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staring at me with no expression whatsoever.
    I lifted my hands from the tabletop and spread my fingers. Ten days.
    With a brief nod, he looked away.
    The remainder of the night is blurred, run together with others, too many others. Nothing was different, save that Imriel was there-and more, more Âka-Magi, more Drujani, more Tatars. What I could not bear to watch unflinching, I avoided. It is a coward’s excuse, I know, but I had endured too much to give myself away now. In time, the Mahrkagir led me away to his quarters and I was granted an anguissette ’s reprieve , forgetting everything in the exquisite depths of pain and humiliation, until it ended and awareness returned in a rush, misery trebled by renewed self-loathing.
    I was returned to the zenana before Imriel.
    Always before, I would go to my chamber and sleep for some hours when the Mahrkagir had finished with me. This time, I waited, kneeling on my carpet, enduring the dull throb of pain. Rushad and Drucilla hovered alike, both distraught. I kept my gaze fixed on the latticed door and ignored them.
    It was over an hour before he returned, Uru-Azag escorting him, and the boy Imriel who returned was not the same I had known, the one who had spat in my face and led me a merry chase about the zenana . This boy walked stiffly, his face blank and dazed, no trace of defiance in his eyes, only uncomprehending hurt. Uru-Azag let him go, bowing imperceptibly as Imriel stumbled with leaden steps toward his couch.
    An island of Chowati lay in his path. It is true that Imri had plagued them on more than one occasion, pinching sweets, trading insults. There was no real harm in it ... but in this place, cruelty bred cruelty. I cannot think why else Jolanta, the most ill-tempered among them, chose to torment him in that moment. I only know that she did.
    “Little rooster,” she called maliciously to him in zenyan, “little cock, where is your crow? What is wrong, have the Tatars taken your balls?” She threw back her head in laughter at his blank stare. “Come, boy,” she said, spreading her legs and rubbing herself, “you’d best use them while you have them, young or no, before you end like the Skaldi!”
    “I say he’s lost them already,” one of the others offered, rising from her couch. Imriel blinked, pushing her hands away as she reached to undo his breeches. Another caught him from behind, pinning his arms. Panicked, he began to struggle, uttering a high, terrible sound. “Any wagers? Is the little rooster’s staff still working?”
    Light-headed with fury, I did not know I had gotten to my feet. The world had taken on a familiar scarlet tinge. My ears were ringing with the terrible sound Imriel was making, and something else, something that blew through me like a wind, a buffeting bronze-winged storm.
    I drew a breath that seared my lungs like fire and shouted. “ Let him go !”
    The words resounded like a whip-crack in the zenana , an echoing silence following. And in the silence, a hundred pairs of eyes stared at me .
    Jolanta of the Chowati was no coward. In the silence, she rose from her couch and picked her way across the zenana to confront me. “Why should we? Who are you to order it?”
    I held my tongue and did not answer.
    “Her name,” said a man’s voice, cracked and harsh, speaking crude zenyan, “is Phèdre nó Delaunay, and she once walked across a war into torture and sure death to save her country.” Erich’s lips curled as he pushed himself up against the wall. “From the Skaldi.”
    “You knew,” I whispered, gazing at him.
    “I was six,” he said. “The defeated always remember.”
    Jolanta blinked, opening and closing her mouth. Like a dark shadow, Kaneka appeared at her side, sliding an ivory hairpin from her thick, woolen hair. It had a point on it like a dagger, and nearly as long. She gestured with it, smiling pleasantly. “Go back to your island, Chowati.”
    I started. “Imriel.”
    “I’ll check on him.” It was Drucilla, steady and efficient. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now. Kaneka, Nariman is coming.”
    With an unobtrusive motion, the Jebean woman slid the ivory pin back into her hair, and Jolanta sidled away toward her couch. Nariman approached, waddling and officious. “Lady,” he said to me in zenyan, breathing hard, dislike in his small eyes, “do not shout in my zenana .”
    The hand of Kushiel had not entirely left me.
    “Listen to me, little man,” I said in Old