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banishment,” I gasped, “I bid you relinquish your curse!”
    The seas shimmered about Rahab, rising in columns, in towers, more water than the harbor could possibly hold, rising to threaten the very cliffs. Quintilius Rousse’s flagship rode the crests, pitching steeply, drawn toward the epicenter that was Rahab. His bone-white gaze sought mine, and he seemed at once no taller than a man and vast as mountains. “ You dare ?” he asked, bringing his adamant chains taut with a clap like thunder, “ You dare, misbegotten child of Elua ?”
    There is strength in yielding. I had gone beyond my own fear.
    “Elua understood love,” I said to him. “The world may have been better served, my lord Rahab, had you done the same. Will you go peaceably? I offer you that choice.”
    The seas towered and raged, and Rahab shone like a chained star in their midst, silver-dark, bone-white, kelp-green, cloaked in raiment like water and lit with an inner fire that owed nothing to this world of mortal clay . “ As my heart knows no peace, nor shall yours !”
    So it was to be.
    Of a strangeness, I felt calm. The Sacred Name blossomed like a rose within me, swelling to fill every part, until there was no room left for any trace of fear. I saw in Rahab the centuries reaching back untold, the ancient conflict-rebellion, born of pride; subservience, born of adoration. I saw the hatred and bitter envy he bore for Elua and his Companions. All the joy and wonder of the deep seas, I beheld in him, and loneliness, too. And love; ah, Elua! It had hurt, it had cut to the bone. Nothing in the endless centuries of tempestuous service to the One God had prepared Rahab for the vagaries of mortal love, for the pain of rejection.
    “In the Name of God,” I said with pity, “I banish you, Rahab.”
    Waves clashed in answer, and Rahab grew terrible with wrath, gathering fury, blue-white lightning flashing in the writhing locks of his hair as the mighty voice chimed . “ You lack the right, Elua’s child !”
    But it was there, in every part of me, in every fiber of my being, rising like a tide to overflow me and I would have laughed, if my throat had not been filled with it, or wept, if I could. I had travelled to the farthest reaches of the known world for the Name of God, and walked paths darker than I had dreamed.
    All that was left was to speak it.
    I did.
    “_________________”
    If the whole of the mortal world were a brazen bell, and that bell were tolled; that would be the sound of it, as the unpronounceable syllables rolled from my tongue, ringing over the waters, tolling without beginning or end, and it was as if there had never been anything else, not sea nor land nor sky, but only this endless Word, that was before time began. For the space of time in which I spoke it, nothing else existed. Then ... everything, and I at the center of it, hollow and echoing, my tongue a dumbstruck clapper in the vault of my mouth, while I swayed beneath it, dazed and empty, a sounding vessel whose time had passed.
    I had spoken the Name of God.
    Ah, Elua !
    It was done.
    Without a sound, Rahab’s head bowed, like night’s last star vanishing in the dawn. Sorrow, and defeat. One arm rose, sweeping, a plumed wing of water and sea-foam, trailing adamant shackles, passing before his face. Bittersweet, this ending. Even the anger of a spurned heart had held mercy in it. The curse that had divided Terre d’Ange and Alba before Hyacinthe’s sacrifice, that had bound him afterward, had held us safe, had protected our shores. Where the One God had abandoned His misbegotten grandchildren, Rahab, in all the anguish of his immortal heart, had not.
    Now it was ended.
    The brightness that was Rahab sank and subsided, winds dying, towering crests dwindling to ripples, a glimmering on the waters. And then ... nothing. He was gone, and I, I was a hollow vessel, empty of purpose, the scoured walls of my being forgetful of what they had contained. The flagship Elua’s Promise bobbed on the waters, momentarily rudderless, thin shouts arising. On the translucent, buoyant chasm of the harbor, I fell to my knees, my soaked skirts floating about me, born on the gentle waves.
    “Phèdre.”
    Hyacinthe’s voice; Hyacinthe’s hand, upon my shoulder. I gazed up at him, glad of the reminder. Yes, that was who I was, then. Phèdre, Phèdre nó Delaunay, Delaunay’s anguissette ; Kushiel’s Chosen, Naamah’s Servant. And his friend, Hyacinthe’s true friend. His