier Millard Verreuil took the place of precedence, seated in a stiff, throne-backed chair. I could not but help glancing at his left arm where it lay atop the chair's arm. It ended in a stump, hiddenbeneath the cuff of his cambric sleeve. He'd lost his left hand at the battle of Troyes-le-Mont, during the last, desperate surge of attack by a group of Skaldi invaders, cut off from their retreating army. He inclined his head to me, opening the discussion with formality. "How may House Verreuil serve her majesty the Queen?"

"My lord." I shook my head. "We're not here on the Queen's business, not exactly."

He blinked. "I thought-"

"Father." Joscelin leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. "Do you recall the missing Courcel heir?"

"Melisande's child." The Chevalier said the words as though they tasted foul.

"Imriel de la Courcel," said Jehane, Joscelin's sister. "Son of Melisande Shahrizai and Prince Benedicte de la Courcel, brother of Ganelon, uncle to Rolande, great-uncle to the Queen. Missing since the attack in La Serenissima." She was the genealogist of the family, I remembered. I had not met her before.

Joscelin had made a point of visiting at her husband's estates, but Ysandre had required my skills as a translator for an Illyrian delegation and I'd been unable to accompany him.

"Yes." Joscelin nodded. "He was at the Sanctuary of Elua at Landras." He ignored the indrawn breaths and murmurs of surprise. "Some three months ago, he vanished; disappeared, tending goats in the mountains. We thought it was part of a conspiracy, but last night. . . last night we learned of another missing child. A dairy-crofter's daughter, eleven years of age, stolen from a cow-pasture some miles outside of Harnis village."

"Bears," Luc said promptly. "Or wolves, like as not. They're bold in the spring, come calving season, and themselves still hungered from winter."

"I don't think so." Joscelin shook his head. "There would have been traces, remains, signs of bloodshed.

The crofter searched, and so did the priests. They know mountains. This has an odor of human intervention."

"But who would do such a thing?" It was Marie-Louise, Mahieu's wife, who exclaimed aloud, paling.

Plump and pretty, she contrasted with her husband, who was as tall as the rest of his clan and lanky with it. "And why?"

"We don't know," I said softly. I turned to Millard Verreuil. "That's why we've come, my lord. To ask your aid in scouring Siovale, at least the area between here and Landras."

"You shall have it." He sat upright in his chair, face fierce and bloodless with anger, eyes blazing like an old hawk's. "Name of Elua! I'll lead the search myself, and turn out the countryside. Every crofter, every shepherd, every small-holder-no, wait, I'll do more. I'll send to his lordship Marquis de Toluard, and see how many men he'll lend us for the task."

"I'll bear the message," Yvonne offered. "He's my mother's cousin, he'll listen to me."

"He'll listen anyway!" Millard Verreuil pounded the arm of the chair with his good right hand. "Elua's blood! No one of Shemhazai's lineage will rest while an abomination of this nature occurs in Siovale!"

The Lady Ges looked at me with worried eyes, her pleasant face furrowed. "You've no idea who mighthave done it?"

I turned out my hands. "None, my lady."

"Euskerri might have," Jehane said in her cool voice, thinking aloud, "if there was some gain in it, some way to force the Queen's hand in their quarrel with the House of Aragon." It was a quarrel of which I knew little, save that Euskerria was a native province of northwestern Aragonia, annexed by the descendents of Tiberium who comprised the House of Aragon. She shook her head, dismissing the idea.

"If they knew the lad's identity, that part might make sense, but not the crofter's daughter."

"No one knows mountains like the Euskerri," Mahieu observed, raking his forelock back from his brow.

"And they're cunning enough to throw us off the scent by abducting a second child." Like his sister, he was of a scholarly bent, well versed in the history of the area.

"No." She frowned. "The Queen would have heard by now. Tsingani, mayhap. I've read accounts of D'Angeline children being stolen by Tsingani. Elua knows, there are enough of them that travel the passes between here and Aragonia. Tinkers and horse-traders, they say, but who knows what they might hide in those wagons?"

"No." The sharpness of my own voice surprised me. I sighed, apologizing. "My lady Jehane, forgive me.

But it is not Tsingani."

"As you say, Comtesse." Jehane looked at me with composed interest. "Near-sister, I should say. I must confess, you're not what I expected."

"Oh?" I raised my brows.

"No." A corner of her mouth curved in the familiar hint of a smile. "I expected a keen wit and a strong will. Joscelin wouldn't have fallen for less. And I know what you are. Still, I didn't expect you to ride out of the backlands of Siovale looking like one of the more delicate blossoms in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers."

I flushed. Jehane laughed.

"Jehane!" Her father, already closeted with Luc and Joscelin, laying his plans for the search, turned to give her a look of reproach. "Be courteous."

She merely smiled, rose and stooped to kiss his cheek before turning back to me. "They'll be at it for hours. Shall I show you to your quarters? You look as though you wouldn't mind a rest before dinner.

With your permission, Mother," she added.

"By all means." The Lady Ges, abstracted, gestured with one hand, counting on the other. "I'll be busy till nightfall trying to figure out how the larder's to provision this undertaking."

I followed Jehane through the rambling corridors of Verreuil to the rooms in which Joscelin and I had stayed before when we visited, clean and airy, with massive timbers supporting the ceiling and a window that looked out onto the mountains. It held, touchingly, some few items of Joscelin's childhood-a Caerdicci primer with a cracked binding, a book of verse by the warrior-poet Martin Leger, a child's miniature hunting-horn. Jehane lingered, picking up the horn and examining it.

"I gave this to him," she murmured. "For his ninth birthday. I had to beg the money from Luc to do it. Iknew he'd only have a year to use it, before he was sent to the Cassilines. Does he speak of his time there?"

I sat down on the bed. "Not often."

