"It may." A grin broke over Eleazar's homely face, making it for an instant lovely. "Who can say, Phedre no Delaunay? It is a mystery, and one that we who follow the teachings of Yeshua ben Yosef have abandoned. Who needs the voice of Adonai speaking between the cherubim when the Mashiach has walked the earth, flesh and blood and somewhat more besides? Who needs the Name of God, when His Son has spoken the Word of redemption and pledged a new covenant?"

I thought of the terrible power and anguish caught behind Hyacinthe's eyes, of the yawning chasm that had opened in the sea between us and the awesome, wrathful presence moving in its depths. "Not all of Adonai's creatures accepted Yeshua's covenant with obedience, father. Rahab, who is the Prince of the Deep, did not; and it is Hyacinthe who suffers for it. If there is no power in Elua's lore nor in Yeshua's to turn him aside, if the Name of God is the only power to which Rahab must answer, then I need it." "Perhaps it is so." Eleazar was silent for a moment. "You answer your own questions, and I can tell you no more. Is there merit in the scroll's tale? I cannot say. You must go to Jebe-Barkal and see. Only one other thing may I tell you, Phedre no Delaunay, one true thing." He folded his hands, his expression grave. "Adonai is beyond our mortal compass. To receive His Name, we must approach Him in perfect trust and love, to make of the self a vessel where the self is not."

"Eleazar." I swallowed. "I'm not sure what that means."

"Nor am I," he said gently, "though I have sought it these many years. I know only that it is true, for it was taught to me by my teacher and his teacher before him, as long as the Children of Yisra-El have endured. Although you do not worship Adonai, you are Elua's child, Phedre, and as such know something of love. Perhaps the way will be revealed."

"Thank you, Eleazar," I said, rising from my kneeling position. "I pray you are right."

Well, it was less than I might have wished, but it was enough- enough to keep hope alive, at any rate.

It seems strange to me that a people could be so dispersed, that so much of their lore and history could be forgotten, though mayhap it is unjust of me to think thusly. We are different, we D'Angelines, but what we have, we could lose as easily. Waldemar Selig's invasion had proved that much.

Yes, I thought, and how well would we endure then, trusting to the love of Blessed Elua to sustain us for a thousand years, keeping our faith? What tales would we still tell of Kushiel's justice, of Camael's might, of Eisheth's compassion, of Anael's husbandry, of Shemhazai's cleverness, Azza's pride and Naamah's generosity? Would we still admire Cassiel's loyalty, or reckon it folly? And Elua, Blessed Elua . . . what solace would we find in our wandering, misbegotten deity, whose sole province was Love?

I was ashamed, then, of my thoughts, and gave my blessing unto Eleazar ben Enokh. He embraced me at our parting, and his kind wife, Adara, did too. His parting words stayed with me, and I pondered on them. How could the self be where the self was not? In the end, it was like all mysteries: Unknowable. I would worry about that, I thought, in Jebe-Barkal.

"So?" Joscelin asked when I returned home. "What has the Rebbe to say?"

"Little enough," I said. "Less than I expected, though more than I might have feared. He says we must go and see for ourselves."

He nodded, accepting my words, his mouth twisting wryly. "Well enough, then. Melisande Shahrizai was right in one thing, at least. The scholar's art has taken you as far as it may. We will see what answers Jebe-Barkal holds."

It seemed soon, too soon, to be leaving the City of Elua once more when we had only scarce returned, but my business was settled and my affairs in order, my farewells said anew. We dined that night in the garden, a quiet meal, Joscelin and Ti-Philippe and I, amid a profound air of melancholy. Young Hugues sat some distance away, playing a sad, sweet tune on his flute. He was a better musician than poet, and the soft, piping notes rose plaintively in the twilight, born on the lingering scent of sun-warmed herbs.

Eugenie served us herself, as she had before, and if her expression was reserved, there were volumes of reproach in her eyes. I was torn in myself as I had never known, at once longing to stay, yearning to be gone.

"Let me go with you." Ti-Philippe came out with it at last, slamming his wineglass down on the table.Red wine slopped over the edge, staining the immaculate linen. His eyes glistened with emotion in the fairy-light of the torches. "Please, my lady. It's a dark road, the Tsingano said so himself, and already it has taken a branching you could not have guessed. Who can say what lies ahead? Can you truly afford to turn away aid freely given? Even a Cassiline can use someone to watch his back."

The sound of Hugues' flute halted. Joscelin regarded me without speaking, by which I knew he did not disagree.

I looked at Ti-Philippe's face, open and earnest. Of all of Phedre's Boys, he had always been the most easy in his manner, the one least capable of hiding aught he thought or felt. He'd sworn his loyalty to me on a whim, a jest, so long ago-and yet he'd kept it, and proved it a hundred times over. I thought of his comrades, of Remy and Fortun, and how they had died. It had taken a half-dozen of Benedicte's men to bring down Remy, who had sung so sweetly and died cursing. And Fortun, ah! My steady Fortun, who had almost made the door, a dagger to his kidneys and another to his heart.

