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At that, Joscelin lifted his head and smiled.

“Come
here
,” I said, drawing him to me.

He did, hoisting himself out of the water on both arms, the left as solid as the right, hands braced on either side of my shoulders. I bit my lip, reaching down to fit him into me, his phallus rigid and hard, the walls of my nether parts still throbbing. Any other man-any one I have known-would have begun, then.

Not Joscelin. He waited, his brow touching mine, sheathed to the hilt in me and our loins enjoined. Slowly, my breathing eased to match his, and our heartbeats synchronized.

In the space between the beating of our hearts, I felt the presence of Blessed Elua.

I’d felt it before, that golden light filling me, the taste of honey in my mouth. I felt it now, and Joscelin’s mouth tasted of honey to me, his tongue like nectar as we kissed. I smelled lavender in his damp hair as it fell to frame my face. The world pulsed and surged as he moved within me, and I moved to meet him, hips thrusting, no longer certain where I began and he ended, my fingers seeking the line of his back, the column of his spine, his muscled flanks. His eyes, summer-blue, looked into mine, shining with Elua’s tide.

This is how we were made whole.

I cried out, at the end, and whose name it was-Joscelin’s or Blessed Elua’s-I could not say. It was one and the same, then. And if I had called what had gone before a climax, it was naught to what came after, welling from someplace deeper within me than I knew I had, until I could only cling to Joscelin with all my limbs and shudder at the force of it. And he-Elua! He went rigid against me, within me, and I felt the vibration all the length of his spine before his loins shivered and he spent himself within me.

So it was done.

“I’m sorry,” I said when we had finished, and the presence had faded. “Joscelin, I am so, so sorry for what I’ve done to us.”

He brushed my lashes. “For what, love?” he asked, examining my tears on his fingertips. “You did what you were called to do. So did I. What is there to forgive?”

“You know,” I said softly. “You heard … stories. Some of them are true.”

“Yes.” He drew a line from the corner of my eye, the left one, with its crimson mote. “Do you wish to speak of them? I swear to you, I can bear it now.”

Remembering, I shook my head. “No. Let them fade, and be forgotten. No.”

“Then it is what it is,” Joscelin said, “And we are what we are. No more, and no less.” He smiled. “Never less. Do you agree?”

I did. I demonstrated to him with a degree of ferocity the extent to which I agreed, until he caught his breath and laughed, and then until he laughed no longer, but tumbled me over with keen desire. And if the presence of Blessed Elua was no longer with us, our own presence sufficed.

I asked nothing more.

For once, it was enough.

Seventy-One

THERE WERE jests, of course; Jebeans speak with frank delight about the arts of love, and there are no secrets in a small campsite. But they were good-natured and I did not mind, and Joscelin bore it well. Their great fish had been gutted and cleaned, and strips of flesh hung to smoke over a second fire. We had some of it fresh that evening, fried in an iron pan with coriander and wild onion, and I thought it was the most delicious dish I’d ever tasted. Like as not it wasn’t, but it seemed so that night.

After we’d eaten, we sat about the fire discussing plans to make ready on the morrow for the following day’s departure. Bizan shared around a skin of honey-mead he’d been hoarding, and the taste of it was sweet and fiery in my mouth. I caught Joscelin’s eye and he smiled, lacing his fingers with mine.

“There are thorns and there are thorns,” Nkuku said judiciously, noting it. “Some are larger than others, but their prick is more pleasant.”

At that, there was laughter; such was the manner of jest we endured. Imriel sat with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped round them, peering over his knees with scarce-disguised joy. I understood it better, now.

Make me whole
, I had prayed in the Temple of Isis.
Make us all whole
.

We had become like family to him.

There are ties that bind more complex than blood. I knew it, who’d been sold into indenture at the age of four; when I think of the family I have lost, I think of my lord Anafiel Delaunay and my foster-brother Alcuin. Of a surety, Joscelin knew it too, he who was an adored stranger in his childhood home of Verreuil.

I’d not thought about the ties we had forged with Imriel, and what they meant to him.

Nor to me.