"I missed him the most, I think." Jehane set down the horn. "Ma-hieu was too young, and Luc . . . Luc never said it, but I think he was glad it wasn't him. You know Father was furious that Joscelin broke his vows for you? It nearly killed him, when he learned Joscelin had been convicted in absentia for the murder of your lord Delaunay. He didn't believe it, but it nearly killed him all the same."

Joscelin and I had been enslaved in Skaldia when that had happened, betrayed by Melisande Shahrizai, though no one could have known it. It had been the logical conclusion, I suppose, when Anafiel Delaunay and his apprentice Alcuin were found slain in their home, while Delaunay's anguissette and her Cassiline guard had vanished. I remember how it grieved Joscelin, on the eve of battle, to think his father might have believed it. "I guessed as much," I said. "But he never said it to my face. He was always courteous."

"Courteous." She pulled a wry look. "Yes. Father is that. Well, he had the sense to realize that fate will out in the end, after Troyes-le-Mont. Mother was glad, though. She always mourned losing her middle son to the Cassilines." Jehane cocked her head at me. "You do love him, don't you?"

"Yes." I nodded. "More than I can say."

"Good." She dusted her hands, then wiped them on her skirt. "Keep him safe, will you?" She gave a self-conscious laugh. "It sounds foolish, I know. He with a sword at his back and daggers at his belt, knowing more ways to use them than I can count, and you . . . well. But he was my younger brother, once, and he's given his heart into your hands."

"I understand, my lady."

Jehane left, then, and I lay down on the bed. She was right, I was weary; more weary than I had known. Of a surety, travel takes its toll, but this was a weariness of the soul more than the body. The crofter's revelation had dealt me a blow. In all my careful efforts to unravel the mystery of Imriel's disappearance, it had never occurred to me that it could prove out to be a senseless crime. It was the last, the very last, thing I had expected; that anyone might have expected. All my wits, all my second-guessing and plotting, went to naught. Now it fell to Millard Verreuil and his compatriots to search out the truth by might of numbers and main force. If I was relieved to be free of the burden of responsibility-and I was-still, it left me feeling bereft and directionless, and very, very tired.

So thinking, I drifted into sleep and did not wake until someone shook me. I opened my eyes to find slanting gold rays of sunset filling the room and Joscelin seated on the edge of the bed, smiling down at me.

"You're not going to sleep through dinner, are you?" he asked. "I wouldn't blame you if you did-it's seven kinds of mayhem down there-but there are a few members of the family would be mortally disappointed."

"No." I yawned and sat up. "I'm coming."

Joscelin hadn't exaggerated. The dining-hall of Verreuil was nigh overflowing, full not only with his considerable family and their offspring, but the estate's eight men-at-arms and almost a dozen others, crofters and shepherd's sons in plainspun clothing, seated elbow to elbow with the minor nobility ofSiovale. Millard Verreuil had wasted no time and stood on no ceremony. For all his formal courtesy, he was an egalitarian at heart.

All the talk was of the expedition to be launched in the morning. Yvonne had already departed with a delegation to the Marquis de Toluard, begging his assistance. Mahieu and Jehane had been busy in the library, gridding the region to be searched and copying maps, recruiting a number of the older children to aid in the endeavor. The Lady Ges and Marie-Louise had spent the afternoon supervising the harried kitchen staff, assembling packets of provisions for each of the parties. Small wonder, I thought, that dinner appeared to have been cooked in haste, the mutton roast charred without and rather too red on the inside.

Still, no one seemed to mind. I picked at my food and let the conversation wash over me, being gracious to those around me and ignoring covert stares from the newcomers. Jehane's sons begged permission to accompany one of the parties and were granted it; Luc's eldest daughter begged the same, and was sharply denied, for which I was glad. The lads were fourteen and fifteen, old enough to fend for themselves. The girl was scarcely ten.

"We'll leave at dawn," Joscelin said to me, his voice pitched below the clamor. "Mahieu and Jehane have established rendezvous points for the parties to meet on the third day, so if anyone's learned anything, we can proceed from there. Either way, we'll send a runner back to the manor. There ought to be word from the Marquis by then, and you'll be kept informed here."

"What?" I stared at him. "Are you mad? I'm going with you."

"Phedre." His face hardened, white lines forming alongside his nose. "No. You'd only slow us down."

He held up one hand, forestalling my outburst. "Listen, these men are born and bred to the mountains, and they know how to travel quickly and surely. I'm not even leading a group, I'm travelling with Reynard's party because I don't know the territory as well, I've been away too long. And you . . . you're staying at Verreuil."

"Slow you down?" I asked incredulously. "Joscelin, I crossed the Camaelines in the dead of winter with you!"

"Yes." His voice was taut and low. "Because we had to. This is different. Name of Elua, Phedre! I don't have that many chances to keep you out of unnecessary danger. Won't you let me take this one?"

I opened my mouth to retort, and remembered Jehane, reminding me that I held her brother's heart in my hands. I sighed. Joscelin was right; there was no real reason for me to accompany them. If I wouldn't slow them down-and I might, a bit, it was true that he was better in the mountains than I-I wouldn't contribute much either. "All right," I said, giving way with ill grace. "I'll stay."

"Thank you," he said, meaning it.

NINETEEN.

MORNING DAWNED fair and bright over the mountains of Siov-ale, although the manor was awake and bustling long before. I felt displaced and underfoot with no role to perform. Joscelin was in the stables with Mahieu, seeing that all was readiness. Wandering down to the kitchens, I found Marie-Louise staggering toward the dining-hall with an immense pot of porridge. "Here," I said, reaching for it. "I'll take that."

"Are you sure?" She rolled her eyes. "It would be a help. We've got every hand in there cooking, and no one to serve at breakfast. Mind, it's heavy."