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the City of Elua. I do not wish to leave it.”
    I laid a purse on the table before her. “Please accept this with my thanks for your excellent work. With your permission, I’d like to talk more with you about Jebe-Barkal some time. I’m only sorry my schedule precludes it now.”
    She bowed from the waist, smile-lines deepening. “As you wish, Comtesse. I am not going anywhere.”
    I envied her that, I thought in the carriage during my homeward journey. Strange, how her father’s wandering urge had grounded itself in his half-D’Angeline daughter. Strange, that the child of a former adept of Eglantine House and an Ephesian dancing-girl should make her life in the arcane pursuits of academia. I thought about my own parents-my beautiful, languorous mother and my foolish, spendthrift father-and wondered for the thousandth time if they had ever known what became of me, if they had ever linked the Comtesse de Montrève, Delaunay’s anguissette , the Queen’s confidante, with the flawed, pretty girl-child whose marque they had sold to the Dowayne of Cereus House. They surrendered all claim on me to the Night Court, and until I was ten, I knew no other life. I never saw my parents again.
    It was not a bad life, on the whole. Each of the Thirteen Houses has its own specialty, and in Cereus, it is appreciation for the transient nature of life and beauty. The adepts were kind enough, and I learned a reverence for Naamah’s service. Many of the graces I carry, I learned in Cereus House. But their lives are given wholly over to entertaining patrons, and mine ... mine has encompassed a great deal more. I cannot help but wonder if my parents ever knew.
    If they did, they kept silent about it-and because of that, I think mayhap they no longer live. A good many people died during the Bitterest Winter twelve years ago, between the sickness that ravaged the land and the Skaldi invaders who did the same. I like to think they would have come forward if they had been alive afterward, when my name was first spoken in the City of Elua by poets as well as patrons. My mother wept the day she abandoned me to the Dowayne’s care. I remember that she wept. I wondered if she would have marveled that a child of their loins should become an adept in the arts of covertcy. When all was said and done, I was Anafiel Delaunay’s creation more than theirs.
    I thought about Melisande Shahrizai’s son, raised by Elua’s priests. I wondered what he was like.
    If time had permitted, I would have spent every waking hour of the next days poring over Audine’s translation of the Kefra Neghast . Unfortunately, it didn’t. Loathe though I was to admit it, Hyacinthe’s plight was the less urgent of the two. Like the drumming-mistress, he wasn’t going anywhere. Imriel de la Courcel was another matter.
    Once again, Joscelin and I made ready to travel.
    Since no word had come from Ysandre, I took it as a hopeful sign and gave license to delay our departure a half-day to keep my other postponed appointment, journeying to Night’s Doorstep to meet with Hyacinthe’s old companion Emile.
    It is in truth the most disreputable district of the City of Elua, a warren of taverns and inns and gambling-houses at the base of Mont Nuit, the hill on which the Thirteen Houses of the Night Court are located. If it lacks the sophistication of the Night Court, it makes up for it in bawdy enthusiasm, and for countless years, it has served as the slightly dangerous playground for the daring nobles of the City. The denizens of Night’s Doorstep know a thousand ways to fleece the pockets of the D’Angeline peerage.
    Hyacinthe, my dearest friend, had been one of them ... and it was because of this that I regarded Night’s Doorstep, that cut-rate antechamber to the civilized pleasures of the Night Court, as a sanctuary. It was where I went when I escaped the rigors of Cereus House, and later Delaunay’s. My Prince of Travellers earned his silver telling fortunes to drunken nobles, using the gift of the dromonde ; but also selling information and trading favors, and, more pragmatically, running a livery stable and lodging-house.
    It was the latter that he had left to Emile, chief among his cadre of runners and assistants. Ti-Philippe had arranged the meeting ahead of time, and we found a table held for us at the Cockerel.
    “My lady Phèdre nó Delaunay!” Emile cried as I entered the busy inn. He went down on one knee and spread both arms wide. “You honor me