Well and so; we were a long way yet from home, whatever Joscelin might claim, and our quest was far from over. One day, Elua willing, it would be done and we would be home. Imriel had a destiny that would claim him, with Ysandre’s protection extended over him and obligations to House Courcel. And there was Melisande, too. What she would make of this, I dared not think. But I had placed myself in Blessed Elua’s hand that day, trusting to his mercy. If it brought love unlooked-for, what right had I to complain? I drew Imriel to join us and he knelt in the firelight between us, leaning against Joscelin’s knee, smelling faintly of fish and content for the first time since I had known him.

And Joscelin and I, who had regained the trick of knowing one another’s minds without speaking, gazed at each other over Imri’s head and wondered.

The next day was a flurry of activity. The new-cured hides must be sewn, the smoked and dried meats gathered, our replenished stores packed, unpacked, rearranged and packed again, boots patched and blades whetted. Tifari Amu showed me on the Ras’ map where we would be going, striking out across the mountains to intersect the Great Falls.

“What will happen,” I asked him, “when we reach Saba?”

Tifari shrugged, quiet and diffident as always. “As to that,” he said, “I cannot say.”

So we departed, and left behind our pleasant campsite. I turned in the saddle as we left, watching it vanish behind a bend in the river.

“I never thought,” I said to Joscelin, “I would be so grateful to a rhinoceros.”

He grinned. “I never thought I’d be so grateful to a fish.”

The Jebeans thought we were a little mad, of course, although they didn’t mind it. I don’t know what Kaneka had told Tifari-during the times she deigned to speak kindly to him, which had been enough to encourage him-but it had got about that we were god-touched, all three of us. That, it was allowed, was why Queen Zanadakhete had blessed our journey, and Ras Lijasu had provided for it. As members of the guard, Tifari and Bizan understood the politics of it better, but they still considered it madness. And Joscelin challenging the rhinoceros hadn’t helped. They watched him in the mornings and evenings, performing his Cassiline exercises, and merely shook their heads.

It didn’t matter. With each day that passed, we drew nearer.

Once again, we mounted the green heights, wending our way through forests. It was beautiful, untrammeled country, devoid of human inhabitation; too far, Tifari said, from the cities, and too hard to build roads. To be sure, it was hard going, but there were trails carved out by wildlife and these we followed.

“Who do the Sabaeans trade with, then?” I asked Tifari as we rode.

“No one, now.” He was silent for a few minutes. “There are other tribes-Zenoë, Shamsun-in this area who owe allegiance to neither Jebe-Barkal nor Saba. But they are hunters, mostly, and bandits. Saba-the Melehakim-have been isolated for a long time, Lady, many hundreds of years. I do not know what you expect, but you may find them otherwise.”

I didn’t answer. In truth, I had no idea what to expect.

After some days of travel, we reached the Great Falls.

Tifari Amu had described them to me, but he knew them only by legend and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of them. There is nothing in Terre d’Ange to match it; no, nor anywhere else in the world I have travelled.

It was the Nahar river we had regained, and here, near to its source, it was broad and placid once more-until it reached the Falls. Long before we saw them, we heard the tremendous sound. At last we came upon them from above and stood at the edge of the tree-lined gorge, staring in open-mouthed awe; eagles must feel thusly, gazing down from on high. The Falls were as wide as the river itself, far too wide to bridge, and formed a sheer drop of a hundred feet or better. Water cascaded off the edge in a solid sheet, churned white as foam, plunging impossibly far, down and down and farther still, until it plunged into the greenish waters of the basin below with such force as to raise a constant mist, sun-shot and shimmering with rainbows.

“Name of Elua!” Joscelin whispered.

I swallowed and pulled Imriel back from the edge, as he clambered over moss-covered rocks for a better view.

’Tis a poor description I have given of the Great Falls, but it is not something words can compass. The raw force and beauty of it are too great. And so we stood for a time, all of us, drinking in the sight of it, the roar of the falling water filling our ears. Even at this height, windblown spray dampened our faces.

I daresay if the Falls had not been so stunning, we would have heard the hunting-party.

They were Shamsun, although I did not know it at the time; Tifari Amu told me, after. There were ten of them, armed with crude bows and javelins; agile and strong to a man, with skin the color of ripening olives and hair braided close to their skulls. Hunters-and bandits. It needed no one to tell me that. I saw it in the way the leader’s gaze flicked over our laden mounts and donkeys.

