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a long time ago.
    Afterward we dined with Jacques and Agnes Ecot, seated at the table in their cozy, rustic kitchen. Lamplight glowed warm on dishes of broad beans and ham, a puree of turnips, a pitcher of water drawn cold from the well. It should have been homely and charming, and yet a pall of sadness hung over that home, and I was oddly uneasy.
    “It’s no business of mine,” Agnes murmured, pushing the food on her plate without eating. “But it is passing strange to find a fine lord and lady in the back hills of Siovale.”
    “Not so strange.” Joscelin smiled at her. “My father is the Chevalier Millard Verreuil. Do you know of him? Our estates are near.”
    “Oh, yes!” Her face lit up. “He came to market once in town ... more than once! He praised our cheeses. You have a look of him, now that I see it. He and those tall sons of his. What are their names?”
    “Luc,” Joscelin said. “Luc and Mahieu. My brothers.”
    “Luc and Mahieu,” Agnes echoed wistfully. “They must be men grown now, with wives and children of their own.”
    “They are.”
    Jacques Écot’s harsh voice broke the moment of reverie. “You’re coming from the wrong way, if you’re coming from the City of Elua.” He looked me up and down. “And from your finery, I’d say you are.”
    “Messire Écot.” I inclined my head to him, determined to take no offense. “You have the right of it. But more recently, we come from Elua’s sanctuary at Landras, searching for a boy, some ten or eleven years of age, fair-skinned, with black hair and blue eyes. Have you seen anyone matching his description, alone or in the company of others? He has been missing for some three months now.”
    Agnes’ fork fell with a clatter and the blood drained from her face. “Jacques,” she whispered.
    “Is this some jest?” The dairy-crofter was on his feet, hands balled into fists, sinews knotting, his mouth working with rage. “Do you seek to mock our loss?”
    I sat very straight against the back of my chair.
    “My lord crofter,” Joscelin said smoothly, easing himself between us, putting his hands on Écot’s shoulders and guiding him gently back into his seat. “I pray you, we meant no offense. My lady Phèdre speaks the truth, we do but seek a missing boy. Will you not sit, and tell us of your troubles?”
    The dairy-crofter sat, obedient and dazed, passing one hand before his eyes. “Agnette,” he murmured. “Agnette!”
    I looked at his wife. “Your daughter.”
    She nodded her head like a puppet, face still white. “Our daughter.
    Eleven years, going on twelve.” She swallowed. “She went missing, my lady, some three months ago.”
    “Ah, no.” I felt a wave of sorrow, gathering and breaking, too immense to be comprehended. “No.” A sense of dread hung over me like thunder, and red haze clouded my vision. My ears were buzzing with a sound like a hornet’s nest. I saw, at last, in the forming pattern, the thing I had been missing, the hand I had forgotten, awesome and implacable.
    Kushiel.
    It was Joscelin who drew the story of their daughter’s vanishing from the dairy-crofter and his wife, though I daresay it was a familiar enough tale. The spring rains had been meager and she had gone with a portion of the herd seeking pasturage in the next valley. Sweet, pretty Agnette, with her mother’s vivacious face, had never returned. Her father Jacques had sought her that evening, with the help of a lad they hired during the days, pushing his way among the lowing cattle with a lamp held high.
    She had vanished without a trace.
    Elua is not so cruel as to use a child to lesson his priests ...
    So Brother Selbert had said, and he had believed it; but it was not Elua who was once named the Punisher of God. It was Kushiel. And I knew too well his cruel justice to dismiss this as mere coincidence. A pattern too vast for me to compass . So Hyacinthe had said, reading the dromonde for me. Truly, it was. I had expected anything- anything -but this. I sat dumb as a post and listened as Jacques Écot warmed to his topic, his stoic demeanor forgotten in the passion of his grief. A bear, they had thought, or wolves-but surely creatures of the wild would have left traces, signs of passage, prints and struggle, bloodstains. No, he concluded grimly; it must have been human, whatever took Agnette. Tsingani, most like. Everyone knew the Tsingani were not to be trusted, that they would steal D’Angeline babies from their cradles and