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ready to go after him.
    “Joscelin ...” I whispered.
    He looked as sick as I felt. “I have to try.”
    That was when we heard the splash, and Jebean voices raised in fierce shouts of encouragement. Kaneka’s form cleaved the waters like a dark spear, long arms flashing in steady strokes, her legs kicking strongly, clearing the line of horses. Where the current was with her, she hurtled downstream; where it eddied and surged, she rode it with skill, drawing ever nearer to her objective.
    “Pull,” I said to the raft-handlers . “ Pull !”
    They did, at a frantic pace, no longer laughing. I daresay we crossed the Euphrate at record speed. By the time we reached the far shore, Kaneka and Imriel were out of sight. I stumbled onto dry land, ignoring my sodden skirts, and grabbed the reins of the nearest horse, snatching them from the hands of a startled Akkadian soldier.
    “Watch him,” I said to Joscelin, pointing to the second soldier on our raft. “And get Amaury.”
    Without waiting for his acknowledgment, I flung myself on the horse’s back and wheeled, heading downstream. It was soaked and skittish and unsaddled, but if nothing else, I have become a passing fair rider in my travels, and I clung to its slick hide and urged it onward.
    Around the second bend, I came upon Kaneka hauling Imriel out of the shallows. Water ran off her dark skin in rivulets and she was panting like a distance-runner, her arms trembling with the effort. Imriel was dead weight, hanging limp in her grasp. I drew up the horse so sharply its forehooves sprayed dirt and dismounted at a run. Together we got him ashore.
    “Turn ... on ... belly,” Kaneka gasped in Jeb’ez, dropping in exhaustion. “Get... out... water.”
    Imriel wasn’t breathing. Following her instruction, I turned him onto his stomach, pressing rhythmically between his shoulders. A trickle of water emerged from his slack mouth, dribbling onto the soil. I kept pressing. Then, all at once, he drew in a choked breath, coughed, and spewed out half the Euphrate.
    I sat back on my heels and breathed a prayer of thanks.
    By the time Lord Amaury and the others arrived, Imriel’s wracking coughing and spitting had subsided and he was alert, albeit dazed. Beneath the inky tendrils of hair plastered to his brow was a crescent-shaped bruise where a horse’s hoof had caught his temple, a deep blue against his bloodless pallor.
    “He’s all right?” Amaury asked, dismounting and offering his cloak to Kaneka, who’d stripped off her garment before diving.
    “I think so.” I smoothed the damp hair back from Imriel’s brow, shading his eyes to see if his pupils contracted, knowing somewhat of what a blow to the head could do. Elua be praised, they did. “Are you all right, Imri?”
    Sodden and shivering, as much with shock as the chill, he nodded. “Kaneka?”
    “Here, little one.” She answered him herself in zenyan, wrapping herself in Amaury’s cloak and laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You gave me a fine chase.”
    “Elua!” Amaury said fervidly, eyeing her. “She swims like a fish. Phèdre, will you convey my thanks and compliments?”
    I did, translating them into Jeb’ez. Kaneka laughed, water sparkling like diamonds in her woolly hair. “They call this a Great River?” she said contemptuously. “Let them try the Nahar in flood season, where it passes the cataracts and the crocodiles wait. Now that is a river!”
    Someone caught the horse I’d borrowed, which had wandered some distance away, and Imriel was bundled in another cloak. By the time we returned to our party, Imriel had stopped shivering and grown excited by the adventure, displaying the bruise on his temple to Joscelin with a boy’s pride.
    “Very nice,” Joscelin said to him, raising his brows. “Phèdre, may we speak?”
    The drowned body of the guilty soldier had washed ashore on the far side. Captain Nurad-Sin made profound apologies, swearing up and down that the man was a new conscript, and he’d had no knowledge of his actions, any more than his innocent comrade had had. I heard him out, gauging his words sincere. In the end, I had no choice but to accept them. We were too far outnumbered to do anything else.
    “Thank you for your concern, my lord Captain,” I said politely. “Her majesty Queen Ysandre de la Courcel is eagerly awaiting the return of her young kinsman, Prince Imriel. She would be most wroth if ill befell him now, after such trials, and I daresay