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“Are your own gods so powerless?” another of the women, Ranit, asked shrewdly. “Why then do you not set aside your heathen ways, and petition the Lord of Hosts with a pure heart? Instead you come like a beggar who dares not approach the door, beseeching alms at the gate.”

“Even Adonai Himself uses mortal hands to do His bidding, my lady,” I replied.

“You claim your gods have sent you?”

I spread my hands. “I do not have that right, not here. But I am Kushiel’s Chosen, and Kushiel was once the Punisher of God. This is a matter of justice, and justice is his province. My ladies, I am D’Angeline. It is bred in my blood and stamped on my flesh. While Adonai grieved for His son, Blessed Elua wandered unheeded, aided only by his Companions. We are his people, their people, born of their seed. When Adonai’s attention turned at last to Elua, a new covenant was made, between the Lord of Hosts and the Mother of Earth, and it is by that our lives are sealed. I cannot be other.”

Another woman spoke; Semira, with eyes keen and birdlike in a wizened face. “Do you claim, then, that this Elua is the Mashiach?”

“The Mashiach?” The question startled me. “No, mother. No D’Angeline has ever claimed such a thing. Elua is … Elua.”

“Ah, but your people were barbarians. How could they know?” She nibbled unthinking at her lower lip. “There are those who claimed Melek-Zadok was the Mashiach, and the Covenant of Wisdom the first step toward the great healing of the earth that His reign will betoken, when war shall be no more, and wisdom dwell in every heart.”

“There are some,” another voice echoed, soft and tentative, “who say Adonai Himself will be reunited with His Eternal Bride when the Mashiach comes, and the union of Shalomon and Makeda was a forerunner of that celebration.”

Silence followed on it, and I sensed that this was a women’s mystery, written nowhere in the chronicles of Habiru or Yeshuite.

“It did not happen,” Semira said firmly. “This we know. Perhaps the fault lay in ourselves, for breaking the Covenant with which we were entrusted. Perhaps it was a false omen, a shadow only of greater things to come, for even in Melek-Zadok’s time, there was war. This Yeshua ben Yosef of whom you speak … I do not think peace followed in his reign, either.”

“No.” I shook my head. “The Yeshuites were united in his name, and the Habiru quarrelled no more among themselves, but peace-no. Even now, they have begun to divide once more, and the children of Yisra-el seek to carve out a new kingdom with blades.” Joscelin stirred at my words, and we exchanged a glance. He had played a role in that matter, though few people ever knew it, nor ever would.

“What
are
you?” It was Ranit who spoke, brows knitting in frustration as she asked the same question with which Hanoch ben Hadad had greeted us. “Unprophesied, unlooked-for … you do not
fit
! Elua! Who is this
Elua
, to be born of blood and tears? Who are these angels, these Companions, to defy the will of Adonai and be worshipped as gods? It is evil, I say; vile and foul. How can you say otherwise?”

“My lady.” Joscelin’s voice followed hers, calm and level as he gave his Cassiline bow. “I can speak to that, if you permit. I serve Cassiel, who alone among the Companions followed Elua out of the purity of his heart.” He paused. “Cassiel sought to embody the love and compassion that Adonai, in his ire, forswore. This I believe to be true.”

“It is a dangerous heresy.” Ranit’s words trembled. “Dangerous, indeed!”

“It may be,” I said. “Can you be sure, who have been sequestered here for so long? I do not ask for the Sacred Name itself; only the chance to approach the altar. If I am slain or struck dumb for my presumption, so be it. Yet I must ask, and try.”

“And we shall be unveiled to the eye of Adonai,” Yevuneh murmured.

“So you may,” I said steadily. “My lady Ranit accuses us of heresy. Is it meet that the children of Yisra-el should hide their treasures behind the grief of Isis? I cannot answer that, for D’Angelines consider all deities worthy of respect, Elua’s children being youngest-born on this earth. It is a question, my ladies, for wisdom to decide; not the wisdom of the Elders, but the wisdom of Makeda’s line, to which Shalomon himself deferred. This you hold among yourselves. Is it a thing that may be made to serve base ends?” I shook my head. “I do not believeso.”

“‘For wisdom is more mobile than any motion, and extends and moves through all by purity,’” Semira whispered, quoting from the
Chokmah al-Shalomon
, “‘for she is a breath of Adonai’s power and an emanation of the unmixed glory of the all-ruling; and because of this nothing tainted steals into her.’”

