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not go unremarked.”
    “No,” I said. “I suppose not.” What would Anafiel Delaunay do? All knowledge is worth having. Delaunay would analyze the situation, I thought. And derive ... what? Weary with long travel and the soporific effect of a rich meal, I forced my wits to work. “Chouma,” I said aloud, thinking. Fadil Chouma was a clever and exacting man. He had recorded Imriel’s purchase; why not his sale? Mayhap because he sickened too quickly. And yet, he had concealed the information from his household, which suggested otherwise. Who knows what he had meant to do? But given the information at hand, I thought it unlikely that he intended to make a full accounting.
    Why?
    Political reasons, mayhap; surely, there was danger involved in trafficking in D’Angeline flesh ... and yet not so much that he had feared altogether to record Imriel’s purchase. No, it must be somewhat else. Why had he refused to divulge the boy’s fate? The most obvious possibility loomed before me, sickeningly plausible. Imriel had stabbed the slaver. If Chouma had killed him in a fit of rage, knowing his household doted on the boy ... then, he would keep it silent.
    No. In an act of will, I rejected the notion, summoning the logic to justify it. Fadil Chouma was a slaver; a merchant. He had laid his plans too well and invested too much to dispose of valuable property out of anger. It had to be true, had to be, or all my searching was in vain, the bitter bargain, the promises made. Surely Kushiel’s mighty justice must come to more than this , a small corpse mislaid, a blind alley in an unknown city.
    It made me think of Amílcar, and the children there. A twisting alley, the darkened back room. I thought of the Carthaginians, poor stupid brutes, and Mago with his flame-ruined feet, screaming his lungs raw with his confession.
    Fadil Chouma had a buyer in mind; one, only one, mind ...
    A merchant’s ploy, I’d thought upon hearing it, to get out of a bargain he’d no intention of keeping. And yet... what if it were not? Fadil Chouma had had a buyer in mind. He’d hedged his bets, he’d recorded the purchase-but not the sale. Why? On a deep level somewhere below conscious thought, I felt the pieces of the puzzle fall into a pattern.
    “Chouma was protecting his own interests,” I announced. “He had a buyer in mind from the beginning, and whoever it was, it’s someone dangerous. Dangerous to him; dangerous to be known, dangerous to be named. He was uncertain of the deal, which is why he recorded Imriel’s purchase-but it happened, the buyer came through. He would have altered his records if he hadn’t fallen ill.” I blinked and realized Amaury Trente and the others were looking blankly at me. It had been a long time since I’d spoken.
    “And so ... what?” Amaury asked carefully. “What do we do about it?”
    “Ask ... what’s his name? The ambassador?” My wits were dull with weariness and exertion. “Raife, yes? Raife Laniol, Comte de Penfars. Ask him, my lord. Pharaoh’s a powerful man; powerful men have enemies. It’s an ambassador’s job to be able to name them. It will give us a starting point, at least.”
    One of the women among the delegates-Denise Fleurais-cleared her throat. “Ambassador de Penfars’ knowledge,” she said with a certain delicacy, “is confined to the upper strata of Menekhetan society.”
    “Hellenes,” someone murmured further down the table. “She means Hellenes.”
    There ensued a discussion about the merits of Hellene civilization versus the native component. I listened with half an ear, watching the hovering Menekhetan servants, jugs of barley beer at the ready, waiting with well-concealed impatience for the D’Angeline guests to take to their beds. “Surely,” I ventured, thinking about the polite brown masks of our servants’ faces, “Ambassador de Penfars has contacts among the native Iskandrians as well.”
    A brief silence answered me.
    “Not many,” the Lady Denise said at length. She had auburn hair the color of new mahogany, and a shrewdness to her face which I liked. “There is the clerk, Rekhmire, or so we gather. But Ambassador de Penfars does not speak the argot of the land.”
    “ What ?” The word came out with more force than I intended, but in truth, it shocked me. Raife Laniol had been two years and more stationed in Iskandria; time and more, I reckoned, to learn the language. And yet... I saw from the delegates’ faces that few of them