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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