“‘For she is the brilliance of eternal light,’” I echoed, finishing the verse, “‘and an unstained image of Adonai’s mercy and an image of its goodness.’ So I was taught,” I said, thinking of Eleazar ben Enokh, who taught me the verse, and of my lord Delaunay, who told me
All knowledge is worth having
. “So I believe.”

A second silence followed, longer than the first. Yevuneh and the other women looked to Semira, the eldest present. She chewed her lower lip, deep in thought, and looked at me with her keen eyes. “It is a weighty matter. It will need to be debated, and not only among us. Not only among the old, but the young as well, for wisdom takes many guises.”

“Of course, my lady.” I inclined my head to her.

“Three days.” She nodded, then nodded again, satisfied. “We will answer your plea in three days, after the festival of the new moon.”

Seventy-Four

FOR THREE days, we waited in Tisaar.

We ventured outside the walls of the city to confer with Tifari Amu and the others. Although they were uneasy at their dubious welcome, they had found the common-folk of Saba more accommodating than Hanoch ben Hadad and the guards. For a few scraps of steel-an outworn spearhead, a broken buckle-they had garnered supplies in abundance. And, I daresay, a fair accounting of Saba’s readiness for overtures to report to Ras Lijasu.

“Kaneka might welcome me,” Tifari said with quiet triumph, “if I became a diplomat.”

“So she might,” I said, hoping it might prove true, not daring to tell him that if the Women’s Council denied us, we would risk the most heinous of blasphemies and the enmity of all of Saba to gain the Name of God.

For so I was resolved, and Joscelin too. Fruitless or no, we had come too far to leave without trying. And for all that had been healed between us … it would be lost, if we abandoned Hyacinthe to his fate. Better we should try our utmost, whatsoever the price.

I wished, in those days, that Imriel was not with us; and I gave thanks as well that he was, for his presence did much to charm the women of Saba, and for that I was grateful. He bore it well. I do not think anyone noticed his inward shudder when an unfamiliar hand caressed his cheek. I knew, and grieved at it. How my lord Delaunay bore it, I will never know.

“You need not endure it, Imri,” I said to him. “It is beyond the call.”

“No.” His brows knit in a familiar frown. Ysandre wore the same look when she quarrelled with Amaury Trente. “I don’t mind, not so much. They mean well, and it helps. Even I can tell that much, Phèdre.”

He was right. I brushed his brow with a kiss. “You’ve too much courage for your own good, Imriel de la Courcel. When it becomes too much to bear, tell me.”

“Don’t call me that!” Imriel drew away from me, his frown turning to a scowl.

“It is your name,” I reminded him gently.

He looked away. “They think I am your son, yours and Joscelin’s.”

We had not disabused anyone of the idea, which was far simpler than the truth and brought with it a measure of goodwill. I understood better, now, why Brother Selbert held that an expedient lie did not violate Elua’s wishes. “So they do. It does not change your name, Imri, nor who you are.”

“Wish it did,” he muttered. “I wish I
was
your son, and not
hers
.”

“In the end, what you are is between you and Elua,” I told him. “And he would be proud to claim you as his own for all you have done.”

And he listened to me, his dark-blue eyes hungering, yearning to believe in some proof of his own goodness. It terrified me beyond belief to think he staked such import on my words. What did I know? Beneath it all, I was still a whore’s unwanted get, struggling to make sense of the world and do what was right. To be a parent, I think, must be the most fearful thing there is. I did my best, and prayed it was enough.

One by one, the days passed.

On the third day fell the festival of the new moon. It was unknown to me, being something the Yeshuites no longer celebrate. Many old traditions were shattered with the birth of Yeshua ben Yosef. They are still heeded in Saba. All that day, Tisaar fasted, and we fasted with them out of respect. There had been meetings these last two days, covert and secretive. That much, I knew. Of their outcome, I knew nothing.

The rams’ horns blew when the lower rim of the sun touched the horizon, calling the Sabaeans to prayers. Sabaean temples are round, with a square room within-the Holy of Holies-and two concentric circles without, plus an alcove for the altar itself. Although we were not permitted into the temple proper, we were allowed into the outermost ring which skirts the court of sacrifice.

