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could be.
    I knew. We had been there.
    And whether it had been madness to bring him or no, Imriel thrived on the journey. Although the loose Jebean burnoose kept off the worst intensity of the sun, the pallor of the zenana had given way to healthy color. He had lost the skulking wariness I had first known, and the shadows under his eyes were gone. Although he was far from sturdy, his bones no longer seemed quite so frail and vulnerable beneath his skin, and I swear, he’d grown a full inch since we left Daršanga.
    “He must be eleven, you know,” Joscelin remarked one evening, watching Imriel lay tinder and branches for the campfire in accordance with Bizan’s careful instruction.
    “Eleven!” It startled me somehow; his age was fixed, in my mind, at ten.
    “Do you remember, he was born in the spring? Six months old, when he vanished in fall.” From the Little Court of La Serenissima, he meant; he’d been part of that search. “Somewhere between Drujan and here, he would have turned eleven.”
    “You’re right,” I said.
    Joscelin watched him without speaking for a time. “He’ll hate it at court,” he said eventually. “They’ll watch him like a hawk, every minute of every day, waiting for him to turn into his mother.”
    “Ysandre won’t allow it,” I protested.
    He gave me a deep look. “Her own cousin tried to have him killed. Elua knows whether or not Barquiel was behind it. What’s Ysandre going to do? Bring back the Cassiline Brothers, assign him as someone’s ward?”
    “If she has to.”
    “She won’t like it.” He shook his head. “Not after La Serenissima. And that won’t stop the talk. Nothing can stop the talk. He’s already pulled one of Melisande’s own tricks, eluding Lord Amaury like that.”
    “He didn’t know,” I said softly.
    “You think that will matter where gossip is concerned?”
    I looked away. “No.”
    “It will make him hard,” Joscelin murmured. “I hate to see it, that’s all.”
    “I know.” I watched Imriel crouch beside the firepit, coaxing a spark from Bizan’s flint striker and blowing softly on a nest of dried grasses at the heart of his arrangement. “Well, we’ve a long way to go yet, and a longer way back.”
    “Not as long as it was,” Joscelin said. “Not nearly so long as it was.”
    And I was not sure, then, if we spoke of the journey or somewhat else.

Seventy
    WE OWED our respite to the rhinoceros.
    ’Tis passing strange, to owe so much to such a monstrous beast; and yet it is true. We were yet in sight of the river when the creature burst through the dense underbrush of the acacias, the hooked thorns troubling its thick hide not at all. I sat my horse stock-still, feeling it tremble beneath me, staring at the looming head like the prow of a warship, small, maddened eyes set on either side of that great central horn. All I could think of was the Black Boar of the Cullach Gorrym, and how it had emerged from the wood to lead Drustan’s troops to victory in Alba. I’d thought that was big.
    Then Tifari Amu shouted, and Bizan, and both of them wheeled their horses in opposite directions, seeking to draw the beast off. Having none of it, it lowered its head and charged, swerving at the last minute to miss me, scattering our bearers and our donkey-train, scattering all of us. It was fast, faster than one would imagine, and its passage shook the very earth. I heard cries of dismay and a yell of pain as someone was entangled in the thorns.
    And then-
    “Joscelin!”
    Like in Daršanga, Imriel’s voice, high and true, rose above the shouting and the drumming of mighty hooves. I saw, and breathed a curse. Joscelin had dismounted and stood between me and the beast as it made its turn, rounding. His sword gleamed, angled in his two-handed grip, and he stood light on his feet, waiting.
    The rhinoceros charged.
    I did not see, in truth, exactly what happened, for in that instant I dug my heels into my mount’s flanks and fought him as he flung up his head in terror, sawing at the reins and wrestling him into a sideways dancing step. I know only that Joscelin whirled out of the way, turning like an Eisandine tauriere , both arms extended and the tip of his sword scoring a long gash down the length of the creature’s leathern hide.
    I will do it, I thought, still fighting my mount and seeing the rhinoceros gather itself, lowering its head, shoulders rising like a hummock on the sea, seeking its opponent. Joscelin moved to intercept