Kushiel's Avatar (Phedre's Trilogy #3)

"Fedabin." He bowed to Kaneka, crossing his forearms with care, speaking in the halting zenyan which was our only common tongue. "How dangerous is this trip, anyway?"

"To find the Melehakim?" Kaneka shrugged. "Dangerous, lord. There is a river greater than the Euphrate, and deserts that kill. There are crocodiles and lions, and scavengers in between—hyenas, jackals, even the blood-flies that drive strong men to madness. And there are tribes, many tribes, in Jebe-Barkal, some of them hostile. But," she added, a glint in her eye, "none of them will seek to kill a boy due to an accident of birth. Besides, he could always remain in Debeho, if you willed it. He would be warded well enough in my village."

Joscelin looked at me. I looked back at him. "You can't be serious," I said.

"Phédre." He sounded eminently reasonable. "Think of it. At least he'd be safe from assassination attempts. And . . . Name of Elua, the boy has a point! Is he never to be allowed a choice?”

"You weren't," I murmured. "I wasn't. Not at ten."

"And look where it brought us. Still, neither of us had to endure Daršanga."

Some choices must be made swiftly, lest the enormity of them overwhelm the chooser. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eye-sockets. "All right," I said. "All right, all right, all right! Imriel."I lifted my head. "If we let you stay—if we sanction this—do you swear to me that you will obey us? Joscelin and me both—yes, and Kaneka, too—every word, every whim, as if Blessed Elua himself had crossed the boundary of Terre d'Ange-that-lies-beyond to give voice to a new sacrament?"

Imriel was nodding with every word I spoke, not listening, agreeing to it all. "I swear," he said breathlessly. "I swear, I vow, I promise, Phédre, every word!"

I spent the remainder of our voyage composing the letter to Amaury Trente.

It was a foolhardy decision, and one I daresay I wouldn't have made half a year ago. Still, great distance and great events have a way of changing one's perspective. As mad as our quest might be, it was nothing to what Imriel had undergone in Daršanga, and Kaneka was right; no one in Jebe-Barkal wanted him dead. Once he set foot on Terre d'Ange, he would always, always have enemies, the shadow of his mother's vast treachery hanging over him, every move watched and scrutinized.

Even so.

"I can't believe you sided with him," I said to Joscelin that night. Imriel was sleeping in Kaneka's cabin, which held a spare cot. After three days of scavenging for scraps and sleeping wedged in a dark corner of the hold, he was grateful for it. If she hadn't caught him at the water-barrel, he might have held out till Iskandria. "Amaury will be like to kill us. And Ysandre ... I don't want to think of it."

Joscelin shrugged. "You're the one thought you saw an assassin aboard his ship."

"Thought!" I lowered my voice. "Even I admitted it was probably my imagination playing on my fears. It's not like you, that's all. Honor, duty, loyalty—all those Cassiline virtues, that should demand we send him back."

"I'm tired." Lying on his side, he regarded me across the cabin. "Phédre, all my life, I've had to make that choice, over and over. I'm tired of it.”

Daršanga, I thought, had changed him, too; it had changed us all. "Then love is reason enough? Because he willed it?"

"I don't know. Blessed Elua says it is. Imriel followed you—us— out of love. I know that much is true; there's no other reason for it." Joscelin rolled onto his back and gazed at the ceiling. "Phèdre, did you tell him how his mother escaped from Troyes-le-Mont?"

A chill ran the length of my spine. "No," I whispered.

Incredible as it seems, I had not thought, until then, how very similar were the means, even down to the concealing cloak. In Troyes- le-Mont, Melisande had traded places with her cousin Persia and walked out of captivity under the very noses of the men set to guard her. And her son had played nearly the self-same trick. It would not go unremarked, not by the men who'd been duped by it, who were doubtless on their way back to Tyre even as we spoke, taut and furious, holding in custody a disappointed Akkadian serving-lad.

"He did it for love," Joscelin said softly. "That's the difference. And I don't have it in my heart to betray him for it. Phèdre . . . this boy could be dangerous. Or he could be something else. I can't forgive Melisande. But I can forgive her son."

"Someone should," I murmured. "It might as well be us."

"Why not?" He laughed, the sound blending with the rhythmic ripple of waves against the ship's hull. "One way or another, it seems it usually is."

