In the morning, she was dead.
I'd thought the danger past when her fever broke. I sat on a rock and stared at the dawn, brooding. Joscelin had to come find me when camp was struck.
"Phèdre." His voice was cracked with exhaustion; we were all tired, then. "It's time to go. You did what you could."
"You didn't." Something in his tone made me look. Joscelin sighed, dragging his good hand through his tangled, half-braided hair. "Phèdre, let it be. She died in freedom, attended by kindness. It's a better death than any she would have found in Daršanga. Let it be."
Since there was nothing else for it, I did, returning to our campsite. The caravan was waiting. A cairn of stones marked Ismene's final resting place. Imriel, kneeling behind me, turned in the saddle as we rode away, watching it diminish. "Remember them all," he said aloud, ech oing my words. "Remember them all."
In the mornings there was no time, but in the evenings, when the tents were pitched, the horses and mules staked and the cookfires burn ing, Joscelin sought to practice his Cassiline exercises, one-armed and clumsy. All of that flowing grace, all his long discipline, was centered on symmetry and balance—the weaving patterns of his twin daggers, the crossed vambraces forming a living shield, the pivot of his two handed sword grip. Bereft of it, his movements were awkward. His bound left arm fouled the sweep of his blows, rendering them ungainly, leaving him exposed. Time and again, he stumbled off-balance, losing his form, unable to complete the complex patterns.
It pained me to watch him.
He never complained, not once. And he never ceased trying, push ing himself harder as the bones began to knit. During the first days of our journey, his hand swelled alarmingly. I watched it closely, breathing a prayer of relief when the swelling began to recede. After that, he began to carry a good-sized rock in his left hand as he rode, squeezing it rhythmically for hours on end, trying to keep his muscles from growing slack and useless.
Ten years old, Joscelin had been when he was exiled from the loving chaos of Verreuil to the grim rigor of the Cassiline Brotherhood. I never saw so clearly how it had molded him as I did on that journey, in his unflagging resolve. So young, I thought, watching Imriel; only a boy, wearing the fragile shape of childhood. And I... I had been ten when my lord Delaunay took me from Cereus House, beginning the long apprenticeship that had made me what I was.
Imriel had Daršanga.
Remember this.
Twice, he had nightmares, awakening the entire camp with those terrible, piercing screams. The Drujani handlers nearly bolted in terror, and the Magi cringed in fearful reflex, recalling the iron chains of Angra Mainyu. Joscelin, wild-eyed, was on his feet in an instant, sword bare in his right hand, staring about for danger. The Akkadians and the women of the zenana only grumbled. I took Imriel in my arms, soothing him until he awoke and knew me. After that, the tears, and I held him while he shook with them, narrow shoulders heaving.
Joscelin sat with his sword across his knees, watching wearily.
We did not speak of what had happened in Daršanga. It was too soon, too vast. Let us get out of this alive, I had said. What was to become of us afterward, I could not say. There was love, still; that much, I knew. My heart ached at the sight of him. And Joscelin ... I heard it in his voice, saw it in his wounded gaze, felt it in his touch. Love, broken and damaged, mayhap beyond repair. I prayed it was not so. In the evenings, I watched his halting, faltering exercises, and knew fear. He had survived, and the arm would heal. Whether or not his skills would ever be the same was another matter. Some things, once broken, can never be made whole again.
I prayed we were not one of them.
Halfway through the journey, I found the jade dog, the Mahrkagir's gift, stowed in the bottom of my packs. I sat on the floor of my tent in shock, staring at it. I remembered the Mahrkagir's pleasure in making me gifts, his boyish delight. I thought I had left them all behind. I remembered the nights of anguished pleasure, the exquisite, rending pain and the sound of my own voice begging. And I remembered his eyes, black and shining and mad, filled with adoration, his heart beating stead ily beneath my hand as I positioned the hairpin.
"I thought ... I thought you would want it." It was Imriel, sidling through the tent-flap, wary and unsure. "I didn't know."
"Yes." I longed to hurl it from me. Instead I closed my hand on it, smooth and polished, the jade cool to the touch. "You were right. Thank you, Imri."
I had killed a man, murdered his trust, taken his life. If I had to do it again, I would. I believe that. Still, I could not forget.
Should not forget.
For the others, it was different. They had not chosen their fates, and the shadow of blood-guilt did not lie heavy on their souls. Despite it all, despite the suffering and the madness, the scores of losses, the further we got from Daršanga, the higher their spirits rose. It gladdened my heart to see it, even though I envied them. Uru-Azag and the Akkadians had found in the battle some measure of their lost pride. If they were returning home less than men, still, they were more than slaves.
And the women . . .
At first, I think, a good many did not dare believe. By the time we reached the mountains, guarded fear gave way to hope, and thence to cautious rejoicing. Our company fractured into groups by country, ech oing the divisions in the zenana, the zenyan argot fading as women began to speak of home in their own tongues, those who had family and loved ones remembering, speculating on whether or not they would be welcomed back.
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 free dom 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 com pany, 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 Dem-seen Fort of our arrival. Mercenary or no, he'd seen us safely to Darsanga, 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.