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Kaneka was one who had no doubts. Fierce and glowing, she took to freedom like a caged hawk to the sky, carrying her purloined battle-axe at her saddle and her dagger stuck through a sash round her waist.

“So, little one,” she said to me the day we entered the mountains, our passage slowed by the wagons. “You will go to Jebe-Barkal after all, eh?”

“It seems I will.”

“Maybe I will go with you.” She grinned, showing her white teeth. “Come with me to Debeho. My grandmother, may she still live, will tell you many tales of the Melehakim.”

“I have a guide to Meroë promised in Iskandria,” I said.

“Iskandria.” Kaneka waved a dismissive hand. “A caravan guide. He will rob you blind, little one. Better to travel the Great River to Majibara, and hire there. With me you will not be robbed.”

Our pace was slow enough that a few Akkadians had dismounted to hunt along the way, shooting at rock partridge and the occasional startled hare. I watched Uru-Azag teaching Imriel to draw an Akkadian bow. “Do you mean it, Fedabin?”

“What do you think?” Kaneka touched the leather bag at her throat that held her amber dice. “Your luck … your madness. I owe my freedom to it.”

“And others owe their deaths,” I said.

She shrugged. “Did you kill them? No. Anyway, I am alive. It is enough. You may take my offer or not, I do not care. I am grateful nonetheless.”

I looked at her and nodded. “I’ll take it.”

Fifty-Nine

ON THE third week of our slow journey, Tizrav son of Tizmaht found us in the mountains. He was waiting at a campsite off the old royal road, busily skinning a fallow deer. I heard the commotion at the head of the caravan and rode to investigate, Joscelin a few paces behind me.

“Lady.” The mercenary greeted me in Persian, grinning behind his greasy eyepatch, his hands messy with blood. “Lordling. You have returned.”

“Tizrav!” I was so glad to see him, I nearly kissed him. “Did the Lugal send you? Or Lord Amaury? Are they near?”

“Amaury.” He eased a skinning knife a few more inches beneath the deer’s hide and separated it with an expert jerk. “He’s the one offered a reward. They saw the fires light from Demseen Fort, and the cursed Akkadians are still too scared to go and see. Your Lord Amaury offered gold to anyone who would. That’s me.”

“You know this man?” Uru-Azag looked down his aquiline nose at Tizrav.

“He is the Lugal’s most trusted guide,” I said, stretching the truth considerably.

“The Lugal’s going to have someone’s hide when he finds out the Drujani let you march through with a passel of women and eunuchs, and his men too scared to cross the border,” Tizrav said, shifting the flayed carcass. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “We were granted safe passage. Tizrav, how far are we from the border?”

“At your pace? Two days, maybe three.” He eyed Imriel behind me, watching the operation in morbid fascination over my shoulder. “I see you got that boy you wanted.”

“Yes. Is the border guarded?”

“By Drujani?” He shrugged. “You could march an army across it untouched, and like as not the Lugal will, when he hears of it. I figured I’d wait. Sinaddan didn’t promise gold, not like your Lord Amaury did.”

Someone overheard his words, and they passed through the company, translated into a dozen tongues. Cheering arose at the mention of an invading army. I raised my hand. “
No
!” The word came out sharp and forceful, quelling the cheers. I took a deep breath, shifting my mount to address them all, speaking in zenyan. “Drujan wishes to sue for peace, and I gave my word I would deliver the message. Let no one here gainsay it. Is it understood?”

It was, reluctantly.

“And you, son of Tizmaht,” I said to the mercenary. “Will you bide your tongue until I have spoken?”

Tizrav gave his crooked shrug. “War, peace; what is it to me? There’s more profit in the former, and less risk of dying in the latter. I’ll keep silent if you wish it. My father, he’d be glad to see the Sacred Fires lit, devout fool that he was. I reckon I can owe you that much.”

And so we made for the border.

On the second day, Tizrav rode ahead to alert the garrison at Demseen Fort of our arrival. Mercenary or no, he’d seen us safely to Daršanga, and I trusted him to keep his word. In that, I was not wrong.

Slowly, creeping along the mountain roads, our company followed.

After so long, it seemed unreal, the grey fortress on the horizon, flying the Lion of the Sun banner of the Shamabarsin, the ancient House of Ur. Some of the Akkadians, Uru-Azag among them, broke down and wept. The reluctant Magi who had accompanied us dug in their heels, deserting us, taking the Drujani hostlers and bearers with them. No one moved to detain them, and the stones rattled with their passage.