And so our journey passed. In the morning and the evenings, his seasickness faded, Joscelin performed his Cassiline exercises on the foredeck of the ship, sweating under the bright sun as he sought to regain his old balance, the steel daggers weaving intricate patterns—slowly, so slowly. After the first day of his discovery, Imriel joined him, using a pair of wooden practice-blades whittled for him by a bored sailor. With infinite patience, both for his own infirmity and Imri's ineptness, Joscelin taught him the rudiments of it.

I watched them both, stirred by emotions I could not name. In days long gone by, when first he had come to Delaunay's service, I used to watch so, standing upon the terrace while he did his exercises in the garden, and wondered at the Cassiline's patience when he began teaching Alcuin, my near-brother Alcuin, with his milk-white hair and his gentle smile.

In those days, I had despised Joscelin.

Now...

I loved him; I loved him still. And when his grin flashed, quick to forgive an error; when he pushed himself tirelessly, silhouetted against the sparkling sea; when Imriel's laugh rang out, surprised and delighted—I loved him all the more, until my heart ached with it, too vast for the confines of my body.

Yet we had not even kissed.

Too many shadows lay between us, and all of them born in Drujan. I am an anguissette; I have been so all of my life. Like Joscelin, I had made my way with balance; between the left side and the right, between pleasure and pain, between love and all that it was not. Somewhere, in Daršanga, I had gone too far. And something in me had shattered, as surely as his bones.

I did not know how to find my way back.

And so I watched them and was gladdened, taking secondhand pleasure where I might, in the clean sea and wind, the leap of blood resurgent in wasted muscles and the arc of steel cleaving sky, the sound of a boy's laughter. And I composed, in my head, my letter to Lord Amaury Trente, striving to explain why I believed this was in accordance with the will of Blessed Elua.

Thus did we arrive in Iskandria.

I hadn't expected Nesmut.

"Gracious lady!" His voice rang the considerable length of the quai, his sandaled feet slapping the pavings as he pelted toward us, all dignity forgotten. "Gracious lord! You are alive!"

"Nesmut." I laughed, my heart rebounding with unwonted joy. "Are you free to take on an old client? There are more of us, this time."

After much negotiation, at once light-hearted and solemn, Nesmut contracted carriages and porters and led us to our lodgings—not Metriche's, these, but a purely Menekhetan establishment, pleasant and modest. The women of the zenana were not like to complain. It was palatial, after Daršanga.

And I did not want us to be easily found.

I obtained parchment and a pen and ink, and spent the better part of a day writing the letter I'd composed—the one to Amaury, and a good many others. When I had finished, I sent a message, via Nesmut, to Ptolemy Dikaios. The lad's status had risen in the world, that such a message might be sent and delivered without question. He preened with it, which I begrudged him not in the least.

Pharaoh's summons came almost immediately.

As I had requested, it was a discreet meeting and not a formal one.

This would all, I thought ruefully, be a great deal easier without Imriel. But the decision was made, and I would do what I could to ensure it done safely.

Ptolemy Dikaios received me in the private reception-hall where we had struck our bargain, and under the impassive eyes of his fan- bearers I gave him a letter from the Lugal which detailed the events that had befallen and requested his aid in seeing the freed Menekhetans restored to their families or housed with honor. He read it without need of a translator and regarded me thoughtfully when he was done, reclin ing on a couch.

"Bold deeds, Phèdre nó Delaunay, and worthy of honor. Why then do you ask to meet in secret, and not trumpet this victory to your Ambassador de Penfars, to Lord Mesilim-Amurri, the Akkadian consul? I am certain they would wish to arrange for a triumphal procession, if they knew."

"There is a complication, my lord Pharaoh," I said.

His heavy lids flickered. "Indeed? What is it?"

I told him about Imriel.

When I had finished, he laughed. "And what would you have me do about it? By all rights, I should send for de Penfars right now and remand the boy to his custody! It would win me favor with the D'Angeline Queen."

"It would," I said, "until I told her about your alliance with Melisande Shahrizai."

"There is that." Pharaoh rubbed his chin. "What do you propose?"

"We will be gone in several days' time, my lord. If, at that time, I sent various letters to you by messenger, you might see them enacted and dispersed. That, from the Lugal, regarding the survivors of the zenana," I nodded at the letter he held, and produced three more, "this, to be sent to Lord Amaury Trente in Tyre, and this, to be given to Ambassador de Penfars, who will send it by courier to Queen Ysandre. Both detail my suspicions, and give the reason for my actions, asserting that you had no knowledge of my presence and that I relied on your integrity as a ruler to see the missives delivered."

"Sent by messenger, eh?" He thought through the implications. "So it shall seem I'd no idea you were here until you were gone."