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“We do,” I said firmly, forestalling any other answer Joscelin might give. “We have some business to attend to in Iskandria, messire guide, but be assured, we are very interested in the descendants of Saba. Can you arrange to guide us there? We will pay.”

Nesmut made a sound of protest. Karem, looking sullen, wandered to his worktable and pried at the edge of a cabochon gem, peering at its hidden face. Radi Arumi watched me through half-lidded eyes. “There is,” he said presently, “a caravan leaving for Meroë in a fortnight’s time. I have contracted to serve as their guide. Do you wish to go with them, I will accompany you, and from Meroë, we will set forth for Saba, where Melek al’Hakim’s descendants endure. Does it please you, my lady? If it does, we will speak of money.”

I glanced at Joscelin, who shrugged. “Yes, messire guide. It pleases me. Let us speak of money.”

And so we did, in a polyglot of languages, for it would not do but that Nesmut, our self-appointed liaison, had his say, and Karem contributed, while Joscelin and I conferred in D’Angeline. It was an art, I realized in time, and part and parcel of making the deal. At some point, a tray of strong mint tea was served, sweetened with honey. We sipped it from small cups and made polite argument with one another. When it was done, Joscelin and I had signed on to accompany a Menekhetan trade caravan to the Jebean capital city of Meroë, and thence to pay Radi Arumi a certain sum to lead us south to the descendents of Saba.

“May Amon-Re smile upon our endeavors,” Radi said formally, rising and bowing. “I will await you at the Southern Gate a fortnight hence. We will leave ere daybreak.”

So it was done, and it left us a full two weeks to search Iskandria for Imriel’s trail. Although I kept my face solemn, I was pleased with the outcome. It was time enough, I thought. If it was not, no amount of time would suffice. I thought that, then.

“Gracious lady,” Nesmut said tactfully. “The noon hour is nigh. Will you not take repose? There is a house nearby that serves a very fine beer, yes.”

“Yes.” I stood, stiff with long sitting, and wandered to Karem’s worktable, attempting to see his handiwork, “Karem, these are very fine! What is this, a cameo? It’s worthy of D’Angeline workmanship.”

He moved awkwardly, interposing his body between me and the worktable, preventing me from seeing. “No, no, my lady is too kind,” he murmured. “They are poor trifles; poor trifles, nothing more.”

“Gracious lady.” Nesmut, appearing at my side, tugged at my hand, looking at me with earnest eyes. “Let us go.”

In the street, when the door to the jeweler’s shop had closed behind us, he relaxed. I exchanged a perplexed look with Joscelin, who shrugged. The sun stood high overhead and the heat had intensified.

“Come,” Nesmut said. “We will take repose.”

The establishment to which he led us was thoroughly Menekhetan in nature; cool and dim, with thick walls to keep out the heat and high ceilings to diffuse it, and the same low arrangement of table and chairs, nearer to the cool tiles of the floor. We paused in the arched doorway. Several men seated within were playing a game with an inlaid board. They looked up, neither hostile nor welcoming. Nesmut spoke to the proprietor at length in Menekhetan. Eventually he nodded and waved us to a table, bringing a brown earthenware jug of beer and three cups.

The proprietor poured and the men resumed their board game, stealing occasional glances our way. “Nesmut,” I said. “Are you sure we are welcome here?”

Draining half his beer at a draught, he nodded vigorously, swallowing and setting down his cup. “Yes, gracious lady. It is not a place for women, Menekhetan women, but I explained to Hapuseneb that you are a foreigner, and different. It is proper. Do not fear. I know much of the ways of foreigners,” he added, boasting.

“And Menekhetans and Hellenes as well?” Joscelin inquired.

Nesmut refilled his cup. “Everything, gracious lord, that passes in the city. But you are going to Jebe-Barkal, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “In a fortnight.” I sipped my beer and found it cool and refreshing, sweetened with honey and a trace of mint. “Nesmut, it is true, we do have need of a guide to the city, one who knows it inside and out. But our business here, it is a very delicate matter, and this guide … it must be someone whom we can trust, someone who can keep a secret.”

His eyes had grown very round. “I can keep a secret!” he said excitedly, tapping his breast. “I can, yes!”

I shook my head. “No. Even a promise is not enough. It is too grave.”

“I will swear it by Serapis, god of the dead.” Nesmut shivered and knelt on his low chair, tucking his bare feet under him. “I will swear the most dire oath I know, gracious lady!”

