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raise them as their own, given half a chance.
    “They wouldn’t,” I murmured, but my voice went unheard, buried beneath the flood of anguish our inquiry had unleashed.
    Somehow, Joscelin managed everything that night, hearing out their terrible story, making amends and apologies, pleading the travails of our journey and spiriting me away to our simple bedchamber. Agnette’s chamber, I knew now, the counterpane stitched by a loving mother for the only child of her blood. I sat upon it, turning my dumbstruck gaze to his.
    “Oh, Joscelin! What if it’s ... it’s nothing to do with politics, with the Queen’s kin, with Melisande. What if it’s just. ...” I searched futilely for words. “A bad thing that happened?”
    “We will find out.” He knelt beside the bed, eyes fierce, gripping my hands in his. “Phèdre, if someone is abducting D’Angeline children from their homes, we’ll find out about it. We’ll go in the morning to Verreuil. My father won’t stand for this lightly, I promise you that! He’ll give us every aid, put his men-at-arms at our disposal, rouse the countryside. We will find them.”
    I was shivering, to the marrow of my bones. I dared not think to what purpose the children had been taken, not yet. The rawness of the Écots’ grief was unbearable. I do not know, if it had been my child, if I could have endured it. What did I know of a parent’s suffering? It was that very fear had kept me from motherhood, and this bereavement was worse, far worse, than aught I had imagined. “These poor people.”
    “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 Écots’ 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 Écot 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, Phèdre. 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.