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saw through a skein of crimson Kushiel’s face, cruel and smiling, his mighty hands. One, held close to his breast, held a key-the other, outstretched, offered a diamond, dangling at the end of a velvet cord.
    “ Phèdre !” There were hands again, Joscelin’s, hard on my shoulders, shaking me. I blinked at him, my vision clearing, realized I was swaying on my feet. “Are you all right?”
    “Yes.” I gripped his forearms, steadying myself, and looked past him at Ptolemy Dikaios. “My lord Pharaoh, I crave a boon.”
    He made a slight gesture. “Speak.”
    From the corner of my eye, I could see Lord Amaury grimacing and Raife Laniol discouraging me with a discreet shake of his head. I ignored them both. “My lord Pharaoh, you know that her majesty has bade us seek a young D’Angeline boy, stolen by Carthaginian raiders and sold unwitting into slavery in Menekhet. You have aided us most graciously in this search. I ask that you aid us once more, and inquire of your Iskandrian Guard if such a boy was seen leaving the city in the custody of Drujani priests.”
    Ptolemy Dikaios relaxed slightly. “It shall be done,” he said, and beckoned to a senior guardsman, resplendent in a white kilt and gilded breastplate, addressing him in Menekhetan.
    “My lady Phèdre ,” Amaury hissed in my ear, one hand closing hard on my upper arm, “think what you do! You place yourself-”
    “Shh.” I waved him to silence, straining to hear the words Pharaoh spoke to the guardsman. He spoke with quiet discretion, but I have an ear for languages, and a memory trained by Anafiel Delaunay. “Amaury, did you give Pharaoh a description of Imriel de la Courcel?” I asked him in a low tone, speaking D’Angeline.
    “A description?” He unhanded me and looked puzzled. “No, of course not. Pharaoh would not concern himself with such details. Even his Secretary of the Treasury didn’t deign to hear them. I told the clerk, Rekhmire. No one else.”
    Raife Laniol, Ambassador de Penfars, glared at us both, put off only slightly by Joscelin’s warning glance. I paid him no heed, considering the key Amaury had given me and what leverage it granted.
    “It is done,” announced the Pharaoh of Menekhet, putting an end to our covert squabbling. He looked at me with a cunning light in his eyes, a smile stretching his broad mouth. “It seems Terre d’Ange has a mighty interest in this young slave-lad, does it not? So, my lady, what boon will you grant me in return?”
    Amaury Trente sighed and threw up his hands in despair, turning away. One of his delegates grinned. Juliette de Penfars gazed sympathetically at me, while her husband the Ambassador strove to put a good face on it. Joscelin ... Joscelin merely frowned, like a man listening to the strains of distant battle.
    “My lord Pharaoh,” I said. “May I speak privately to you?”

Thirty-Six
    OF COURSE, he granted my request.
    To this day, I cannot say whether or not Ptolemy Dikaios truly believed I would bed him for a trivial favor. Mayhap he did, or mayhap he believed I would reckon the price worth it to buy his silence in the matter of the D’Angeline slave-lad our Queen so ardently desired. After all, he knew his worth.
    Either way, I disabused him of the notion.
    “My lord Pharaoh,” I said to him in his private reception-chamber, attended only by impassive fan-bearers. “This is my boon: In exchange for your aid, I will not tell Ambassador de Penfars nor Lord Amaury Trente that you have been in league with the Lady Melisande Shahrizai de la Courcel.”
    He looked at me for a long moment without speaking, reclining on a couch, head propped on one hand. “Now why would you say such a thing?”
    “Because, my lord.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “No one described the lad to you. And yet I heard you tell the guard he was a D’Angeline boy of some ten years, with black hair and blue eyes. Either you have seen the lad yourself... or someone else has described him to you. And I can only think of one person like to do such a thing.”
    At that, he had the grace to blanch a little. “You do not speak Menekhetan.”
    “No,” I agreed. “I don’t. But I listened to a young man in my employ translate those very words into Menekhetan for the benefit of Fadil Chouma’s widow and concubines. I have an ear, my lord, for language.”
    “Indeed.” After a moment, Ptolemy Dikaios rose from his couch and paced the room, his hands clasped behind his back. He regarded his