I remembered them. Gildas, the elder, had been white-haired when I'd met him before; now, he was ancient. He came forward trembling, one crabbed hand extended. "Thou hast agreed," he said, his voicequavering, speaking in the D'Angeline of the oldest courtly lays. "Thou hast agreed to the sacrifice, fair lady!"

"Not exactly." I took his hand in both of mine. The bones felt bird-hollow, sheathed in skin like parchment. "I have come to break the curse, my lord Gildas. Your long service here is done."

He withdrew his hand with a querulous sound. Hyacinthe merely watched, colors shifting in his dark eyes. Tilian, the younger, bowed to him.

"Wilst thou require the basin refilled ere sundown, my lord?" he asked.

"You heard her," Hyacinthe replied. "Soon it will be ended here, one way or another. I require nothing further."

They remained behind, watching with consternation as Hyacinthe led the way down a second set of steps to the lonely tower that had been his home for so long. It rose, grey and stony, from the rocks of Third Sister, the oriel windows glinting in the sun-rose-red, amber, emerald, a cobalt like the color of ImriePs eyes. I gaped at it now as I had not, then. Hyacinthe paid it no heed. It was his prison, as familiar to him by now as his own skin.

I had forgotten how many of the isle-folk attended upon the Master of the Straits. They bowed low as he entered, watching with curious eyes as we mounted the curving stair, circling to the top of the tower.

His attendants, his gaolers. They had been kind to us, long ago. They treated him now with a mixture of awe and fear.

We climbed to the very top of the tower, a level unseen from below. And there, the chamber was set about not with colored oriels, but windows open onto the skies, looking out over the seas in every direction. It held uncountable treasures gathered from the deep-a gilded helmet encrusted with coral, a mottled egg the size of a newborn baby, a marble sphinx, an unstrung harp made from the jawbone of a whale, all things strange and wondrous, salt-pitted and ancient. Hyacinthe stood in the middle of the room and looked about him.

"Here is where he taught me," he said softly. "What I became, I learned in this place. He was not bad, you know; only desperate, and bound by strictures not of his making."

"I know," I whispered.

"It's funny." Hyacinthe turned to a massive bookstand, riffling through the pages that lay spread open upon it, pages of incalculable power. "I never had a father, not really. For a little while, in the Hippochamp, I thought Manoj might acknowledge me. But..." He shrugged. "There was the dromonde, after all. And in the end, it was this, instead. And he is the nearest thing I have known to it. To a father."

I watched him wrap the pages in oilskins and place them in an ancient leather case, bound with straps of bronze. "Are you sorry to leave it?"

"No." He closed the case, and looked at me, swallowing hard. "Yes." He sat down on a low ivory stool that dated to the Tiberian Empire. "It's been a long time, Phedre. I thought, at first, mayhap I could change this role, this place . . . bring a touch of light, of mirth, cast it in my image instead of his." He shook his head. "I was wrong. It was too hard, too long, too lonely. And the power ... it isolates. It changed me instead. And now?" He gave a bitter laugh. "I've become like him. All the servants I thought to befriend bow and fear to meet my eyes. Me, Hyacinthe, who ran a livery stable and told fortunes inNight's Doorstep to drunken lordlings! Who would have believed it? But I have become the Master of the Straits, and I do not know how to be anything else."

"Emile still has the stable," I said, kneeling beside him and taking his hands. "And your mother's lodging-house, and a good deal more. He's made quite a business of it."

"I know." His fingers moved in mine. "I saw it in the sea-mirror. You know I can't go back to that, Phedre."

"Tsingan kralis." Hyacinthe's mouth twisted. "A Didikani half-breed, outcast for wielding the dromonde.

They let Manoj banish me, and they let my mother live and die as vrajna, tainted for her loss of honor, though it was through no fault of her own. Do you think they would name me king if they did not covet the power I bear?"

"Mayhap not," I said steadily. "Do you blame them? For a thousand years, they have been outcast themselves, lest you forget. Even in Terre d'Ange, they are merely tolerated, sometimes despised, left to wander, to fend for themselves. And they are willing to change, for you. Even now, the Didikani enjoy greater stature than before. Under your leadership, the laws that condemned your mother, that rendered you outcast, might change."

