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Melisande’s letter. It wasn’t easy. In the end, I kept it simple and to the point.
    Swear to me in Kushiel’s name that I will have no cause to regret it and you shall see your son .
    Summoned by Allegra, Ricciardo Stregazza arrived at Villa Gaudio that morning, and we went through the entire story again. This time, Imriel was present for it, listening with his eyes shadowed and wary, pained at the living reminders of his parents’ treason. Not until Ricciardo and Allegra’s son Lucio, now sixteen and filled with good-natured manful pride, took Imri to the stables to choose a mount of his own did his spirits lighten.
    “He’s a good lad, isn’t he?” Ricciardo said, watching them go.
    “Yes,” I said. “That, and more.”
    My message was delivered by way of an anonymous courier, a stone-mason from one of the Scholae Ricciardo represented. We waited at Villa Gaudio for the man to make his slow return. Allegra took us on a tour of her gardens, where a few late-blooming blossoms lingered.
    “I’m sorry,” she apologized, glancing at Joscelin. “My lord Cassiline, this must be terribly dull for you.”
    “No.” He gave her his best Cassiline bow. “Not at all, my lady Allegra. I am passing fond of gardens.”
    I remembered how we had first come here together at Ricciardo’s invitation, when Joscelin and I had scarce been speaking to one another. Such a haven it had seemed ! We had gardens in Montrève, too, although there are as many herbs as flowers. Richeline Purnell, who is my seneschal’s wife, tends them lovingly. Joscelin knelt in one for many hours contemplating his anguish and his Cassiline vows, the day I told him I was returning to Naamah’s Service to answer Melisande’s challenge.
    That seemed a very long time ago.
    Ricciardo’s stone-mason returned before dusk, bearing a letter with a single phrase written on it.
    I swear it .
    The handwriting was shaky. It was not noticeable, not to one who didn’t know it well, not to one whose own hand wasn’t trained in the elegant formal script of D’Angeline nobility and adepts of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. I noticed.
    Melisande’s hand had trembled as she wrote it.
    My heart quickened within my breast and my breathing grew shallow. My blood beat in my ears, sounding out the Name of God, while a different name throbbed in my pulse. Blessed Elua, I prayed, let me be strong.
    It was a sober meal we passed that night, and much of it due to my own distraction. Ricciardo and Allegra’s daughter Sabrina joined us, along with her husband. In the year we had been gone, their studious, even-tempered daughter had surprised them by falling in love with a poet, a minor son of one of the Hundred Worthy Families. They were wed now, and her belly just beginning to swell with their first-born. I noted the tender pride which with she carried herself and thought on the mysteries of life.
    “You feel it?” she asked Imriel, inviting him to lay his hands on her. “It will begin to move, soon.”
    His face was a study in solemn awe. “I helped Liliane to deliver a kid, once,” he told her. “It was backward, but it came out all right, because she was there. Brother Selbert always called on her to attend when a goat was birthing.”
    “Well.” Sabrina smiled. “Then I know who to call upon, if the midwife has troubles.”
    The goat-herd prince. I remembered the stories they had told of him at the Sanctuary of Elua, and the simple-minded acolyte Liliane whom animals trusted, and my heart ached. He should have had that life, should have grown to manhood there in the mountains of Siovale, fit and happy, scrambling over crags.
    It should have been so.
    But there still would have been Melisande.
    We left for the Temple in the morning, travelling by a hired gondola. Ricciardo and Allegra would have gladly given their own vessels, their own guards to attend us, but I preferred it this way. If aught went awry, no taint of it would fall upon them. We travelled the waterways of the mainland and crossed to the islanded city, shivering a little in the cold air. I’d meant to procure new attire, but in the end, some whim made me wear my Jebean garb, Ras Lijasu’s finest gift, with a borrowed cloak flung over it, gold and ivory bangles at both wrists. Let Melisande, I thought, remember how far we had travelled.
    It was a bright day despite the chill, and La Serenissima shone brightly under the wintry sun, and brightest of all the Temple of