These things I thought, and gazed at Ti-Philippe in the torchlight until his face wavered, and I saw him pale and dead, his throat gaping in a scarlet grin.

"No." The word came out harsher than I had intended. I shuddered, blinking, "No." I said it again, with gentle firmness. "This road is not for you, Chevalier."

What he heard in my voice, I cannot say, but it was enough. Ti-Philippe bowed his head, unruly hair shadowing his brow. His hand closed hard around the wineglass, white at the knuckles. "So be it," he said roughly. "My lady, I will keep your hearth until you return. But know that in my heart, I ride at your side."

On the marble bench where he played his flute, Hugues burst into tears.

So it was decided.

That night I slept, and dreamed again-the nightmare, the same I'd had before. It was the same to nearly every detail. Once again I stood in the prow of a ship, one of the swift Illyrian ships with its canted sail, my heart breaking as the stony shore of the island receded and Hyacinthe's boyish voice cried out across the widening gulf, "Phedre, Phedre!" It was his voice, alive in memory, the same that had greeted me in merriment, that had dared me to steal sweets in the crowded marketplace of Night's Doorstep, that had shouted warning when the Dowayne's men came to fetch me back to Cereus House, tinged now with terror and loneliness.

But the boy, the boy who wept on the shore and stretched out his arms in a futile plea, had skin the hue of new ivory and hair that fell in a blue-black shimmer, and his features were not those of Hyacinthe.

"I am coming," I murmured in desperate petition, thick-tongued and half awake at the greying of dawn, "I am coming." And then I woke and knew myself in my own bed, with Joscelin asleep beside me, peaceful in repose. While I am safe, no dreams trouble his sleep. I give him nightmares enough waking. I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, wondering to which boy I had spoken-the Hyacinthe-that-was of my memory, or Imriel de la Courcel, whom I had never met. The pattern of fate, like the Name of God, was too vast to hold.

Wondering, I slept and dreamed myself awake and wondering still, and knew no more until Joscelin shook me gently awake, and I opened my eyes to bright sunlight. It was time to go.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

WERE attacked by bandits on the northern route through Caerdicca Unitas.

It bears telling, for it served me a grave reminder of the limits of my own wisdom. I was so confidant in my own dire destiny, so sure I had done the right thing in forbidding Ti-Philippe to accompany us, that I paid scant heed to the normal dangers the road posed to a lone pair of travellers.

The new riding attire I'd commissioned from Favrielle no Eglantine was all she had promised; fluid and comfortable, with an elegance of line and richness of fabric that fair shouted D'Angeline nobility. Of a surety, it did so to those who attacked us, reckoning a D'Angeline noblewoman and her single man-at-arms easy prey.

We were a day's ride west of Pavento when it happened. An irony, that; it is where Ysandre's couriers were slain, attempting to outrace Melisande's messengers many years ago. I daresay we had been more vigilant on our first journey. Still, it happened nigh too fast for thought, in a deserted stretch of road.

One moment, Joscelin and I were riding quietly side by side, trailing our newly acquired packhorses behind us; the next, some eight men had swarmed out of the hills.

They were Caerdicci, by the look of them, although some few may have had Skaldic blood. Poor and hungry, to a man; outcasts and brigands, with no armor and shoddy weapons. Two of them ran behind us, severing the lead-lines to our packhorses and claiming them. One was at my side before I'd scarce blinked, a grubby hand clutching my riding skirts while the other shoved the point of a dagger at my waist. Another held my mare's bridle. Joscelin's gelding reared, having once been battle-trained; he swore, getting it under control. Three men ranged around him with knives and makeshift spears and one notched sword, and their leader stepped into the road before us.

He held a crossbow, fine and new and gleaming, and I've no doubt it was stolen. Still, he held it cocked and level, pointed directly at Joscelin.

And no more did he get out, for in a motion too quick for the eye to detect, Joscelin ripped one of his daggers from its sheath, hurling it at the bandit leader. The man's lips continued to move even as his hand rose, perplexed, fumbling at the hilt protruding from his throat, and his body slumped sideways.

In the instant of gaping surprise that followed, I clasped my hands together and brought them down hard on the head of the man whose knife poked at my ribs. He staggered and looked at me open-mouthed, but I had already set heels to my mare's flanks, hearing the ringing sound of Joscelin's sword being drawn.

