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vast caravan bound for the west, for a good many women of the zenana would be travelling with us. And our escort ... Prince Sinaddan had kept his promise. It was nearly the size of a small army. The tents, the supply-train, the wagon-loads of gifts and generous dowries; it needed a small army to transport us.
    I didn’t like it, not one bit. There were hundreds of unfamiliar faces, and hundreds of ways accidents could happen on the journey. And there was not a single blessed thing I could do about it. I’d asked for this escort myself.
    For all that, it was a pleasant journey crossing the flood plains between the Great Rivers. The spring floods had deposited a load of rich alluvial soil on the arid plains, and it was farmland as far as the eye could see, fields of wheat and barley waving in the sun, villages flanked by rows of date palms. The days were warm without being unbearable, and the nights pleasantly cool. If not for my fear of Imriel’s assassination, it might have been idyllic.
    We had told Amaury Trente, of course, who’d heard us out in silence, his shoulders slumping. I pitied him. Unsubtle or no, Amaury was a good man and a loyal one, and he’d undertaken this mission out of regard for the Queen. Already, it had proved harder and led him further astray than he’d ever dreamed possible. This only made his task more difficult. Still, when I had finished, he sighed, squared his shoulders and went about informing his men, whom he vowed were trustworthy. I prayed he was right.
    Between us, we kept a guard on Imriel at all times, unless he rode with Kaneka and the Jebeans, betimes joined by the Chowati. He ate no dish that was not from the common pot, and drank no water not drawn by friendly hands.
    All went well until the day we crossed the Euphrate. The floods had subsided, but the river was still swollen to a dangerous torrent. I had not liked the raft-crossing the first time, and I dreaded it no less the second. There were ten passengers on our reed raft-Joscelin, Imriel and I, Kaneka and four others, along with two Akkadian soldiers, who looked no less wet and miserable than the rest, ostensibly placed there for our protection by their captain, Nurad-Sin.
    Our unsteady vessel bucked and surged on the raging waters, drawn across by the raft-keepers, chanting and laughing with steady cheer, drawing it hand over hand along one of the massive, water-logged ropes that spanned the river, while a team on the far end hauled on a second rope. Once again, our poor horses had to swim for it, and I feared sorely for there lives. Imriel knelt anxiously at the edge of the raft, watching his Akkadian pony struggle valiantly against the current.
    I was watching him. I should have heeded my own teaching, and watched the soldiers.
    It happened so suddenly. At mid-river, the raft was lurching so violently I didn’t notice when one of the soldiers rose to his feet, thinking him pitched there by the raft’s movement. In a single motion, half-falling, he lurched across the raft, arms extended, pushing Imriel over the edge.
    A cry of dismay caught in my throat. Flecked with foam, the roiling brown water swept Imriel downstream into the struggling bodies of our horses, fouled amid their churning legs. With a wan smile, the soldier followed him overboard, letting himself tumble into the raging river. Amid the shouting and panic, one of the raft-keepers somehow lost his grip on the rope, and the force of the river tore it from the others’ hands, the raft’s surge sending the handlers on the far side staggering and reeling.
    What would have happened if Joscelin had not lunged for the rope, catching it in his good right hand, I cannot say. His face was wracked in a grimace of pain, and his arm stretched taut in its socket. I cannot imagine how he held on without being pulled from the raft-but he did. In seconds, the other soldier had grabbed his legs, anchoring him, and the raft- keeper regained the rope with anxious cries. Our craft was stable.
    And Imriel had been carried twenty yards, his body now motionless, his head a dark spot on the surging waters.
    It may have been hopeless, against that torrent, but he knew how to swim; I knew he did, he’d taught the younger children at the Sanctuary. Why was he not even struggling? I thought of how he’d been tangled amid the horses, their churning hooves, and felt sick at heart. In the raft, Joscelin got unsteadily to his knees, fumbling at the knot on his sling, making