Naamah's Blessing

manipulated Desirée’s affections, nor how cunning he was in seeking to exploit the poor chambermaid when I had spied upon him. He had done his mother’s bidding, abetting her in her schemes. He may have been too young to fully grasp the magnitude of his treason at the time, but he was old enough to know better now—and he had kept his mother’s secrets.
    Thanks to Prince Thierry’s inclination toward clemency, the sailor Edouard Durel, who had confessed to treason, was not sentenced to death, either. He, too, was given a prison sentence, and barred from ever sailing again under a royal charter. True to his word, Balthasar Shahrizai discreetly saw to it that his wife and daughter would be cared for, with Thierry’s tacit approval.
    It was a relief to have it done.
    I kept the candle that Sister Gemma had given me, but I did not light it. After all his years of unsubtle hints, it was Bao who now proved reluctant, suggesting that we wait until journeying to Alba.
    “Are you reconsidering?” I asked him.
    He gave me a puzzled look. “Reconsidering what?”
    “Us,” I said softly. With the city buzzing with gossip over the annulment of the betrothal between Desirée and Tristan, and the Duc de Barthelme initiating proceedings to annul his own marriage, I couldn’t help but think of it. “Me. The entire notion of building a family together.”
    “No!” Bao’s puzzled look turned to shock. “Gods, no, Moirin! It’s just…” He groped for words. “I’ve been dreaming of it again. Of the stone doorway, and… and bears. Or a bear. A very, very large one. And I think…” He took a deep breath. “I think I would like to know that your bear-goddess accepts me before we do this.”
    “What happens if She doesn’t?” I asked.
    Bao was quiet a moment. “I don’t know,” he said at length. “But Ithink…” He pressed one hand to his chest. “I think her spark inside me would die. That’s what would have happened to you, isn’t it?”
    “Aye.” I hadn’t thought it through before, and I felt a little sick. “And if it did…”
    “I would die, too,” Bao said quietly. “So I would rather wait, and be sure that if I must leave you a widow, it is not a pregnant one.”
    My eyes stung. “At least it would leave me a part of you!”
    “One I’m not sure I could bear to lose.” He brushed my hair back with one hand. “Do me this kindness, Moirin, and wait.”
    I eyed him. “You’re sure you need to go there?”
    “You need to ask?” Bao gave me a wry smile. “Yes, Moirin. It is your own
diadh-anam
that tells me so, and I suspect if I fail to heed it, it will gutter and die all the same.” His smile faded. “I only wish I felt more surely that I am someone a foreign god would wish to claim.”
    “You are!” I said.
    Bao shrugged. “We will see.”
    Before the date of his coronation, Prince Thierry summoned another audience to conclude the tale of our sojourn in Terra Nova. He told the tale himself, relating how Raphael’s army of ants had laid waste to the crops of the Quechua as they fled back to their native jungle, leaving an immense swath of barren land in their wake. And he told the audience how I spent every waking hour in the newly replanted fields, walking the endless rows, causing the plants to quicken and grow an entire season’s worth in a matter of weeks.
    When he had finished, an attendant entered the salon carrying a specimen from the glass pavilion wherein all manner of exotic plants were grown, this one a small Aragonian orange tree in a large pot, hard little green fruits clustered on its branches.
    “Cousin, I owe you an apology for failing to consult you in this matter,” Thierry said to me. “I know others have sought to exploit your gift. And I know it was given to you by your Maghuin Dhonn, and it was meant to be used freely or not at all.” He gestured at the audience. “But these good people have heard tales of magic and wonder, and I would take it as a personal favor if you would show them a simple taste of it.”
    I rose. “For you, my highness, of course.”
    There were murmurs in the audience, and some muttering about theatrics and parlor tricks. I did not sense any real malice in it, only a reactionary disbelief. I did not blame them. It is one thing to listen to tales of wonder from a distant land, and another to be told one is about to witness
magic
wrought in a familiar, urbane setting.
    A blonde woman I recognized as the Marquise de