"Cassiel!" His shout rose bright and hard on the midday air, the line of his blade arcing like a scythe as it sheared through flesh and bone, a spray of crimson blood following. His face was set in perfect fury. At a safe distance, I drew in my mare and sat her, trembling. Three men dead and another wounded, and he not trained to fight on horseback. He dismounted, stalking the remaining four. Seeing one retrieve the crossbow from their fallen leader, I drew breath to shout a warning, but Joscelin was already turning,braid flying out in a straight line, sword grasped in his two-handed grip.

The bandit closed his eyes and pulled the crossbow's trigger, whispering a prayer to any Caerdicci deities listening. There were none. The bolt flew and Joscelin's vambraces flashed, deflecting the quarrel.

Cassiline Brothers actually prepare for such feats. He advanced, the backstroke of his sword perfectly level, catching his assailant even as the man fumbled to load another bolt. The bandit crumpled at the waist and lay bleeding into the dust of the road.

The others scattered. One of the packhorses balked and threw his head up hard, tearing the lead-line from his captor's hand; the other spooked. A pair of the remaining bandits waved their arms and shouted as they ran, endeavoring to scare it into the foothills. The wounded man followed at a hunched, limping run.

For a moment, I thought Joscelin would remount and pursue them, then I saw him gather himself.

Thrusting his fingers between his lips, he gave the shrill, trilling whistle that summoned all our mounts. It is a trade-secret of Tsingani horse-trainers, though they taught it to us; more than that, I have sworn not to say. The errant packhorse came running, and my own mare's ears perked. I nudged her to a trot.

Joscelin stood in the road, breathing hard, blood sliding in crimson runnels toward the point of his lowered sword. "You're all right?" he asked without looking at me.

"I'm fine." I didn't wholly trust my voice.

He nodded, wiping his blade carefully on the roughspun tunic adorning the nearest corpse, and then, without warning, knelt in the dust. With his head bowed, he laid his sword down and crossed his forearms, murmuring a Cassiline prayer. The packhorses and I waited silently, while his gelding leaned in to whuffle his hair in curiosity. Joscelin's eyes, when he rose, were filled with anguish.

"It gets easier, you know." In one fluid motion, he sheathed his sword at his back and went to pluck his thrown dagger from the throat of the bandit leader, face averted from me. "Too easy."

"I'm sorry." There was nothing else I could say.

"I know." Cleaning and sheathing his dagger, he went about the business of splicing our severed lead-lines. "Give me a hand, you've a better touch with knots."

I worked without comment. When we had finished, we remounted and rode onward toward Pavento, where we sought lodgings for the night and reported the incident to the Principe's guard. No further hostilities troubled us that day or the next. If the local banditry had any network of information, I daresay word went out along the northern route that the pair of harmless-looking D'Angeline travellers were best left undisturbed.

On the next day, we reached La Serenissima.

Twilight hovered smoky and blue on the waters of the canals and soft roseate hues washed the buildings around the Campo Grande, here and there picked out with a brazen note of gilt where the sun's dying rays still pierced. Laughter carried over water, and voices raised in song. The painted bissoni and gondoli were out, young men of the Hundred Worthy Families courting and wooing in the ways of Serenissiman nobility.

It could have been my world. I even entertained the thought- once, briefly, for a heartbeat's space oftime. Severio Stregazza, who is the Doge's grandson, proposed marriage to me in this city. His family would never have permitted it, of course. Still, he did not know it at the time.

I looked at Joscelin's profile, silhouetted against the deep blue of falling night.

I never doubted that I chose aright.

It made it all the harder to ask him what I had to ask, that night in the dining-hall of our elegant inn, the same we'd stayed in before. I'd no more inclination than I'd had the first time to burden any of my acquaintances in La Serenissima with this visit. The rooms were fine and the service well-trained; the food was outstanding for Caerdicci fare.

"Joscelin."

Amid the clamor of voices and rattling cutlery, he caught the hesitation in my tone. "What is it?"

I beckoned for the neatly-attired servant to bring more of the sweet muscat wine the inn served with its dessert course. He bowed, smiling with pleasure, and refilled my glass. I took a sip, and another, delaying. "I want to go alone tomorrow."

Joscelin sat unmoving, then blinked, once. Something hard surfaced in his expression. "To see Melisande. Why?"

"Because." I turned the delicate wineglass, watching the candlelight refracted in the fluted rim. It was exquisitely made. Serenissiman work, no doubt, blown on the Isla Vitrari. "What I have to tell her... it is about her son. And it is a matter between her and Kushiel. No one else."

"Oh, Phedre." It was the sorrow in his voice that jerked my gaze back to his. "Do you have such a care for her pride? Even still?"

"It's not only that. Not pride." I shook my head. "Joscelin . . . you saw the children, the children we saved. And they were the lucky ones. I have to tell her that."

"It is Kushiel's justice," he said softly. "You said so yourself."

"Yes." I drained my glass and set it back. "Did you think it just, when we found those children in Amilcar?"

