Kushiel's Avatar

laughter; such was the manner of jest we endured. Imriel sat with his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped round them, peering over his knees with scarce-disguised joy. I understood it better, now.
    Make me whole , I had prayed in the Temple of Isis. Make us all whole .
    We had become like family to him.
    There are ties that bind more complex than blood. I knew it, who’d been sold into indenture at the age of four; when I think of the family I have lost, I think of my lord Anafiel Delaunay and my foster-brother Alcuin. Of a surety, Joscelin knew it too, he who was an adored stranger in his childhood home of Verreuil.
    I’d not thought about the ties we had forged with Imriel, and what they meant to him.
    Nor to me.
    Well and so; we were a long way yet from home, whatever Joscelin might claim, and our quest was far from over. One day, Elua willing, it would be done and we would be home. Imriel had a destiny that would claim him, with Ysandre’s protection extended over him and obligations to House Courcel. And there was Melisande, too. What she would make of this, I dared not think. But I had placed myself in Blessed Elua’s hand that day, trusting to his mercy. If it brought love unlooked-for, what right had I to complain? I drew Imriel to join us and he knelt in the firelight between us, leaning against Joscelin’s knee, smelling faintly of fish and content for the first time since I had known him.
    And Joscelin and I, who had regained the trick of knowing one another’s minds without speaking, gazed at each other over Imri’s head and wondered.
    The next day was a flurry of activity. The new-cured hides must be sewn, the smoked and dried meats gathered, our replenished stores packed, unpacked, rearranged and packed again, boots patched and blades whetted. Tifari Amu showed me on the Ras’ map where we would be going, striking out across the mountains to intersect the Great Falls.
    “What will happen,” I asked him, “when we reach Saba?”
    Tifari shrugged, quiet and diffident as always. “As to that,” he said, “I cannot say.”
    So we departed, and left behind our pleasant campsite. I turned in the saddle as we left, watching it vanish behind a bend in the river.
    “I never thought,” I said to Joscelin, “I would be so grateful to a rhinoceros.”
    He grinned. “I never thought I’d be so grateful to a fish.”
    The Jebeans thought we were a little mad, of course, although they didn’t mind it. I don’t know what Kaneka had told Tifari-during the times she deigned to speak kindly to him, which had been enough to encourage him-but it had got about that we were god-touched, all three of us. That, it was allowed, was why Queen Zanadakhete had blessed our journey, and Ras Lijasu had provided for it. As members of the guard, Tifari and Bizan understood the politics of it better, but they still considered it madness. And Joscelin challenging the rhinoceros hadn’t helped. They watched him in the mornings and evenings, performing his Cassiline exercises, and merely shook their heads.
    It didn’t matter. With each day that passed, we drew nearer.
    Once again, we mounted the green heights, wending our way through forests. It was beautiful, untrammeled country, devoid of human inhabitation; too far, Tifari said, from the cities, and too hard to build roads. To be sure, it was hard going, but there were trails carved out by wildlife and these we followed.
    “Who do the Sabaeans trade with, then?” I asked Tifari as we rode.
    “No one, now.” He was silent for a few minutes. “There are other tribes-Zenoë, Shamsun-in this area who owe allegiance to neither Jebe-Barkal nor Saba. But they are hunters, mostly, and bandits. Saba-the Melehakim-have been isolated for a long time, Lady, many hundreds of years. I do not know what you expect, but you may find them otherwise.”
    I didn’t answer. In truth, I had no idea what to expect.
    After some days of travel, we reached the Great Falls.
    Tifari Amu had described them to me, but he knew them only by legend and nothing could have prepared me for the sight of them. There is nothing in Terre d’Ange to match it; no, nor anywhere else in the world I have travelled.
    It was the Nahar river we had regained, and here, near to its source, it was broad and placid once more-until it reached the Falls. Long before we saw them, we heard the tremendous sound. At last we came upon them from above and stood at the edge of the tree-lined gorge, staring in