Horns rang out from the turrets, clarion calls echoing over the crags. We had been seen.

The garrison turned out to meet us.

Foremost among them was Lord Amaury Trente, disbelief and joy writ large on his features. “Phèdre!” He embraced me, kissed me on both cheeks, then took my shoulders in his hands and shook me. “Name of Elua, I swear … Joscelin Verreuil, you mad Cassiline …” He embraced Joscelin awkwardly, mindful of his bound arm. “And you-Catching sight of Imriel lurking warily between us, he paused and executed a courtly bow, his voice unwontedly gentle. “You must be Imriel de la Courcel. My lord prince, welcome back.”

“What?” Amid the milling chaos of the reunion, Imriel’s voice was lost and bewildered, rising to panic as he glanced from Amaury to me and back. “
What
?”

I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t thought.

“Phèdre.” Amaury’s hand on my arm forced me to attention. “You didn’t
tell
him?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Amaury … you can’t know what it was like.”

“
What
?” Imriel’s demand rose, strident with fear. In his experience, the unknown was never good. This time, I daresay he was right. “Tell me
what
?”

“Imri.” I knelt before him, taking his hands in mine. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Lord Amaury is right. Your name, your full name, is Imriel de la Courcel, and you are a Prince of the Blood, third in line for the D’Angeline throne.”

His face had gone bloodless. “You said … you said my father was dead.”

“He is,” I said steadily. “Your father was Prince Benedicte de la Courcel, the great-uncle of Queen Ysandre. She is your cousin, and she has been praying very hard for your safe return. Lord Amaury here is her emissary. He has come all this way to bring you home.”

Imriel tore his hands out of my grasp, clenching them into fists. “You
lied
,” he hissed, eyes glittering feverishly in his pale face. “You said my
mother
sent you!”

“Your mother!” Amaury Trente gave a short laugh, and caught himself. “My lord prince, your mother …” He looked at my face. “He doesn’t know.”

“No.” Even as I spoke, Imriel spat at me and darted away, running pell-mell for the fortress.

“I’ll go after him,” Joscelin said quietly, suiting actions to words. I sighed and straightened, wiping spittle from my cheek.

“I’m sorry.” Lord Amaury slid his fingers through his hair. “Phèdre, I’m sorry. I assumed-”

“I should have,” I said, cutting him off. “I know. Amaury, the boy’s spent the past half a year in the seraglio of a madman. Do you see these women? They’ve been through hell, every one of them. So have I, and so has Imriel. All of us have. So, no. I didn’t tell him. Andyes, his mother sent me. Ysandre,” I said, holding his gaze, “sent you. Melisande sent me.”

“Melisande,” Amaury repeated doubtfully.

“Yes,” I said, weary beyond belief. “Melisande.”

We did not stay long at Demseen Fort, only long enough to gather ourselves for the journey to Nineveh. The accommodations were rough, unprepared to handle so many refugees, and we slept crammed on pallets in the main hall. For two nights and a day, Imriel avoided me, clinging fiercely to his sense of betrayal. I let him. Joscelin, somehow exempt from his outrage, shadowed him dutifully, as did Kaneka and Uru-Azag, who had both conceived a fondness for the wayward child.

On the morning we were to depart, Imriel was missing.

“Phèdre.” Joscelin found me overseeing the loading of the wounded, helping arrange cushions to bolster the leg of Ursulina, an Aragonian woman whose thigh had been laid open nearly to the bone. Miraculously, it was healing clean, the layers of muscle and skin closed in neat stitches by the hand of the Caerdicci seamstress Helena.

“Did you find him?” I asked.

He nodded toward the far crags on which the fortress perched. “He’s up there. I think you should talk to him.”

“How is that?” I asked Ursulina in zenyan, testing the stability of the cushions. “Better?” At her grateful nod, I turned to Joscelin. “You go. He’s angry at me, and rightly enough.”

Joscelin’s face was haggard in the morning sunlight. “He knows about his mother,” he said, watching my expression change. “Phèdre, he was bound to ask, and bound to find someone who would tell him. It wasn’t gently done.”

“Who told him?”

“Nicolas Vigny,” he said, naming Amaury’s right-hand man. “And Martin de Marigot. It’s not… it’s not their fault, either. They only spoke the truth. Vigny fought at Troyes-le-Monte; he lost a brother there. He’s reason to be bitter. It was her doing, after all.”

