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Jebe-Barkal. And whether she’s telling the truth or no, it’s not an arrangement I care to trust. I’d a hard enough time enduring my own ignorance in Amílcar.”
    “Well, add Aragonian to your studies,” Joscelin said peaceably. “All knowledge is worth having, isn’t that what Delaunay used to say? If Luc can master it, anyone can. It’s near enough to Caerdicci, anyway. I’ll learn it, if you can’t be bothered. Phèdre, what do you think Ysandre will do?”
    “I wish I knew.”
    “Barquiel will advise her to leave well enough alone,” he said. “Like as not, the boy’s a pleasure-slave in some Menekhetan aristocrat’s seraglio by now. He doesn’t even know who he is. He couldn’t have vanished more thoroughly if he’d been slain.”
    “Yes,” I said slowly. “So Melisande thought, when she sold you and me to the Skaldi.”
    “True.” Joscelin sat up, wrapping his arms about his knees. “And it nearly killed us, or at least it did me.” His face was quiet, remembering. “I would have died in Selig’s steading, if you hadn’t shamed me into living. I wanted to. I was a man grown, with a Cassiline’s skills and training. How do you think Imriel will endure it? He’s only a child.” He shuddered, his voice turning harsh. “You saw the others.”
    “I saw them.” I had no answers. Imriel de la Courcel was strong, strong and willful. It was clear in all that was said of him, clear in the stamp of his blood lineage. And, too, he was Melisande’s son. Whatever else one could say of her, there was no end of courage in Kushiel’s scions. Would Imriel bend or break? I could not say. “Was it that which angered you so?”
    “Yes.” He rubbed his palms on his knees as if, even now, they itched to strike. “Do you remember ... you said something to me once. It was in Morhban, after you’d ... well. As we were leaving.”
    “I remember.” It had been on our mad chase to Alba, to bring Drustan mab Necthana and an army of Cruithne to D’Angeline soil to face Selig’s invading Skaldi. I had traded my favors to Duc Quincel de Morhban in exchange for passage across his holdings; a trade, I think, neither of us regretted. Joscelin had been less pleased. Although we’d not been lovers at the time, my anguissette ’s proclivities offended his sensibilities.
    “You tried to explain it to me-the pleasure, the relief in surrendering one’s will to a patron. You asked me if I didn’t feel somewhat similar when I gave in to defiance, when I fought against the Skaldi, Gunter’s thanes, or Selig’s, even knowing I would lose.”
    “And you owned that you did.” I smiled. “I accused you of having a terrible temper.”
    “Buried under Cassiline discipline.” Joscelin acknowledged it with a nod. “You were right, though I didn’t want to hear it. Even so, I’ve never felt the sort of rage that could only spend itself in another’s suffering. I felt it, the other day, when we found those poor children. I wanted to see the Carthaginians bleed for what they had done. It frightens me, Phèdre, to know that’s in me.”
    “As it should.” I touched his arm. “Joscelin, what’s in you is no worse than what’s in anyone else; a good deal better, rather. You’re just more loath than the rest of us to accept your own mortal failings. In the end, it’s what you do with them that matters.”
    He looked sidelong at me. “I accepted you, didn’t I?”
    “Eventually,” I said evenly. Joscelin laughed.
    “Ah, well... the thing is, Phèdre, what would happen if I did give in to it? Such a rage, I mean.”
    “I don’t know.” I thought about it and shook my head. “Who can say? All I know is that if you ever did, you’d have a damnable good reason for it.”
    “I suppose.” It relaxed him a little. “I hope it never comes to it.”
    Our voyage passed in like days, bright and idle. The Aragonian crew was pleasant and good-natured, and we dined some evenings at the Captain’s table in his neat quarters. He was from Amílcar, an educated man who spoke fluent Caerdicci. He reckoned himself Count Fernan’s man, but he spoke well of Lord Ramiro and his D’Angeline wife. Nicola, I knew, was a gracious hostess. I daresay Ramiro owed his present appointment to her skills, though to his credit, he seemed to do a fair enough job at it.
    At length we arrived in Marsilikos.
    If I had been less impatient, I would have paid a visit to Roxanne de Mereliot, the Lady of Marsilikos. She had