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from his own obeisance, bowing in the Cassiline manner, crossed hands hovering over the hilts of his daggers. “Me, my lord?” I asked the priest. “How is it so?”
    “You,” he said. “Or someone. You are not the first.” He cocked his head, and I heard in the distance the sound of shepherd’s pipes calling and answering across the far crags. “Did the Queen send you?”
    Beneath the shadow of Blessed Elua, I gazed at him, a solitary figure drenched in sunlight. “Whose emissary do you think I am, my lord priest?”
    “Ah.” Brother Selbert exchanged an enigmatic smile with the effigy of Elua. “As to that, I suppose you are Kushiel’s. Come.” He extended his hand. “We must speak.”
    So it was that Joscelin and I followed the priest across the field, as obediently as our animals had followed the girl Liliane. At the entryway, we paused to don our boots. Brother Selbert waited, patient and calm. Like the other members of his order, he went unshod, and his bare feet were calloused and cracked, engrained with the dust of a thousand journeys.
    “Come,” he said again when we were done.
    We followed the priest into his private quarters, where he bade us sit.
    “You are here about the boy,” he said when we had done so.
    I opened my mouth to reply, but it was Joscelin who spoke first, giving voice to his long-held anger. “How could you do it?” he demanded. “How could you betray the realm to aid, that... that woman?”
    “Melisande.” Brother Selbert spoke her name calmly, tilting his head. “Melisande Shahrizai de la Courcel.” He smiled in reminiscence. “Why does it offend you, young Cassiline?”
    Joscelin stared at him in patent disbelief. “Why? Where shall I began, my lord priest? You are aware, I trust, that she engineered the Skaldi invasion? That she collaborated with the warlord Waldemar Selig? That she blackmailed the royal commander Percy de Somerville, wed Benedicte de la Courcel under false pretexts, suborned the loyalty of the Cassiline brotherhood by-”
    “Yes.” The priest held up one hand, forestalling his argument. “These things she has done, Joscelin Verreuil. And not a one of them would have been possible had it not been for the greed, the fear, the unreasoning hatred, the hunger for vengeance, on the part of her conspirators.”
    The meaning of his words brushed me like the tip of a fearsome wing, and I shuddered. “You say she has not violated the precept of Blessed Elua.”
    “Yes.” Brother Selbert bent his head to me. “ Love as thou wilt . For good or for ill, Melisande Shahrizai alone has laid her plans out of love of the game itself.”
    “But,” I whispered, “they are dire.”
    “They are.” The priest nodded gently. “Such is not my place to judge; only the intent.” There was a look in his silver-green eyes such as I had seen in Michel Nevers’ in Kushiel’s temple-a terrible compassion. “Thus are the gifts of Kushiel’s scions, to see the fault-lines in another’s soul. I can do naught, if it is exercised in love.”
    I swallowed. “Even love without compassion?”
    “Even that.” There were oceans of sorrow in Brother Selbert’s voice. “I can but feed the spark where I see it. And I saw it, in the Lady Melisande’s regard for her child.”
    “You lied to the Queen !” Joscelin protested in anguish.
    “Yes, of course.” The priest gave him a quizzical look . “The Queen sought to claim the child for her own ends. The ends are admirable, young Cassiline, and they are rooted in her love of the realm, her desire for peace. But they do not supersede the love of a mother for her child. The Queen did not know the child. He was the Lady Melisande’s son. No matter what she had done, Elua’s dictum made my choice clear.”
    “Elua’s dictum.” I pressed my temples. “Brother Selbert, you know it was Melisande’s intent that the boy should be sheltered here, until he reached such an age where she might unveil his identity like some hero out of legend, staking his claim to the throne?”
    “It was her intent.” His eyes glinted the color of sunlight on the poppy-leaves. “He might have surprised her, in the end.”
    “He might have,” I said, making my voice hard. “If he had not vanished. Thanks to your interpretation of Elua’s dictum.”
    “Ah.” Brother Selbert sighed. “And so we come to it.” He spread his hands helplessly, his expression turning somber. “What can I tell you, my lady Phèdre? Even now,