I thought about it, and at length nodded, keeping my expression terribly serious. “All right, then. Swear it.” He did, raising one hand and reciting a long oath in Menekhetan with all the gravity of his youth. “Good,” I said when he had finished. “Nesmut, we are looking for a boy, a D’Angeline boy who was sold into slavery somewhere in Iskandria.”

“Oh.” Looking disappointed, he slumped back into his chair. “Yes, gracious lady. The one who put a knife in merchant Chouma?”

I raised my eyebrows. “You know about it?”

Nesmut sniffed. “Everyone knows. Rekhmire the clerk marched through the city to Chouma’s house with enough men for an army. Everyone knows. Not,” he added scornfully, “the lords and ladies, no. They are too busy aping Hellenes, courting favor.
They
do not care what Pharaoh’s men do to a Menekhetan slave-merchant.
They
do not care that Chouma’s third concubine will have scars.”

“So much for discretion,” Joscelin said to me.

“True,” I said. “Nesmut, what else do people say about it? Do they know where the boy may be found?”

“No.” He shook his head, concentrating on refilling his cup. The jug was empty; our young guide had a considerable thirst for beer. He glanced at Joscelin for permission before gesturing to the proprietor for more. “No, gracious lady, no one knows. But it is said …” He glanced sidelong at us and fell silent. The proprietor came with a fresh jug. Nesmut watched his receding back.

“Nesmut,” I said gently. He met my eyes with reluctance. “Whatever it is you fear to say, I swear, I will never divulge that I learned it from you. I swear it in the name of Blessed Elua, and that is an oath no D’Angeline may break.”

The boy stared into his cup, lowering his head until his hair obscured his face. “It is said,” he murmured, “that the D’Angelines who came, the others, are looking for the boy. Why else would Rekhmire go to Chouma’s house only then? So it is true. What is the name it is death to tell Pharaoh’s men?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Pharaoh.”

It made sense, although I wished it did not. I should have thought of it myself. Terre d’Ange does not permit traffic in D’Angeline flesh. Of a surety, if Pharaoh had a fancy for a D’Angeline slave-boy, it would be a whim best concealed.

Fadil Chouma had a buyer in mind; one, only one, mind
…

If Pharaoh had bought Imriel, it was done in secrecy, no doubt with Chouma’s assurances that the lad was no one, a shepherd boy who would never be missed. I thought of the others, the children we found in Amílcar. It would have been true, had it been either of them. But no, it was Imriel, and now there was a delegation on Pharaoh’s doorstep offering lucrative trade-rights, asking for the child’s return.

“Elua!” Joscelin breathed. He looked ill. “If it’s true, he could never admit it.”

“No,” I said. “He would give every evidence of cooperating. And I daresay it would be worth one’s life to suggest a word otherwise. No,” I sighed, “it’s too late for diplomacy. We need to find out if it’s true, first.”

“And if it is?” Joscelin raised his brows.

“We’ll have to steal him,” I said. Nesmut let out a startled squeak. I glanced mildly at him. “I
told
you it was grave enough to warrant your oath.”

From the look on his face, I daresay he agreed.

Thirty-Two

THE FIRST order of business was to determine whether or not Imriel de la Courcel was indeed housed within the Palace of Pharaohs.

After his initial shock, Nesmut proved a valuable ally; I’d not done ill in trusting him. The oath he’d sworn was a binding one, and Nesmut, balanced on the cusp of adulthood, regarded it with a boy’s solemnity and a man’s sense of duty.

Once he put his mind to the matter, he bethought himself of a considerable number of contacts within the Palace: a laundress, a cook’s apprentice, a gardener, a beer-taster. The list went on and on. It was as I had seen that morning-likeable and quick-witted, the lad knew nearly half the city. And when he was not escorting foreigners about Iskandria, he ran errands and carried messages and gossip for coin.

So had Hyacinthe done.

As he became caught up in the spirit of conspiracy, Nesmut’s eyes shone with eagerness and I had to remind him to lower his voice, to speak in coded reference to our plan. Whether or not any of the other patrons spoke Hellene, I did not know, but I was taking no chances. Elua, but he was young! It made me uneasy.

“No one,” I instructed him, “is to take the slightest risk to gain this information, do you hear me? No one, and most especially not you.” My lord Delaunay’s voice echoed in my head. He’d said much the same to me, on numerous occasions. I’d usually ignored him.