And the way it flicked over me, astonished and avid, his tongue wetting his lips. In a swift motion, he nocked an arrow and drew his bow, aiming at Joscelin, who made the tallest target. The others followed suit, and I drew Imriel behind me.

“Hold,” the Shamsun leader said in a recognizable dialect of Jeb’ez, addressing Tifari Amu and Bizan, who’d already begun to fan out. “Let us take what we will, and no one will die.”

“What will you have?” Tifari called, his sword half-drawn.

“Your goods. Your weapons. Whatever you have,” the Shamsun replied. Let it be that, I prayed; let it only be that. We are near enough now that it makes no difference. There is water, and fish, if we can catch them-surely the Habiru laws of hospitality must hold true in Saba. The leader’s gaze slid over me again, and I saw his breath quicken. “And the woman.”

Joscelin had learned enough Jeb’ez for that.

It took them by surprise when he bowed, his crossed vambraces flashing in the verdant light. It took them harder when he straightened with daggers in his hands, throwing both in quick succession.

He missed with the left. Not the right, which killed the leader.

Arrows filled the air. I flung myself down on top of Imri scarce in time, feeling a line like a red-hot poker scored across my back. Pain, unexpected, blossomed in me like an old acquaintance come to visit, the scent of crushed ferns filling my nose. Imriel made a muffled sound of protest and I moved cautiously off him, turning my head to see the mêlée.

It wasn’t pretty. If the Shamsun had been farther away, they’d have held their advantage, but after the first rain of arrows, it had gone to hand-to-hand combat. Bizan had the shaft of an arrow standing out from his thigh, but he fought undeterred, hobbling fiercely and swinging his sword. One of the bearers had managed to free Tifari’s camelopard shield from the baggage, and I got a glimpse, then, of the full skill of Jebean soldiery.

And Joscelin … Joscelin had blood pouring in a stream down the right side of his head. For all that, he fought as calmly as if he were at his exercises, wielding his two-handed sword with careful grace. Not like he had before, no. But he was right. He could still do it.

The Shamsun had come prepared for a hunt, not a battle. It was over in minutes. The last one, who tried to flee, Tifari Amu slew with one of his own javelins, picking his mark through the trees and heaving a mighty cast. The man fell, pierced from behind.

“He would have gone for his tribe,” Tifari said to my shocked expression, lowering his shield to wipe his brow with his forearm. “And then we would have blood-debt to settle.”

To that, I could make no reply. We were alive.

I went instead to see to Joscelin, who winced when I touched him. An arrow had nicked his ear, taking a chunk of flesh from its upper curve. Since it was not a dangerous wound, I washed it and applied a tincture of snakeroot, giving him a clean rag to press against it until the bleeding stopped.

“Well?” he asked.

“It won’t show if you wear your hair unbraided,” I said. “I always did like it loose.”

He laughed, then stopped as I turned to tie up the water-skin. “You’re hurt.”

“Some.” I peered over my shoulder, shrugging at the gouge. “A scratch, no more. I need to see to Bizan.”

Over his protest, I went to supervise the extraction of the arrow, which was not so bad as it might have been. The Shamsun were poor. Their arrows were beautifully fletched-how not, with the birdlife that abounded?-but they were only fire-hardened wood, sharpened to a point. If it had been forged steel and barbed, we’d have had to cut it out. As it was, I had Nkuku withdraw it in one swift yank, and clapped a wad of clean cloth in place lest it had pierced an artery. Bizan was lucky, for it had not. I cleaned and dressed it.

“Phèdre.” Joscelin had Imriel in tow. He took the jar of snakeroot from my hand. “Sit down,” he said, shoving me forcibly onto a rock. “Imri, you’re deft. See it cleaned, and put some of this on it.”

“A lot you know about medicine-” I began.

“Oh, hush.” Joscelin handed a damp rag to Imriel, who moved behind me and dabbed carefully at the graze through my rent gown. “Do you want it to fester?”

“I heal clean,” I said, then drew in my breath as Imriel applied the snakeroot. Kaneka had said it was effective; she hadn’t mentioned it stung like seven hells. For an instant, my vision was veiled in crimson, and the surge of the Great Falls was like brazen wings buffeting in my ear. “Ah.”

When I blinked, the world cleared. Joscelin’s expression had changed. “So,” he said softly. “That, too, is unchanged.”