He didn't answer immediately. "It is not for me to judge."

"Nor I. But I think ... I think there is no one in the world who despises Melisande Shahrizai with the same purity of emotion as you." My voice was shaking, a little. "And I think that when she learns that Kushiel has chosen to punish her by exacting payment for her sins from her son ... I think that even Melisande deserves to hear it alone."

Joscelin's voice was harsh. "Do you think she would offer you the same compassion?"

To impart suffering without compassion . . .

"It doesn't matter." I swallowed, hard. "Joscelin, I am not easy in my heart with this. I have served Kushiel all my life, and never questioned his will. I question it now. I do not see that the end justifies themeans. And I am made to endure pain, to revel in it, not to inflict it. To deliver this news with you glowering over my shoulder ... I don't think I can do it."

"I wouldn't glower," he said automatically, then sighed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye-sockets. "All right. All right, all right. Do as you must, and I will wait in the Temple proper."

Dropping his hands, he looked at me with slightly bloodshot eyes. "Will it suffice?"

"Yes," I whispered. "Thank you."

"Don't." He shook his head. "I think your compassion is wasted on Melisande."

Thence the need for an anguissette to balance the scales.

"I know," I said miserably. "And mayhap you are right. But I can only act according to the dictates of my nature, not hers."

"Love as thou wilt," said Joscelin, and sighed again.

In the morning we went to the Temple of Asherat-of-the-Sea.

Poets and philosophers alike have written of the sense of strangeness that one encounters from time to time of a moment lived before; a place, a person, a chance word, that triggers something in one's memory that says, yes, I remember, that is how it was, that is exactly how it was. So I have read, but I have never encountered such a thing save that there was reason for it. I felt it that day. I had been here before, in this city built on water, beneath the great golden domes of the Temple. Full many a time had I met the blank stare of the great effigy of Asherat, towering vast and stony above the altar, carved waves surging at her feet.

I brought honeycakes, the first time. The second, I usurped her voice.

It was a bargain we had struck, the goddess and I.

And I had come with Ysandre, who had the right to order me because she was my Queen; and I had come, last of all, with Joscelin, as I came now, amid the priestesses of the Elect, with their whispering blue robes and the veils of silver net that hid their faces, glass beads shimmering like wire-strung tears, bare feet moving soundlessly over the floor.

"I will wait," Joscelin said to me, making a formal Cassiline bow, his hands clenched into fists beneath the steel mesh gauntlets of his vambraces. Amid the murmurous presence of the priestesses, the fierce soft pride of the Temple eunuchs with their ceremonial spears, he seemed an alien thing, hard-edged and masculine.

"I will return," I promised. He thought me a fool; I know he thought me a fool for my compassion. Was I? I didn't know. I followed the Elect priestess down the winding corridors, wondering. What do you owe Melisande, that you must deliver this news yourself? So Ysandre had asked me, and rightfully so.

She was my liege and my sovereign, Ysandre de la Courcel; she had believed, when any other would have doubted. She had raised me up and given me every honor, given me the Companion's Star to wear at my breast, called me her near-cousin. When I thought of courage, when I thought of loyalty, it wore Ysandre's face as I had seen it on our return from La Serenissima, when she had parted the troops of Percy de Somerville's army and ridden without faltering to the very walls of the City of Elua. And when I thought of love, it wore Joscelin's face.

Phedre!

But there was Melisande's voice in my memory too, unstrung with shock, her beautiful eyes wide with fear after I had cracked open my skull against my cell in La Dolorosa. I had seen it, as I slumped to the floor.

A kiss, one kiss. It took all that I had to resist it.

She had only touched me once, since. And that with the point of a dagger. Joscelin's dagger. I'd have let her kill me, if she could. She couldn't.

It was the same, all the same. The gilt-hinged door, the priestess of the Elect giving the double knock and announcing my name in the soft, slurring Caerdicci dialect they use in that city. It was the same room, filled with slanting sunlight and the soft splashing of an unseen fountain. The sound of the door closing, leaving us alone, was the same. Even the fragrance was the same; a little deeper, in summer, of water and sun-warmed marble and flowering shrubs, and the scent, the faint, musky spice I would have known anywhere, could have picked blindfolded out of a crowd, the unique fragrance of Melisande, who stood waiting.

And the wave, the wave of emotion was the same, hatred and love and desire, cracking my heart to bits and grinding the fragments. Only this time, I saw the fear in her eyes. And this time, I knelt.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

"TELL ME.".

Melisande's eyes closed, lids dusky with blue veins, shuttered against the pain. I have done such a thing myself. I have seen it in others. I had never seen it in Melisande. I had been right to come alone. Her lashes curled like ebony wave-crests. I am D'Angeline. I cannot fail to notice such things.