“I hear you, gracious lady.” Nesmut nodded vigorously. “No risk. Only to observe.”

And that, too, rang familiar, with all the brash assurance of my youth. The irony of it was not lost upon me. Melisande Shahrizai taught my lord Delaunay to use people to his own ends; as he had used me, as he had used Alcuin, ruthless and guilt-ridden, honoring a vow the rest of the world had forgotten. He’d had little choice, for the doors of the society whose secrets he sought to penetrate had been closed to him.

As the doors to Pharaoh’s secrets were barred to me.

And now I must needs use Nesmut to gain access to the lower echelons of Menekhetan society, to ferret out those secrets through the only avenue possible, in order to fulfill my vow to Melisande Shahrizai.

No, the irony was not lost upon me.

“Nesmut.” It was Joscelin who changed the topic, a deliberate note of inquiry in his voice. I looked at him with gratitude, knowing full well he sensed my thoughts. “Why did the jeweler Karem turn over his work when we entered his shop?”

“Oh, that.” The lad grinned. “Gracious lord, Karem makes … how did you say? Cameos? Portraits, yes, carved of Pharaoh’s Queen for her admirers. For one of such beauty as my lady to gaze upon them …” He clicked his tongue and snapped the fingers of one hand. “The stone would crack with envy.”

“Ah.” Joscelin shot me an amused glance. “I see.”

“It is well known,” Nesmut offered helpfully, “that such things happen.”

By this turn of the conversation, I gauged it time and more that we returned to Metriche’s inn to confer with Amaury Trente. Indeed, Nesmut was filled with plans and ideas for undertaking his quest, and nothing loath to part company for the day. We settled our account with the proprietor and Nesmut led us out the door of the beer-shop … only to stop dead in his tracks, one slender, brown hand flung into our path.

“
Skotophagotis
!” he hissed, flattening himself against the wall of the shop and urgently gesturing for us to do the same. Joscelin’s daggers rang free of their sheaths and he went into an automatic crouch. Caught behind the two, I peered over their shoulders.

At the end of the street, which intersected a canal, a lone figure stood, clad in loose black robes, illuminated in the slanting afternoon sunlight. The sunlight glinted oddly upon his head, though I could not make out why; either his skull was shaved and oiled, or he wore some manner of curious cap. He paused, glancing this way and that, before proceeding, picking his way with a long steel-shod staff topped with an obsidian ball.

Nesmut sighed and relaxed as the figure moved out of sight, lowering his arm.

“Skotophagotis?” I said quizzically, even as Joscelin straightened and sheathed his daggers. It was Hellene, but no word I knew. “Eater-of-darkness?”

“Gracious lady.” Nesmut shuddered all over. “Do not ask me. These things are known. Do not look on the Queen’s portrait, lest the stone crack for envy. Do not cross the shadow of a
Skotophagotis
, lest you die before sunrise. Come, I will take you to Kyria Maharet’s.”

It must be, I thought, some priest of Serapis, the god of the dead. They are much obsessed with death, the Menekhetans, and spend a good deal of their lives in preparation for it. It was a cleverness of the Ptolemaic Dynasty to unite this worship with that of Dis, the Hellene deity. Now, I daresay, not even the ruling descendants of Hellas knew where one began and the other ended. They have become more Menekhetan than they reckoned, the Ptolemies. How not, in a thousand and a half years? But I, I had endured the mysteries of the Temenos on the isle of Kriti, and I knew some little bit about the living worship of its eldest scions.

Well and so; mayhap Serapis was like unto my lord Kushiel, who once maintained the brazen portals of hell for the One God of the Yeshuites. If it was so, I thought guiltily, I owed him a prayer. Only I was still wroth with Kushiel, the pattern of whose justice I had yet to decipher. If there was a greater purpose at work, I could not discern it.

With such thoughts did I occupy my mind until we returned to the Street of Oranges, and Nesmut remanded us unto the hospitality of the lady Maharet, or Metriche, as she would have it. He left us with promises to return in the morning, and with that I had to be content, wondering if my lord Delaunay had felt the same misgivings when I departed, full of cheer, to some violent assignation.

I’d have felt the same with Hyacinthe, if I’d known where the
Lungo Drom
, the Long Road of the Tsingani, would lead him. But I had been younger then, and more ignorant.

“You know who he reminds me of?” Joscelin asked as Nesmut took his leave, his quick grin flashing in the gathering twilight.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I know.”