Naamah's Blessing

The only thing that kept me from joining it was the pressure of the young princess’ hand in mine.
    “Moirin?” she whispered.
    “I’m sorry, dear heart,” I whispered in reply, my own heart breaking. “Ah, gods! I wish it had been otherwise.”
    Later, we would learn more details about how the Dauphin’s expedition had found favor with the Nahuatl Emperor by virtue of Raphael de Mereliot’s skills as a physician. It seemed that along with foreign elements such as horses and steel, the Aragonian explorers whoestablished a base of trade with the Nahuatl unwittingly introduced foreign diseases that ravaged the native folk, rendering them helpless before its onslaught.
    The killing pox.
    It was Raphael who found a way to ameliorate the effects of the pox, persuading the Nahuatl Emperor to allow him to inoculate him and his extensive family with a lesser strain of the disease.
    When it proved effective, the Emperor rewarded him with knowledge, knowledge of another empire on the far side of the sea, rich in gold. But that day on the docks, we learned only that Thierry had set out on a secondary expedition that vanished into the jungles of Terra Nova.
    “I was sick myself,” Denis de Toluard murmured, still kneeling. “Dysentery. I was too weak to travel. I agreed to stay behind and wait. I waited and waited, your majesty. Months past the appointed time.” He lifted his face, screwed up with grief. “But he never came. Prince Thierry never came back. None of them did. He made me promise that if anything befell him, I’d tell you myself. So I took charge of the flagship, and set sail.”
    The King laid one hand on his head. “It wasn’t your fault. You did the right thing.”
    “It wasn’t enough!”
    “No.” The King smiled sadly. “It never is, is it?”
    I swallowed my grief as best I could.
    Ah, gods!
Thierry
, good-natured Prince Thierry, who had forgiven me all my transgressions.
    Gone…
    It seemed impossible—and yet it was so. Of course, it had
always
been a possibility. In my head, I knew this. Ships foundered, men died. Seafaring and exploring was a dangerous business. But in my heart, I simply hadn’t thought the gods would be cruel enough to deal one more crushing blow to a man who had experienced so much grief in his life.
    King Daniel turned away and began walking toward the royalcarriage like a blind man, his face gone utterly blank. Guards and spectators moved out of his way uncertainly.
    Trusting Desirée to Bao’s care, I ran after his majesty. “My lord!” I wasn’t sure what to say. “You… you should not be alone.”
    He looked at me as though I were a stranger for a moment. “Moirin. Oh. The child.” His blank gaze shifted to Desirée, holding Bao’s hand, tears streaking her face. “See that she’s safely returned to the Palace.”
    “You should not be alone right now,” I said stubbornly.
    My father came alongside me. “My daughter is right, your majesty.”
    “Thank you for your concern,” Daniel de la Courcel said with gentle firmness. “You are dismissed.”
    We could not ignore a royal command, could do nothing but watch as he climbed into the carriage and gave the order to depart.
    I stole a glance at Duc Rogier. He was standing with one hand on his son Tristan’s shoulder. I thought the look of sorrow on his face was genuine, but behind it, calculating wheels were turning. It struck me that Desirée had just become the heir to the throne of Terre d’Ange in earnest.
    Beneath the bright spring sunshine, I shivered.
    Obeying the King’s order, Bao and I saw the young Dauphine returned to the nursery, where she wept herself into a state of profound exhaustion. Not even Sister Gemma’s most soothing cradle-songs could comfort her for the loss of her absent brother. I wondered if she sensed the burden that had settled on her shoulders that day. At last, wrung as limp as a dishrag, Desirée fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth. I stroked her damp hair, plastered to her cheeks. Her tear-spiked lashes were like fans.
    “You should go,” Sister Gemma said wearily. “She’ll sleep for hours now.”
    “I know.”
    Our eyes met. “It was a bad day,” the priestess said. “A very bad day.”
    I nodded. “One of the worst.”
    Bao leaned over the bed, coaxing Desirée’s thumb out of her mouth and crooning to her in the Ch’in dialect of his youth. “Tomorrow will be better,” he said with a confidence none of us felt. “It will, won’t