Hyacinthe withdrew his hands from mine and covered his face. "It's too much," he said, muffled. "You do not know the responsibilities of the Master of the Straits. For eight hundred years, we have protected Alba and Terre d'Ange. Yes." He raised his head at my silence, glaring with unearthly eyes. "Protected!

For all that the separation was maintained, we protected you! Even now, I keep the bans. No Skaldi ship may sail from the north but I permit it, no Aragonian or Carthaginian from the south. Do you think my responsibilities will end if the curse is broken? They won't, Phedre. While I live, it is mine to ensure, because it is necessary. Do you suppose I can do that and serve to lead the Tsingani?"

"No." I wanted to quail under his glare; I steeled myself instead. "Is that why you're afraid to leave the isle?"

He looked away. "Who says that I am?"

I answered him with a question. "Is it Rahab you fear, or leaving?"

Outside the tower windows, gulls circled, riding the winds. Hyacinthe watched them. "Both," he said at length. "Oh, Phedre! I want it, I want it so badly I taste it, dream of it. I see my face in the mirror, aging, and I think of nothing else. But it scares me to death." He looked back at me. "I faltered. I was afraid.

Would the summoning have worked, if I hadn't?"

"I don't know." I sat on my heels and regarded him. "It will work this time. The geis is bound to me, now."

"What happens if you falter?"

I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. "I suppose I become your apprentice."

"And I get to die, while you wither into eternity." There were tears, mortal tears, in Hyacinthe's black eyes. "I should never have let you ashore." I folded my hands to hide their trembling. "I won't falter."

He smiled sadly. "Can you be so sure?"

"No." I forced my tone to remain calm. "But everything I love best in the world, aside from you, is on that ship you bound mid-harbor. And I haven't had twelve years to forget it. What's the cost, Hyacinthe, of pressing forward until Rahab manifests in his entirety? Pain? Fear? I'm an anguissette. These are things I was born to endure."

Hyacinthe shook his head. "You never give up, do you?"

"Not yet, anyway." I rose to my feet and extended my hand to him. "Come on, Master of the Straits.

There's a ship full of anxious people awaiting us, eager to learn if we're all going to live or die. Let's go find out. You can worry later what to do about the Tsingani." I helped him to his feet, then caught sight of myself in a bronze mirror as I turned to go, stopping me in my tracks. The winds that had born me up had blown my hair into serpentine tangles, wild and disheveled. I raised my hands in dismay, feeling at the gnarled locks, trying ineffectually to unknot them with my fingers. "Name of Elua! Hyacinthe, look what you did to my hair!"

"You think it will matter to Rahab?" Hyacinthe asked. I glanced sharply at him, and found him grinning; unexpected, as welcome as light in a dark place, his old grin, irrepressible, white and merry against his brown skin. He laughed at my ire, dodging a well-aimed blow and catching me in his arms. "Ah, Phedre!

You've not changed."

"Neither have you," I whispered, laying my head on his chest. "Not really, not underneath. I still know you, Hyacinthe."

We stood like that for a long time.

"You gave me a gift," he said eventually, his breath warm against my tangled hair. "That last night, on the isle, before you left me here alone . . ." His mouth curved in a smile. "It gave me something beautiful to remember. Sometimes, it was the only thing that kept me going."

"It wasn't a gift," I murmured. "I remember it, too."

"Phedre." Hyacinthe cupped my face in his hands. "I'm going to miss you."

I met his dark, sea-changing gaze and could not pretend he was wholly unaltered. "You'll go with Sibeal."

He nodded. "She has seen, in dreams, something of what I've become. And I have watched her, too, in the sea-mirror. We understood one another from the beginning, Phedre, Necthana's daughters and I.

Sibeal isn't you. But she's someone I could love. And you . . . I've watched you, too."

"Joscelin," I said.

"Joscelin." His smile was rueful. "That damned Cassiline, yes. Even on Alba, I saw it in both of you. I told you as much. Elua must have laughed when he bound your hearts together. Whatever power I have, it's naught to that. I'll not challenge that bond." "This is good-bye, then? To you and I?" I asked him.

