Kushiel's Avatar

of Imriel’s shirt and holding him fast. His eyes, grey-blue under a thatch of unwashed blond hair, met mine.
    “Thank you,” I murmured in Skaldic. He made no reply, turning his head to watch the boy, who was watching me. “Imriel,” I said to him, speaking to d’Angeline, knowing, at least, that no one else within a hundred miles would understand it. “I am Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève-”
    Elua knows, he was fast; I’d seen it before, and I’d no doubt it took considerable speed to plant the knife in Fadil Chouma’s thigh, not to mention the serving fork in the attendant. The Scions of Elua are gifted. But I am D’Angeline too, and if the blood that flows in my veins is not nobly gotten, it holds no less of the lineage of Elua and his Companions for it. My mother was an adept of the Night Court, and in Terre d’Ange, it means as much to be a whore’s daughter as a prince’s son. Even as his arm flashed out, I reacted, half-expecting it. After all, he was Melisande’s son.
    I caught his wrist, his clawed fingers reaching for my eyes, and held it, inches from my face. “Your mother sent me to find you.”
    For a moment he only stared, like an animal in a snare, trapped and vulnerable. And then rage suffused his features, vivid blood surging to stain his alabaster skin. “You lief he hissed, convulsing, tearing himself free from my grip, from the Skaldi’s restraining hand. At loose, he spat violently onto the floor between us. “My mother is dead !”
    “No.” I watched him retreat, opening my empty hands to show I meant him no threat. “Imriel, I speak the truth. It is Brother Selbert who lied to you.”
    It stopped him in his tracks, and there was an instant of recognition. For a moment, we merely looked at one another. Then, with a low sound, Imriel turned and bolted, a rabbit fleeing the trap. I let him go, kneeling beside the Skaldi. “Thank you,” I said gravely to him. “If there is aught I might do, aught that might increase your comfort...”
    Without a sound, Erich turned away, facing the wall. I sighed, stooping, and kissed his brow, then returned to my chamber.
    After that, Imriel shadowed me at a distance, warily curious. I let him. No matter what he had survived-and I shuddered to think on it-he was a boy, carrying a hurt and rage few adults could bear. If he were pushed, he would lash out; and if I pushed before he was ready, it would be I who suffered for it. One word of betrayal was all it would take. I would not risk it coming from the lips of a hurt, angry child.
    One good thing came of the encounter, and that was that it restored the Persian eunuch Rushad’s allegiance to me. His beloved Erich had reacted, had undertaken some action affirming life. It was enough, for him. He came to speak with me thereafter, and did me small kindnesses unasked.
    “Drucilla said you were here, when it happened,” I said to him one day, “serving the Akkadian commander. How did it happen, Rushad? How did the Mahrkagir rise to power? Who are the Skotophagoti , the Âka-Magi? Do they truly hold power over life and death?”
    “You ask many questions, lady,” he murmured, picking up the figurine of the jade dog and studying it. “I was a slave, only, tending to my lord’s wife in the zenana . I know only what I have heard.”
    “What have you heard?” I asked, coaxing the story from him.
    From what I gathered, much of the rebellion had taken place underground, as it were, among the lower echelons of Drujani society. Hoshdar Ahzad’s family was slain, and most of the Old Persian nobles among them. The Mahrkagir, rescued by Tahmuras, was raised in secret, amid the legions of servants who attended upon General Zaggisi-Sin, the Akkadian commander of Daršanga; a strange boy, eyes all pupil, unable to bear the light, prone to laugh at inappropriate times. Still, he was Hoshdar Ahzad’s son, and as he came of age, the stories circulated.
    And they came to other ears. It was the priest Gashtaham who divined the signs, who determined what the Mahrkagir’s strangeness portended. Somehow I was not surprised to hear it. A Magus-in-training, it was he who first put forth the notion of turning away from Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Light, to embrace the worship of Angra Mainyu.
    “He killed his own father,” Rushad whispered, dropping his voice even in the relative privacy of my chamber. “That is what they say. It is the offering, the glorification; vahmyâcam, they call it. The