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need to know it.”
    Joscelin nodded and rose to summon the stable-lad to make ready the carriage. I went to change my attire to something suitable for court, donning a gown of amber silk and pinning the Companion’s Star onto the décolletage, the diamond etched with Elua’s sigil glittered in its radiant gold setting. It is a cumbersome honor, that brooch, but if the Queen had sent for me, I dared not appear without it. Ysandre was particular about the honors she bestowed.
    My carriage is well-known in the City of Elua, bearing on its sides the revised arms of Montrève. Here and there along the streets, cheerful salutes and blown kisses were offered, and I suppressed my anxiety to accept such tribute with a smile, for it was no fault of my admirers that my nerves were strung taut that morning. Joscelin bore it with his customary stoicism. It would have been a point of contention between us, once. We have grown a little wiser with the years.
    If I have patrons still, they are fewer and more select-thrice a year, no more and no less, do I accept an assignation as Naamah’s Servant. It has proven, after much quarrel and debate, a compromise both of us can tolerate. I cannot help it that Kushiel’s Dart drives me to violent desires; I am an anguissette , and destined to find my greatest pleasure mingled with pain. No more can Joscelin alter the fact that he is made otherwise.
    I daresay we both of us know that there are only two people in the world capable of truly dividing us. And one ...
    No one is ever given to know what might have been.
    Hyacinthe.
    As for the other ... of Melisande Shahrizai, we do not speak, save in terms of the politics of the day. Joscelin knows well, better than any, the hatred I bear for her; as for the rest, it is the curse of my nature and a burden I carry in silence. I offered myself to her, once, at the asking-price of her son’s whereabouts. It was not a price Melisande was willing to pay. I do not think she would have sold that knowledge at any price, for there is no one living who holds it. I know; I have sought it.
    It is the other thing I have failed utterly in finding.
    It matters less, now; a little less, though there is no surety where Melisande is concerned. Ysandre thought my fears were mislaid, once upon a time, colored by an anguissette ’s emotions. That was before she found that Melisande Shahrizai had wed her great-uncle Benedicte de la Courcel, and given birth to a son who stood to inherit Terre d’Ange itself. Now, she listens; now, I have no insight to offer. Though Benedicte is long dead and his conspirator Percy de Somerville with him, Melisande abides in the sanctuary of Asherat-of-the-Sea. Her son Imriel remains missing, and I cannot guess at her moves.
    But my Queen Ysandre worries less since giving birth to a daughter eight years ago, and another two years later. Now two heirs stand between Melisande’s boy and the throne, and well guarded each day of their lives; a more pressing concern is the succession of Alba, which proceeds in a matrilineal tradition. Unless he dares break with Cruithne tradition, Drustan mab Necthana’s heir will proceed not from his loins, but from one of his sisters’ wombs. Such are the ways of his people, the Cullach Gorrym, who call themselves Earth’s Eldest Children. Two sisters he has living, Breidaia and Sibeal, and neither wed to one of Elua’s lineage.
    Thus stood politics in Terre d’Ange, after ten years of peace, the day I rode to the palace to hear the news from Azzalle.
    Azzalle is the northernmost province of the nation, bordering the narrow Strait that divides us from Alba. Once, those waters were nigh impassable, under the command of he whom we named the Master of the Straits. It has changed, since Hyacinthe’s sacrifice and the marriage of Ysandre and Drustan-yet even so, no vessel has succeeded in putting to shore on those isles known as the Three Sisters. The strictures change, but the curse remains, laid down by the disobedient angel Rahab. For so long as his punishment continues, the curse endures.
    As the Master of the Straits noted, the One God has a long memory.
    I felt a shiver of foreboding as we were admitted into the courtyard of the palace. It might have been hope, if not for the dream. Once before, my fears had been made manifest in dreams, although it took a trained adept of Gentian House to enable me to see them-and they had proved horribly well-grounded that time. This time, I remembered. I