"To the Queen of Courtesans and the Prince of Travellers." Hyacinthe traced a line along the curve of my left eye, the dart-stricken one. "It's what you became after all, isn't it? And I ... I will have to acknowledge the claim of the Tsingani. If I cannot rule them as Tsingan kralis, still, I shall have a say in the succession, and what we become as a people. That much is owed."

"Then it is good-bye."

"Mayhap." Something moved in the depths of his sea-dark eyes, containing something of Hyacinthe's merriment and something of the Master of the Straits' power. "If it came to pass, on the odd year or three, that the night breezes called your name in my voice, Phedre no Delaunay, would you answer?"

I put both arms around his neck and kissed him hard in reply.

It was at once familiar and strange, that kiss, and I tasted in it my own lost childhood, the legacy of a whore's unwanted get, raised by a reluctant Night Court, finding friendship for the first time. All of our history was in it, scrapes and mishaps, confidences shared, and the darker shadows of adulthood; the losses of the battle of Bryn Gorrydum, where I had learned there is healing in the sharing of Naamah's arts, and the terrible sacrifice Hyacinthe had made here upon this isle. And I tasted too the strangeness his life had become, the alien knowledge of elemental forces, the salt-surge of seawater, the tidal depths, the roiling clouds and the forked violence of lightning, the pure music of the unstrung winds.

"I was wrong." Hyacinthe laughed aloud, unfettered and joyous. His black eyes danced. "You have changed. Is that what it does, to hold the Name of God within you?"

"Yes," I said, and kissed him again.

His grin was pure wickedness when I stopped, and pure Hyacinthe. "And what did Melisande Shahrizai make of it?"

It may be he guessed because he was the Master of the Straits, and privy to arcane knowledge; it may be because he was Anasztaizia's son, and had the gift of the dromonde. But like as not, it was because he was Hyacinthe, and had known me longer than anyone else alive. "Oh, shut up." I laughed, sinking both hands into his black ringlets and tugging his head back down to mine. "I'm trying to say farewell, if not goodbye."

That time, he heeded me.

It went no further than a kiss, an unspoken promise, a bittersweet farewell. I would not have repented it if it had. Mayhap, when we were younger, it would have; but there were too many considerations, and we were too conscious of them. I let him go, and watched the solemn mantle of power settle back upon him as he gathered up the case that bore the pages from the Lost Book of Raziel.

"There is nothing else you want from this place?" I asked, glancing around.

"No." Hyacinthe shook his head. "Let it go to the folk of the isles, if they wish it. Those who were born to the Three Sisters have suffered as long as he or I, under this curse." He hesitated. "Is there aught you desire, Phedre? There is treasure aplenty, and you welcome to it."

"Only the library," I said, remembering how I had passed many hours in this tower reading the works ofa Hellene poetess long believed vanished to the world. "There are lost stories in it. I would see them restored."

"Lost stories." He smiled. "They are yours, if we survive this. I will order it so. Well, then, that's it. Are you ready?"

"Are you?" I studied his face.

"Yes." He took my hand, gripping it hard, the colors in his eyes shifting like the changing hues of the night sea when a cloud passes over the moon. "I won't falter if you won't."

He had the power to command the waves to rise and the winds to blow.

The Master of the Straits was afraid.

"I won't," I vowed, and prayed it was true.

NINETY-SEVEN.

HYACINTHE CALLED the isle-folk who attended him into the reception chamber in the tower. They crowded around, cooks, scullery-maids, foot-servants, laundresses, servants of all ilk, whose lives for countless generations had been spent doing the bidding of the Master of the Straits, maintaining the tower, purveying food, cleaning and restoring treasures brought forth from the bottom of the sea.

They murmured among themselves in an archaic dialect of D'Angeline, forgotten on the mainland for eight hundred years, stealing fearful glances at Hyacinthe as he stood on the curving stair above them, waiting. Ancient Gildas and Tilian, who was no longer young, were among them; for days on end, they had made the arduous trek down the stone stairs to fill the basin of the sea-mirror at sunrise and sundown. How many years? One might suppose they would be glad of their freedom, but they looked dismayed.

