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responsibilities of the Master of the Straits. For eight hundred years, we have protected Alba and Terre d’Ange. Yes.” He raised his head at my silence, glaring with unearthly eyes. “ Protected ! For all that the separation was maintained, we protected you! Even now, I keep the bans. No Skaldi ship may sail from the north but I permit it, no Aragonian or Carthaginian from the south. Do you think my responsibilities will end if the curse is broken? They won’t, Phèdre. While I live, it is mine to ensure, because it is necessary. Do you suppose I can do that and serve to lead the Tsingani?”
    “No.” I wanted to quail under his glare; I steeled myself instead. “Is that why you’re afraid to leave the isle?”
    He looked away. “Who says that I am?”
    I answered him with a question. “Is it Rahab you fear, or leaving?”
    Outside the tower windows, gulls circled, riding the winds. Hyacinthe watched them. “Both,” he said at length. “Oh, Phèdre! I want it, I want it so badly I taste it, dream of it. I see my face in the mirror, aging, and I think of nothing else. But it scares me to death.” He looked back at me. “I faltered. I was afraid. Would the summoning have worked, if I hadn’t?”
    “I don’t know.” I sat on my heels and regarded him. “It will work this time. The geis is bound to me, now.”
    “What happens if you falter?”
    I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. “I suppose I become your apprentice.”
    “And I get to die, while you wither into eternity.” There were tears, mortal tears, in Hyacinthe’s black eyes. “I should never have let you ashore.”
    I folded my hands to hide their trembling. “I won’t falter.”
    He smiled sadly. “Can you be so sure?”
    “No.” I forced my tone to remain calm. “But everything I love best in the world, aside from you, is on that ship you bound mid-harbor. And I haven’t had twelve years to forget it. What’s the cost, Hyacinthe, of pressing forward until Rahab manifests in his entirety? Pain? Fear? I’m an anguissette . These are things I was born to endure.”
    Hyacinthe shook his head. “You never give up, do you?”
    “Not yet, anyway.” I rose to my feet and extended my hand to him. “Come on, Master of the Straits. There’s a ship full of anxious people awaiting us, eager to learn if we’re all going to live or die. Let’s go find out. You can worry later what to do about the Tsingani.” I helped him to his feet, then caught sight of myself in a bronze mirror as I turned to go, stopping me in my tracks. The winds that had born me up had blown my hair into serpentine tangles, wild and disheveled. I raised my hands in dismay, feeling at the gnarled locks, trying ineffectually to unknot them with my fingers. “Name of Elua! Hyacinthe, look what you did to my hair !”
    “You think it will matter to Rahab?” Hyacinthe asked. I glanced sharply at him, and found him grinning; unexpected, as welcome as light in a dark place, his old grin, irrepressible, white and merry against his brown skin. He laughed at my ire, dodging a well-aimed blow and catching me in his arms. “Ah, Phèdre! You’ve not changed.”
    “Neither have you,” I whispered, laying my head on his chest. “Not really, not underneath. I still know you, Hyacinthe.”
    We stood like that for a long time.
    “You gave me a gift,” he said eventually, his breath warm against my tangled hair. “That last night, on the isle, before you left me here alone ...” His mouth curved in a smile. “It gave me something beautiful to remember. Sometimes, it was the only thing that kept me going.”
    “It wasn’t a gift,” I murmured. “I remember it, too.”
    “Phèdre.” Hyacinthe cupped my face in his hands. “I’m going to miss you.”
    I met his dark, sea-changing gaze and could not pretend he was wholly unaltered. “You’ll go with Sibeal.”
    He nodded. “She has seen, in dreams, something of what I’ve become. And I have watched her, too, in the sea-mirror. We understood one another from the beginning, Phèdre, Necthana’s daughters and I. Sibeal isn’t you. But she’s someone I could love. And you ... I’ve watched you, too.”
    “Joscelin,” I said.
    “Joscelin.” His smile was rueful. “That damned Cassiline, yes. Even on Alba, I saw it in both of you. I told you as much. Elua must have laughed when he bound your hearts together. Whatever power I have, it’s naught to that. I’ll not challenge that