There was a long procession leading to the temple, winding through the streets of Tisaar. Elaborate parasols were held over the heads of the priests, casting long shadows in dwindling sunlight. The mournful cries of the rams’ horns echoed over the city, finding an answer in the rhythmic pulse of two-handed goat-hide drums and the small hand-bells carried by the women. A red heifer was led before us all, lowing softly and adding her voice to the music of their worship.

“Remove your shoes,” Yevuneh told us at the temple, “and stand here; no further. That much is permitted.”

Most of the ceremony, we could not see, blocked by a sea of bodies, clad in Habiru garb with fringed shawls colored by blue dyes. I heard the prayers offered, and the lowing of the red heifer; I heard her cries cut short, and knew by the reek of blood and the charnel odor that followed that the sacrifice had been offered. Imriel looked ill at it. Then came more prayer in the form of song, and bare feet tramping the temple floor in dance, men and women in counterpoint to one another. Eleazar had been right-here were preserved traditions forgotten by the Yeshuites.

The sky was violet when they spilled out of the temple, the three of us dispersed in their wake, struggling to find our shoes amid the crowd. In the southwest hung the new moon, a slender crescent scarce visible against the darkling sky. The Sabaeans lifted up their hands, praising Adonai for its return.

And I thought … Elua help me, but I thought of Asherat-of-the-Sea and her crown of stars. Asherat, who had once saved my life; Asherat, by whose mantle Melisande Shahrizai herself was protected. And I prayed, in that twilight, to the goddess Asherat, to Blessed Elua and his Companions, to Isis who knit the sundered pieces of her beloved Osiris, and to Adonai Himself, the One God of the Habiru.

I do not know which one of them answered. I know only that when we returned to the household of the widow Yevuneh, the Council of Women had gathered to await us, and a mighty feast had been laid to break our fast and celebrate the new moon. Young and old were gathered alike this time, and the youngest was scarce six weeks old, a nursing babe in the arms of Yevuneh’s daughter Ardath. But it was Semira, eldest among them, who was appointed to give us their decision.

“It has been determined,” she said in the lamp-lit courtyard, summoning her dignity and drawing her shawl tight across her hunched shoulders. “It has been determined that your presence among us constitutes a sign. And it has been determined that humility is the better part of wisdom. Your case is just. It is not meet that this mortal man-this friend you name
Hyacinthe
-should suffer for the transgressions of Rahab. This matter must be put to Adonai Himself. This we will help you to do, insofar as we are able.”

My head felt light and dizzy atop my shoulders. I sank to my knees in Yevuneh’s courtyard, grasping Semira’s hand in my own and kissing it. “Thank you, my lady,” I said in Habiru, scarce daring to believe. “Thank you!”

“Oh, wait,” she said testily, pulling her hand away. “You haven’t heard the
how
of it.”

The how, it transpired, was complicated. We sat for long hours that night in the widow’s kitchen, poring over maps of the night sky; for that, it transpired, was the only means by which we might find the island of Kapporeth, the fabled land-mass in the Lake of Tears on which the Ark of Broken Tablets was hidden.

“You see, here,” said Morit, who was entrusted with our teaching, as she pointed to a scroll. “Nemuel departed from the shores of what would be Tisaar.” She was a young woman and grave with her calling, coming from a family that had practiced the art of
Mazzalah
for time out of mind, mapping the night skies and charting time by it. “And here he writes, ‘The red planet of war hung low upon the horizon in the tenth degree of the Lion of Judah, and it is toward that I made my way, with the Throne of Shalomon hanging behind my left shoulder like an omen. For five hours we rowed, and came ere daybreak to this isle I have named Kapporeth, that is the mercy seat of the
Luvakh Shabab
, may Adonai have mercy upon us all. And here I shall dwell until the end of my days.’” Morit raised her gaze. “He refers to the Broken Tablets, you understand, and where the temple was built to house them. The location of Kapporeth is known only to Aaron’s line and the Sanhedrin of Elders, but a copy of this document was given unto the keeping of my many-times-removed great-grandmother, for the records of the
Mazzalah
.”

“Then we have but to follow the red star,” Joscelin said, adding wryly, “and row for five hours, I take it.”

“No.” Morit smiled with kind condescension. “Only the distance remains constant. Nemuel travelled at the end of the rainy season, my lord D’Angeline, and the stars have changed their position from where they were on that night many hundreds of years ago. For two days, I have studied the records. This-” she pointed, “-is a chart of the night sky which Nemuel followed. And this-” she pointed again, “-is the sky as we behold it tonight.”