"My people." Although he spoke quietly, Hyacinthe's words encompassed the tower. "This day, I go forth to break the geis and leave the island. If we succeed, I will not return. Know that all things in this tower are yours, to distribute as you choose, saving only the contents of the library, which shall be held in keeping for Phedre no Delaunay of Montreve. Although this exile has been bitter to me, you have served long and well, and I am grateful for it. I leave you with my thanks."

"Fair my lord!" Old Gildas' voice emerged choked. "Surely, thou hast need of thy sea-mirror-aye, and thine acolytes to attend and fill it!"

"No, Gildas." Hyacinthe shook his head. "It was wrought on Third Sister, and will open its far-seeing eye nowhere else in the world. Elsewhere, I must needs construct a sea-mirror anew, in its own place of vision. Let this one remain here, as a reminder."

"Prithee, how shall we conduct ourselves?" someone said wondering, setting loose a flurry of anxious queries. "What shall become of us? What shall we do?" The questions fluttered around the stone walls of the tower, beating on nervous wings. Hyacinthe's brow darkened, storm clouds gathering in his eyes.

"Live!" The word fell like a thunderclap, silencing them. I shuddered at the power that emanated fromhim in waves, a charged odor like the air after lightning has struck. "Live," he repeated, more gently, in his echoing tone. "Live free of this curse, fish and hunt, grow crops and herd cattle. Build boats and sail to the mainland, trade and prosper. Make music, write poems, dance. Find one another in love, lose one another in sorrow. Live"

No one spoke as he descended the stair, parting to make way for him. I saw how their eyes followed him - fearful, calculating, avid and forlorn by turns. Not until we reached the door did anyone utter a word.

"My lord!" It was Tilian who called after us, daring and defiant. "And if thou dost fail, my lord? 'Tis no secret thou has tried it before; didst do so this very day. We, who have attended thee these long years, know the truth of it. Why shouldst succeed now?"

Hyacinthe turned, staring at the man until he turned pale. "Because this time," he said, "I am not alone.

You have served power a long time, Tilian, and come to relish the taste of it. Listen to me now when I tell you: Do not pray for my failure. Because this time, Rahab will come in the fullness of his might and ageless wrath, and my power is to his as a bucket of water is to the ocean. And if we fail, his anger may raise the seas and drown the isles of the Three Sisters, and when the fish nibble at your flesh and the crabs scuttle through your bones, you will not have to worry about how to live without the Master of the Straits to attend."

There were no further protests.

I waited until we were outdoors and the bright sun had chased the crawling chills from my flesh to ask him if he believed it.

"Yes," Hyacinthe said shortly. "Why do you suppose it terrifies me so?"

Well and so; the lives of hundreds of innocent people rested in my hands. I clutched my skirts, concentrating on descending the long stair, my breathing coming shallow and labored - not with exertion, this time, but with fear. Below us, Elua's Promise bobbed at anchor in the center of its tame whirlpool, laden with cargo too precious for words.

It would be better, I thought, if they were gone from this place.

"Can you send them away?" I asked him.

"Beyond Rahab's reach?" His mouth twisted. "No such place exists upon the seas."

"Out of sight, then. Surely it would be safer."

We had gained the promontory. Hyacinthe gazed at the ship, then at me, shifting the case he held under one arm, containing the pages salvaged from the Book of Raziel. "It may be so. They will not thank you for it."

"I know," I said. "Do it."

"Quintilius Rousse!" Hyacinthe's voice echoed off the cliff walls, resounding across the harbor. "Raise your anchor! You are journeying beyond Rahab's gaze!"

Across the shining waters, I heard the cries of protest and dismay. Poor Eleazar, I thought; he hastravelled all this way to hear the Name of God spoken, and now I send him away. Yet it is better that it is so. I didn't even want to think about what Joscelin would say.

"You're sure?" Hyacinthe asked me.

I nodded. "Now, before I lose my nerve."

Hyacinthe stooped, laying the case upon the rock, then whispered, blowing out his breath. A sharp, stiff breeze sprang up from nowhere, filling the storm-rigged sails of the Elua's Promise. Rousse took his warning; I heard the chain clanking as the anchor was raised, a pair of sailors cranking at a furious pace.

The sails bellied and snapped as the ship swung around, its prow pointing toward the narrow exit.

Hyacinthe circled three fingers in the opposite direction and the whirlpool ceased, vanishing back into the waters.