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Impossible as it seemed, it was ending, combatants slumping in wounded exhaustion, drug-addled and confused. The surviving women of the zenana huddled in groups. I saw Drucilla hobbling around the outskirts, clutching her belly where a dark stain was spreading, tending the injured. The festal hall was a bloody shambles, tables overturned, the trappings on the dais shredded, even the rubble filling the firepit scattered and strewn. Âka-Magi and Magi alike wandered bereft and dazed, powerless. In the center of it all, Joscelin leaned on his sword, breathing hard, encircled by death.
    There was no one left alive with the will to continue it.
    Save one.
    There was no outcry at his appearance, but a deepening silence. It seemed even the wounded held their breath, watching. Tahmuras’ shadow darkened the hall. How not, as massive as he was? His shoulders seemed to fill the doorway. Even at a distance, I could see the marks of tears on his face. I daresay in that place, he alone grieved for the Mahrkagir, for the mortal death of a man he had loved. We had that in common, he and I-we alone shed tears. He entered the hall with slow, deliberate steps. No one moved to intercept him. Joscelin’s head came up slowly, his weary gaze fixing on the giant warrior.
    “You,” Tahmuras said to him, his voice taut with pain, pointing with the rod end of his mace. It was as though a mountain had spoken. “You will die.” He swung the morningstar, encompassing us all. “You will all die for what you have done!”
    Too tired to speak, Joscelin merely nodded, the point of his sword rising from the flagstones as he set himself to meet this last challenge.
    It is not a battle I care to remember.
    It is not one of which the poets sing.
    The morningstar is a deadly weapon, and a difficult one. Few warriors wield it well. Tahmuras of Drujan had a gift. Quicker on his feet than his size would suggest, he came on fast and low, picking his path amid the corpses, the spiked ball whipping at Joscelin’s legs. In his left hand, he held a long dagger, using it to make slashing blows as Joscelin whirled in his efforts to evade the mace, disrupting all his careful Cassiline skill.
    His patterns broken, Joscelin was forced on the defensive, stumbling backward, tripping over the bodies of his own dead. His parries grew wild, the unpredictable morningstar shattering his guard, the entangling chain threatening to rip the blade from his grasp. Retreating from Tahmuras’ onslaught, he gained the dais, careful steps feeling for the edges as his opponent pressed him. I clutched the hilt of my Drujani sword, forgotten in my terror, and felt Imriel’s hand close hard upon my upper arm as he knelt on the table behind me.
    “Phèdre!” he whispered urgently.
    “I know,” I said, tears in my eyes, watching the struggle. “I know.”
    “No!” His voice rose. “Look!”
    I followed his pointing finger over my shoulder to see the priest Gashtaham approaching.
    “My lady,” he said in a hideous parody of courtesy, holding his ebony rod like a club. His steps staggered, but his eyes, beneath the boar’s-skull helm, were fixed and intent. “My lady Phèdre nó Delaunay of Terre d’Ange, we have unfinished business.”
    “Daeva Gashtaham.” Remembering the sword, I raised it, gripping the hilt with both hands to keep it from wavering. “Put down your staff. It is over. The doorway is closed.”
    The priest’s smile was a dreadful rictus. “It may be, lady. It may be. But you were promised to Angra Mainyu, and he shall have you, if I must split your skull myself. And afterward, the boy’s, and anyone left standing after him.” He drew back his staff to swing, heedless of the blade I held, leveling it at my head. “Do you know what you have done?” he shouted, flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “Do you know what price I paid? Do you know what you have destroyed, damn your soul?”
    “Yes, my lord,” I said steadily, keeping the point of the sword trained on his heart, conscious of the weight of it, conscious of Imriel behind me, conscious of a stealthy movement in the shadows of the dark hall and not daring to look. “I do.”
    “Then die !” Gashtaham hissed, his muscles bunching for the blow.
    I braced myself for the shock. It never fell.
    A strong black hand seized his face from behind, fingers covering his mouth, wrenching his head backward to bare his throat, and I saw Kaneka’s smile gleam in the shadows as her other hand