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  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 Be nedicte 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 put ting 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 had awoken in tears, and I remembered. An old blind woman's words and a shudder in my soul warned me that a decade of grace was coming to an end.

  TWO

  YSANDRE RECEIVED us in one of her lesser council chambers, a high-vaulted room dominated by a single table around which were eight upholstered chairs. Three men in the travel-worn livery of House Trevalion sat on either side, and the Queen at its head. "Phèdre. " Ysandre came around to give me the kiss of greeting as we were ushered into the chamber. "Messire Verreuil. " She smiled as Joscelin saluted her with his Cassiline bow, vambraced arms crossed before him. Ysandre had always been fond of him, all the more so since he had thwarted an assassin's blade in her defense. "Well met. I thought you would wish to be the first to hear of this oddity. "

  "My la . . . " I caught myself for perhaps the thousandth time; bear ing the Companion's Star entitled me to address the scions of Elua as equals, a thing contrary to my nature and training even after these many years. "Ysandre. Very much so, thank you. There is news from the Straits?"

  The three men at the table had stood when the Queen arose, and Ysandre turned to them. "This is Evrilac Duré of Trevalion, and his men-at-arms Guillard and Armand," she announced. "For the past year, they have maintained my lord Ghislain nó Trevalion's vigil at the Pointe des Soeurs. "

  My knees weakened. "Hyacinthe," I whispered. The Pointe des Soeurs lay in the northwest of Azzalle in the duchy of Trevalion, closest to those islands D'Angelines have named the Three Sisters; it was there that the Master of the Straits was condemned to hold sway, and Hyacinthe to succeed him.

  "We have no news of the Tsingano, Comtesse," Evrilac Duré said quietly, stepping forward and according me a brief bow. He was a tall man in his early forties, with lines at the corners of his grey eyes such as come from long sea-gazing. "I am sorry. We have all heard much of his sacrifice. "

  They would, in Azzalle. It was there that we had come to land, D'Angelines, Cruithne and Dalriada, carried to the mouth of the Rhenus by the mighty, surging wave commanded by the Master of the Straits, the wound of our loss still fresh and aching. And it was Ghislain nó Trevalion who met us there; Ghislain de Somerville, then. He has ab jured his father's name since, and for that I do not blame him.

  "Be seated and hear. " Ysandre swept her hand toward the table.

  Although the realm is at peace, they maintain the ways of vigilance at Pointe des Soeurs; the Azzallese are proud, and wary of the fact that the rocky promontory lies close by to the border of Kusheth. Even in times of peace, it is not unknown for the scions of Elua's Companions to skirmish among themselves. Blessed Elua, conceived of the blood of Yeshua ben Yosef and the tears of Mary Magdelene, nurtured in the womb of Earth, sought no dominion here, where he was welcomed open-armed after his long wanderings. He made this place his home, and Terre d'Ange it was called ever after in his honor. Love as thou wilt, he bade us; no more. It is another matter among his Companions— Azza, Naamah, Anael, Eisheth, Kushiel, Shemhazai and Camael—those fallen angels who secured his freedom and aided his passage, and who divided the realm betwixt them. Many gifts they gave us; and dissension, too. Only Cassiel took no part, remaining ever at Elua's side, the Perfect Companion.

  They are gone, now, to the true Terre d'Ange-that-lies-beyond. Once, and once only, a peace was made betwixt the One God and Mother Earth, that it might be so. Only we, their scions, are left to bear out Blessed Elua's precept as best we might—but we are his de scendants and our story continues. And this, then, was the tale that emerged, told first by Armand, who had been on night watch when it began.

  "Lightning," said Armand of Trevalion, "such as I have never seen; blue-white and crackling, my lady, great jagged forks of it, all coming from a single cloud, some ten miles from the coast. " He shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot be sure, in the dark, but it is in that direction the Three Sisters lie; I am as sure as any man can be that the cloud overlay them. "

  "Surely there is nothing so odd about a storm," Joscelin said mildly.

  Armand shook his head. "I have seen storms, Messire Cassiline, natural and otherwise. This is my third turn of duty at Pointe des Soeurs. This was no storm, and I have never seen its like. It was a calm night, with the sky black as velvet and every star visible save where the cloud blotted them out. With each flash of lightning I could see the underbelly of the cloud, violet and black, shot with glimmers of gold. I stood on the parapet in the stillness of a spring night and watched it. Then I went to fetch the commander. "

  "He describes it truly," Evrilac Duré affirmed. "All around us was calm, but though the waves rippled and the insects sang at Pointe des Soeurs, we could see the skies split open and the seas in a fury about the Three Sisters. " He folded his hands on the table. "I have seen many strange things, living on the Straits. No man or woman, Alban or D'Angeline, would deny it. Tides that defy the moon, currents that run backward, eddies and whirlpools and unbreaking waves. You yourself have seen the Face of the Waters, is it not so?"

  "Yes. " It is a thing, once seen, never forgotten.

  "So it is told," Duré murmured. "But I have never seen the like of this, nor heard it spoken. For the better portion of the night it continued, striking ever faster as Armand and I watched from the parapet. Beau tiful, it was; and terrifying. In the final moments before dawn there came one last burst, a flash so bright it fair washed the sky in blindness, and a great crack of thunder. And a voice, crying out; a man's voice, it seemed, but so vast it carried over sea and wave. A single cry. " He fell silent a moment. "Then nothing. "

  "Woke the garrison, it did," the third man, Guillard, offered. "And me the first out the doors, with the sky greying in the east. I saw the wave come and break ashore, a
nd what it left in its wake. Fish, eels, you name it; thousands, there were, flopping and dying on the stones. A great ring of a wave, like the ripple from a cast pebble. " He shook his head. "All along the shore, as far as the eye could see, writhing and flopping. Never seen the like. "

  "So. " I frowned. "You saw a cloud, and strange lightnings; then a wave, which brought many fish ashore. What of the isles? Did you attempt the Three Sisters?"

  Trevalion's men exchanged glances, and Evrilac Duré's folded hands twitched. "We did not," he said shortly. "Our orders are to watch and report. I sent word to my lord Ghislain, and he bade me bring notice in all haste to her majesty the Queen. This, I have done. "

  He was afraid. I saw it in his eyes, the tight lines around his mouth. I could not blame him. Men of Trevalion had died assailing the Straits; a good many of them under Ghislain's command, some dozen years gone by. It was no fault of his, but the orders of the old King, Ysandre's grandfather, Ganelon de la Courcel. Still, they had died, and I could not fault Duré for fearing. I was afraid, too.

  Ysandre cleared her throat. "I've already sent couriers to alert Quintilius Rousse, Phèdre. But he is away on excursion to Khebbel-im- Akkad, and not due to return until summer's end. I thought you would want to know. It is my understanding you have made quite a study of the Master of the Straits. "

  "Yes. " I passed my hands over my face, wishing the Royal Admiral were not gone. Quintilius Rousse had been there, when Hyacinthe made his choice; moreover, he had a long-standing quarrel with the Master of the Straits. It was Rousse who had tested the defenses of the Three Sisters, year upon year. If there was any man fit to try them again, it was he. I had only useless lore on my side—and Joscelin, who was little help at sea, for my own Perfect Companion, alas, was no sailor and was more oft than not found retching over the rails.

  "What do you make of this?" Ysandre's gaze was kind. She had known Hyacinthe, if briefly, and knew of our long friendship.