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had awoken in tears, and I remembered. An old blind woman’s words and a shudder in my soul warned me that a decade of grace was coming to an end.

Two
    YSANDRE RECEIVED us in one of her lesser council chambers, a high-vaulted room dominated by a single table around which were eight upholstered chairs. Three men in the travel-worn livery of House Trevalion sat on either side, and the Queen at its head.
    “Phèdre.” Ysandre came around to give me the kiss of greeting as we were ushered into the chamber. “Messire Verreuil.” She smiled as Joscelin saluted her with his Cassiline bow, vambraced arms crossed before him. Ysandre had always been fond of him, all the more so since he had thwarted an assassin’s blade in her defense. “Well met. I thought you would wish to be the first to hear of this oddity.”
    “My la ...” I caught myself for perhaps the thousandth time; bearing the Companion’s Star entitled me to address the scions of Elua as equals, a thing contrary to my nature and training even after these many years. “Ysandre. Very much so, thank you. There is news from the Straits?”
    The three men at the table had stood when the Queen arose, and Ysandre turned to them. “This is Evrilac Duré of Trevalion, and his men-at-arms Guillard and Armand,” she announced. “For the past year, they have maintained my lord Ghislain nó Trevalion’s vigil at the Pointe des Soeurs.”
    My knees weakened. “Hyacinthe,” I whispered. The Pointe des Soeurs lay in the northwest of Azzalle in the duchy of Trevalion, closest to those islands D’Angelines have named the Three Sisters; it was there that the Master of the Straits was condemned to hold sway, and Hyacinthe to succeed him.
    “We have no news of the Tsingano, Comtesse,” Evrilac Duré said quietly, stepping forward and according me a brief bow. He was a tall man in his early forties, with lines at the corners of his grey eyes such as come from long sea-gazing. “I am sorry. We have all heard much of his sacrifice.”
    They would, in Azzalle. It was there that we had come to land, D’Angelines, Cruithne and Dalriada, carried to the mouth of the Rhenus by the mighty, surging wave commanded by the Master of the Straits, the wound of our loss still fresh and aching. And it was Ghislain nó Trevalion who met us there; Ghislain de Somerville, then. He has abjured his father’s name since, and for that I do not blame him.
    “Be seated and hear.” Ysandre swept her hand toward the table.
    Although the realm is at peace, they maintain the ways of vigilance at Pointe des Soeurs; the Azzallese are proud, and wary of the fact that the rocky promontory lies close by to the border of Kusheth. Even in times of peace, it is not unknown for the scions of Elua’s Companions to skirmish among themselves. Blessed Elua, conceived of the blood of Yeshua ben Yosef and the tears of Mary Magdelene, nurtured in the womb of Earth, sought no dominion here, where he was welcomed open-armed after his long wanderings. He made this place his home, and Terre d’Ange it was called ever after in his honor. Love as thou wilt , he bade us; no more. It is another matter among his Companions-Azza, Naamah, Anael, Eisheth, Kushiel, Shemhazai and Camael-those fallen angels who secured his freedom and aided his passage, and who divided the realm betwixt them. Many gifts they gave us; and dissension, too. Only Cassiel took no part, remaining ever at Elua’s side, the Perfect Companion.
    They are gone, now, to the true Terre d’Ange-that-lies-beyond. Once, and once only, a peace was made betwixt the One God and Mother Earth, that it might be so. Only we, their scions, are left to bear out Blessed Elua’s precept as best we might-but we are his descendants and our story continues. And this, then, was the tale that emerged, told first by Armand, who had been on night watch when it began.
    “Lightning,” said Armand of Trevalion, “such as I have never seen; blue-white and crackling, my lady, great jagged forks of it, all coming from a single cloud, some ten miles from the coast.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I cannot be sure, in the dark, but it is in that direction the Three Sisters lie; I am as sure as any man can be that the cloud overlay them.”
    “Surely there is nothing so odd about a storm,” Joscelin said mildly.
    Armand shook his head. “I have seen storms, Messire Cassiline, natural and otherwise. This is my third turn of duty at Pointe des Soeurs. This was no