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tugged at Joscelin’s braid. “There is no news of Melisande’s boy?”
    “No.” I said it softly, shaking my head, although she could not see. “I would tell you if there were, my lady.”
    “Phèdre.” She turned around, eyeing me. “Will you never be done with forgetting it, near-cousin?”
    “Probably not.” I smiled at her, leaning over to pluck a handful of violets from Sidonie’s lap and plaiting them expertly into an intricate garland. I had done as much when a child myself, attending adepts in the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. “There,” I said, setting it atop her head. The child glowed with pleasure, rising to run with careful steps and show her mother.
    Some things a courtesan can do that a Queen cannot.
    “Very lovely,” Ysandre said, stooping to plant a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. “Thank the Comtesse, Sidonie.”
    “Thank you, Comtesse,” the girl said obediently, turning round to face me. Her sister Alais loosed a sudden chortle and steel rang as she hoisted one of Joscelin’s daggers from its sheath. The guardsmen started to attention at the sound, relaxing with laughter as a chagrined Joscelin cautiously pried the hilt from her small fingers. The Dauphine Sidonie looked appalled at her sister’s breach of decorum; Alais looked pleased.
    Ysandre de la Courcel looked resigned. “Mayhap you have the right of it,” she said wryly. “Elua’s blessing upon your quest, Phèdre. And if you pass the Cruarch’s flagship on your journey, tell him to make haste.”

Three
    I HAVE known other losses as grave as that of Hyacinthe’s sacrifice and some worse, in other ways. The brutal murder of my lord Anafiel Delaunay and his protégé Alcuin are things I do not forget, any more than I forget how my chevaliers Remy and Fortun were slain on Benedicte de la Courcel’s orders, cut down before my helpless eyes for the sin of their loyalty.
    Their loyalty to me.
    But the awfulness of Hyacinthe’s fate was unique in that it was undiminished by time. He was not dead, but doomed. For eight hundred years the Master of the Straits had ruled the waters from his lonely tower-eight hundred years! And Hyacinthe had made himself his heir. No amount of grieving could wash away his sentence, and I could never forget that while I lived and laughed and loved, he endured, isolated and islanded.
    It took no more than a day to make ready to travel. For all that I maintain one of the foremost salons in the City of Elua, renowned for gracious entertainment and discourse, I have not lost the trick of adventuring. Joscelin, ever-prudent, had sent to Montrève for Philippe, my dear chevalier Ti-Philippe, to accompany us the moment Ysandre’s courier had appeared at our doorstep. Left to my own devices, I would have spared him the journey; and I would have been wrong, for Ti-Philippe, the last of Phèdre’s Boys, came pelting hell-for-leather into the City, a familiar gleam in his eyes.
    “I owe the Tsingano my life as much as do you or Joscelin, my lady,” he said, catching his breath in my antechamber. “And have nearly foundered three horses to prove it. Let your seneschal oversee the shearling lambs without me; I will ride to Pointe des Soeurs with you! Besides, you may have need of a sailor.”
    After that, I could not deny him. And Ti-Philippe had brought with him a companion, a stalwart shepherd lad from the hills of Montrève; Hugues, his name was, a fresh-faced boy no more than eighteen or nineteen, with ruddy cheeks and dark hair, eyes the color of rain-washed bluebells stretched wide at all he saw. Ti-Philippe grinned at me as young Hugues bowed and stammered, blushing a fearsome shade of red upon meeting me.
    “He’s heard tales, my lady, like everyone else. Since you come too seldom to Montrève, I thought to bring him to the City. Besides,” he added judiciously, “he’s strong as an ox.”
    I could believe it, from the breadth of his shoulders. I do travel to Montrève, and make it my residence at least a few months of every year, but the truth is, my estate prospers without me. I have an able seneschal in Purcell Friote and his wife Richeline, and Ti-Philippe enjoys lording over the estate without me, playing the role of steward to the hilt and dallying with the eager lads and maids of Siovale. I have heard it said-for I pay attention to such things-that nigh unto a quarter of the babes born out of wedlock in Montrève are my chevalier’s get. Well and so; I could not fault