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and stuttering with fear, he nonetheless provided a steady flow of information regarding the dedication ceremony, and the feasting that would accompany it. It was Rushad himself who would bring the opium tincture to the festal hall, late in the proceedings, and see it dispersed among the myriad pitchers of beer and kumis.
    I do not think he would have found the courage, if not for Erich. The Skaldi’s reemergence into the world of the living filled him with joy, and he held me personally responsible for it. They were an unlikely pair of friends, the young Skaldi warrior and the slender Persian eunuch. Still, Rushad doted on him, and for his part, Erich bore it with a certain fond tolerance.
    As for the Akkadians, I told Uru-Azag myself, and not without a good deal of trepidation. He heard me out silently and, for a long moment, only stood and stared, fingering the hilt of his curved dagger.
    “Opium alone is not enough,” he said shortly. “There will be fighting. And men in the grip of delusion are dangerous.”
    “But unskilled,” I said.
    He nodded, thinking. “If we could get to the fishing boats, it might be enough. Drujan has no fleet to give chase. Still. Daggers are of little use against swords. And there will be two guards posted at the upper entrance to the zenana . Even that night.”
    “The guards will be dead,” I said. “You can take their swords, their armor.”
    Uru-Azag frowned, brows meeting over his hawklike nose. “Who will kill the guards?” he asked. “ You ?”
    “No.” I shook my head. “The Mahrkagír calls him the Bringer of Omens.”
    The Akkadian laughed with harsh delight. “ Him ! Ah, then, I see.”
    “You will do it?”
    He stared into the distance over my head, weighing the matter. “You are mad, you know. It is likely that we will all die.”
    “It is possible,” I said. I thought of Erich’s words. Like the Skaldi, the Akkadians had been warriors, once. “It would be a warrior’s death, Uru-Azag. Not a slave’s.”
    “It would.” He looked at me. “Nariman will be a problem. I will kill him myself. It will be a pleasure to slit his fat throat.”
    I repressed my surge of relief and only nodded. “And the others?”
    “They will fight.” He smiled grimly. “It would shame them not to. Your god, lady, must be a mighty warrior, to inspire such courage.”
    A hysterical laugh caught in my throat. “No,” I said, half-choking on it. “But he is a prodigious lover. Believe me, Uru-Azag, in this place, it is the more dangerous of the two.”
    The Akkadian only looked at me askance, and went about his business. It didn’t matter. They thought me mad, god-touched. It had made me a pariah, before. Now it made me an icon, a catalyst. The signs had spoken ... Kaneka’s dice, the ringing tone’s of Kushiel’s presence, the Skaldi’s return to life. It was enough. He would fight; they would all fight.
    It left Imriel to be told. I had not done it yet.
    On the first day, I had gone to see him after Kaneka and I had finished. Drucilla had examined him-this time, he had allowed it. He had been beaten with a lash, and there were marks of branding on the skin of his buttocks; Kereyit runes, indicating possession as one might mark a herd-animal. Prohibited from possessing him, Jagun had nonetheless marked Imriel as his own. He was not injured badly, as such things went in the zenana , meaning he would not die of it. She had slathered his welts and burns with Tatar horse liniment and gave him a dose of valerian against the pain, from a store she normally held in reserve for the dying.
    Imriel was half-drowsing by the time I saw him, and I hadn’t the heart to rouse him. I sat on the end of his couch and watched him.
    “Phèdre,” he murmured. “Did my mother really send you?”
    “Yes, Imri.” I stroked his fine blue-black hair. “She really did.”
    “How did she know I was here?”
    “She didn’t,” I said softly. “But Blessed Elua did.”
    I thought he might protest it, but his unfocused gaze merely wandered. “When you shouted,” he whispered. “When you shouted ... it made me think of home, and the statue of Elua in the poppy-field ... one of the goats used to follow me there, Niniver was her name, and she crawled under the fence ... she was so little and I fed her with a bottle when her mother died, and Liliane helped me, and she would crawl under the fence and follow me ...”
    His voice had drifted into silence and he had fallen asleep. I