“So,” I said. “Why me?”

“Because,” Joscelin said steadily. “For better or for worse, you understand Melisande Shahrizai. You’re the only one who can tell her son she loves him without gagging on the words.”

There was so much unspoken between us.

“All right,” I said, pushing tendrils of sweat-dampened hair from my brow. “I’ll go.”

Hoisting the skirts of my riding attire, I traversed the narrow path that encircled Demseen Fortress and found Imriel seated on the farthest outcropping, moodily pitching shards of broken rock into the gorge below.

“Imriel,” I said.

His narrow shoulders stiffened, the bones protruding like wings beneath his fine skin; too sharply, I thought, although what did I know of children? Still, he seemed too thin, too frail for his age. The foundlings in the Sanctuary of Elua had been sturdy by comparison. Even Alcuin, the brother of my fosterage, with his slender grace, his milk-white hair and gentle smile, had been hale next to this boy.

I made my way across the crags to join him, sitting without speaking. Below us, the forested gorge yawned, a light mist sparkling golden in the morning sun. Imriel kept his face averted, fiddling with a handful of pebbles.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked without looking up.

“I was wrong.” I kept my tone level. “Imri, I was going to. I wanted to wait until we were safe, that’s all. I didn’t expect Lord Amaury to greet you thusly. It was stupid of me.”

“My mother did something foolish.” He drew in a wracking breath, his voice half-breaking. “That’s what you told me! Something foolish! My mother betrayed Terre d’Ange to the
Skaldi
!” His head came up, eyes blazing at me. “She married my father for power, and had me as a pawn, a game-piece! She tried to have the Queen
killed
! Something foolish!”

“Yes,” I said, unflinching. “It’s a lot to bear, isn’t it?”

His tears caught the morning light. “You said she
loved
me. You said she sent you.”

I clasped my hands around my knees. “She does, Imri. The Queen sent Lord Amaury. Your mother sent me. And I gave her my promise, in Blessed Elua’s name, that I would do aught I could to find you and keep you from harm. It wasn’t enough. I know that. But it was the best I could do.”

“Why would you help her? Why would she ask you?” Imriel looked away, staring into the gorge. “You gave the testimony that condemned her. Nicolas Vigny told me so, and he was there.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was.” I thought about the caravan, near-loaded and waiting. I looked at Imriel’s fine-carved profile and thought about all that he had been through, and the life that awaited him as Melisande’s son, born of treason twice over, in the court of Ysandre de la Courcel. “Do you want to hear the story? The whole story?”

Without looking at me, he nodded.

And drawing a deep breath, I told him-the story, as best I knew it; his, his mother’s and father’s, and mine own. I told him of the marital alliances that had bound House Courcel, of my Lord Delaunay’s secret vow, and of my upbringing as a pawn, a Servant of Naamah marked by Kushiel, trained in the arts of covertcy and shrouded in ignorance. I told him of his mother’s patronage, and how she had freed me, paying the final price of my marque; and I told him without faltering of her betrayal after Delaunay’s death-although I spared him the knowledge of how she had questioned me-and how Joscelin and I had awakened to find ourselves in a covered cart bound for Skaldia. I told him of our time there, and what we had learned; I told him how we had escaped, and of our desperate quest to Alba, of the Master of the Straits and Hyacinthe’s terrible sacrifice, and then the battle that followed.

Some of it, he knew. Brother Selbert had not kept him completely unaware of history. He knew of the Skaldi invasion, and the Master of the Straits, though not Hyacinthe’s name. Of Melisande’s role, he knew nothing-nor of the near overthrow of the throne in La Serenissima.

It was hard, telling him that part. He was right. He was a gamepiece, gotten for his claim on the D’Angeline throne. I did not deny it, only stressed how his mother had sought to protect him, giving him into Brother Selbert’s keeping. On my own role, I touched lightly, saying only that I had returned in time to give the warning.

And then his disappearance, and his mother’s bargain.

Of that, I did not lie or mince words.

“She bought you,” he said softly when I had finished, staring at the dispersing mists. “She bought you with knowledge, as surely as with diamonds or gold.”

“Imriel.” I saw him hunch his shoulders at his name. “Your mother values pride and knowledge above either, and she spent them both to buy my aid. She spent every coin she had.”

“What happened to me is because of
her
,” he muttered bitterly. “Can you deny it is so?”