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was anything stranger and more fantastic than that blighted landscape, it was seeing it bedecked with unexpected flowers. How could it be, I marveled, that anything could grow in such a place? And yet it did. On the outskirts, we encountered mimosa in full bloom, shrubs laden with yellow flowers, bright under the hot sun.
    Even in the interior, there was life. In the shadow of a jutting basalt formation, we encountered melons growing in the desert, ripening on the vine with unimaginable speed. Mek Gamal called a halt, then, and we ate melons, their fruit faintly astringent, but blessedly moist. Following the Jebeans’ lead, we spat the seeds back into the sand.
    Truly, the rains had ceased, and at night, the stars were as bright and crowded as I remembered them. I knew them better, now. If no one fetched me to sleep, I would sit for hours, gazing at them, recalling the names Morit had painstakingly taught me. To this day, there are constellations I can name only in Habiru. Hour after hour, they wheeled through the sky in their slow dance. I watched them, and thought about the Name of God.
    It was hot, yes; oven-hot, as searing as before. My mouth grew no less parched, my skin no less dry. The endless swaying of the camels was no more comfortable than before. But in the desert, one can observe the dance of the stars, the steady course of the sun across the sky, and the play of light as it crosses the desiccated land. The air was clear, so sharp it cut like a blade. It was in such a place, I thought, stripped to the bare bones of existence, that the Sacred Name was first spoken.
    We reached the bitter well that marked the halfway point, and it seemed almost sudden. I sat on a rock in the baking valley, watching the camels drink their fill, conscious of the heat but paying it scant heed. What a marvel it was, that creatures existed which could endure such conditions! How strange, that we humans needed salt to live, yet would die of its excess. Salt preserves flesh, and yet kills it, too. In saltwater are we nurtured in the womb, and salt runs in the red blood of our veins.
    “Phèdre.” Joscelin’s voice was hoarse as he thrust the water-skin at me. “You need to drink.”
    I did, tasting the water flat and warm in my mouth, feeling it moisten my tissues, thinking how odd that it should sustain life, and yet death was necessary for us to carry it, the cured leather hide holding portable life within it. How intricate, the working of our world!
    “Mek Gamal is waiting,” Joscelin informed me. “And you’re making Imriel worry.”
    I got back on my camel, then, and our journey resumed. We entered the sea of grey stone, where the wind had sculpted the landscape into fabulous formations. No winds blew this time, and the only sound for a hundred miles was the rattle of pebbles displaced by our camels’ broad hoof-pads. No wonder the Habiru prophets had escaped into the desert to think! I did, on that journey. I thought about Ras Lijasu and his merry good nature, his readiness to consider war a possibility. Was it something intrinsic to mortal kind, that we must always think of killing one another? I prayed it was not so. I had seen too much of death, too much of cruelty.
    And yet it is what we do, again and again. And I ... I was complicit in it, for had I not brought word to Ysandre of the Skaldic invasion, so many years ago? Had I not travelled to Alba, beseeching them to war?
    What is our purpose, if not to kill and die? Love as thou wilt . ’Tis all well and good, if one is a god; not so easy for those of us of mortal kind. Would that there were only that in the world. Were it so, my lord Delaunay would still be alive, and I ... Elua knows where I would be. Were love enough, if my mother and father could have lived upon it like Blessed Elua, would they have kept me? I hoped it were so.
    But even Blessed Elua had his Companions. Where would he be, if Naamah had not given herself to the King of Persis for his freedom, had not laid down in the stews of Bhodistan with strangers so he might be fed? Where would he be, if Camael’s sword had not afforded him protection? What of Terre d’Ange, without Azza’s pride that staked our boundaries, without Shemhazai’s cleverness, that built our cities? Where would we be, without Eisheth’s healing skills, without Anael’s husbandry? How could we atone, without Kushiel’s mercy? How would Elua have answered the One God, if Cassiel had not handed him his dagger?
    We