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or cared that Imriel de la Courcel was the son of the deadliest traitoress Terre d’Ange had ever known. And he hadn’t had a nightmare since we arrived.
    “We should leave him here,” Joscelin said, reading my thoughts. “It would be safer.”
    “Do you think he’d stay?”
    “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Ask him.”
    I did, and got the Courcel frown in answer, neat furrows forming between his brows. “You said the Tsingani helped you find me because of Hyacinthe. You said it was right and fair that I should go.”
    “True,” I said, wondering why I’d said somewhat so foolish. “But you could help most of all by remaining safe in Debeho.”
    That went over about as well as one might expect. “ I got Joscelin’s sword for him in Daršanga!” he reminded me.
    “Yes,” I said, and sighed. “You did. And if you try anything half so dangerous in Saba, I swear, I’ll get Tifari Amu to hold you down and sit on you.”
    His eyes lit with hope. “You won’t leave me?” There was an unexpected plea in his voice.
    “No,” I said, and this time I sighed inwardly. Love as thou wilt . Whether I willed it or no, Blessed Elua’s precept had come to encompass this boy, and I didn’t have the heart to abandon him. His trust had been violated too many times already. “I promise, Imri. We won’t leave you.”
    After the feasting, Kaneka told the story of Drujan, and everyone fell silent to listen.
    She had a touch of her grandmother’s gift. ’Twas strange, hearing it told from her perspective. The audience sucked in their breath at the catalogue of the Mahrkagir’s cruelties, although she did not list them all, no; not the ones I knew. Nor did she describe the daily squalor of life in the fateful zenana -the factions, the petty hatreds. And I ... I did not enter the tale as a figure of contempt, Death’s Whore, despised by all, but as a cunning trickster, cleverly winning the Mahrkagir’s trust. It made me smile, a little bit. But the brooding presence of Angra Mainyu loomed over her tale, terrifying and oppressive, and that much was true.
    And the battle in the festal hall, with all its attendant horrors-that, Kaneka told well, much to the Jebeans’ shivering delight. They looked in awe at Joscelin as she described how his sword wove and flashed in patterns of steel too quick for the eye to follow, and a ring of the dead rose around him. He smiled quietly, his hands resting on his knees. It was not a thing of which he was proud, nor ever would be.
    When she described the column of flame bursting from the well of Ahura Mazda, they clapped and shouted in approval-even her brother Mafud, whose envy and long-born guilt were erased by his relief at her safe return. And thus the story ended in triumph. I looked at Imriel, whose expression was troubled.
    “It wasn’t like that, Phèdre,” he said to me. “Not really.”
    “I know.” I stroked his hair. “That’s why it’s important to remember. But the stories are important, too.”
    And we can bear to hear it now, I thought; not the whole truth, no, but Kaneka’s truth, the one she will carry to sustain her, that she will weave into legend and one day her grandchildren will tell to their children, holding up an ancient Drujani war-axe and saying, this was hers, and this was her story.
    If it is so, mayhap we can learn to endure our own.
    This was her land, and these were her people. I envied her that. Her story was done, and I prayed for her sake it was so. Of a surety, she had earned it. Still, mine continued. A sacrifice had been made, and I had allowed another to take my place. I had promised to walk the Lungo Drom , the longest road, for Hyacinthe’s sake. The end of his story was yet unwritten. I prayed it would find an ending half as meet, in debts forgiven and joyous reunion.
    I prayed it would end in love. I prayed we could come home , all of us.
    In the morning, we departed for Saba. Kaneka held me hard and I returned her embrace, feeling her warm and solid presence. “Take care of yourself, little one,” she whispered. “Take care of them all. May your strange gods watch over your every step.”
    I nodded and swallowed. She had been a good friend, and I was sorry to be leaving her. “And you, Fedabin. I think, after last night, you have a long life as the storyteller of Debeho ahead of you.”
    “It may be so.” Kaneka released me and grinned. “It may be so!”
    Onward we rode, turning back in the saddle to wave a