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I tried to think of another way.

I couldn’t.

“I want aid,” I said, rounding on the Magus Arshaka. “As much as you can give, whatever you can give. I want horses, mounts for whomever can sit one, and wagons for those who can’t. I want armor and arms for whomever will bear them, and supplies, bandages and medicaments, tents and blankets, and provision enough to get us to the border and beyond. I want a mule-train to carry them, and hostlers and bearers. I want four Magi to accompany us, whomever you deem hale enough for the journey. If you have talismans or tokens that will signify the protection of Ahura Mazda, I want those, too.”

With every sentence, he nodded, and when I finished, said, “It will be done. All of it.”

“It had better.” I stepped close to the ancient priest, close enough that he drew back lest my nearness taint him, and I knew that in his eyes, I was still Death’s Whore, the Mahrkagir’s favorite. “My lord Magus, I swear to you, if you play us false, may Elua have mercy upon your soul.”

“I do not lie,” Arshaka said stiffly. “Ever.”

Thus our fate was decided.

Fifty-Eight

WE DEPARTED before sundown.

It was not enough time to make ready for a journey of such difficulty, not nearly enough, but our skins itched with the presence of danger, and all of us yearned to be free of the shadow of Daršanga.

The Chief Magus Arshaka kept his word. Stores were plundered, stables looted to provide all that I had requested. When the doors of the palace were opened, we braced ourselves to fight or die, but the inrushing guards of the outer garrison hailed the Magi as heroes.

It would have been a bitter irony, had I cared. I didn’t. All I wanted was to see us out of Drujan, and safe.

Most of the
zenana
was going; only the Tatar women took their leave, rejoining such tribesmen as had survived, already preparing a hasty retreat of their own, no longer in favor. It surprised me, a little, that the women were willing to return to the very men who had given them to the Mahrkagir. Not much. The will that had united us had already begun to falter, and the call of blood-and home-is strong.

The others would ride with us to Khebbel-im-Akkad, where I fully intended to prevail upon the ties of House L’Envers and the D’Angeline throne to adjure Valère L’Envers and her husband to see each and every one restored to her homeland.

If we made it.

The dead who remained would be laid to rest in Drujan-with honor. The Chief Magus Arshaka had promised it. I could only accept his word. He had sworn to uphold the truth above all else and revile the dark lie. I suppose that he did, and I am wrong to resent him and his kind after their long suffering. But I am only mortal, and I could not forget the disgust in his face when I drew near to him.

Never, I daresay, has an undertaking been fraught with such chaos. Merely explaining it took the better part of the morning, accomplished in a babble of tongues, with the zenyan argot pervading. Outfitting the carts for the wounded took the rest, and transporting them the afternoon. That part, I supervised, attempting all the while to keep my eye on Imriel. Three times, he went to see the dead to confirm that the Kereyit Tatar Jagun was well and truly slain, which he assuredly was, and once he vanished in search of one of Joscelin’s Cassiline daggers, the one that had killed the
Skotophagotis
. One of the women had snatched it up in passing in the wild rush for the festal hall. He found it, too, the hilt jutting from a Drujani soldier’s ribs.

“Did you put him up to that?” I asked Joscelin, weary and distraught.

He shook his head. “I mentioned it, that’s all. My mistake. Phèdre, are you sure you’re fit to ride? You’re white as a sheet. We can make room in the third wagon.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Joscelin raised his eyebrows. “Phèdre,” he said gently. “I’ve heard … stories.”

I looked away. “Yes, well. It doesn’t matter. Let me … just let me leave as I came. Not …” I watched a pair of Drujani servants bring out a young Hellene woman on a litter, careful not to jostle her. “Not like that. A victim.”

“All right, then.” He gave a wry smile when I glanced at him, shifting his arm in its sling. “Remember, if you faint and fall off your horse, I’m not going to be able to catch you.”

“I won’t.” The words caught in my throat; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him smile, except in battle. “I promise. Joscelin …” I pressed my fingers to my aching temples, willing the too-ready tears to subside. “We’ll put Imri in the wagon.”

“He won’t like it,” he warned.

“Probably not,” I said. “But it’s the best place for him. You must have seen what Jagun did to him in the hall. The welts are still healing.”

It was Joscelin’s turn to look away. “I hate this,” he said quietly. “I cannot tell you how much I hate this.”

“I know.” Even if there had been time, it was too enormous to discuss, too immediate. It lay between us, incomprehensible. I touched his uninjured hand. “Joscelin. Let’s just… let’s just get out of this alive, first. The rest can wait. If we can do that, the rest can wait.”

After a moment, he nodded. “It will have to.”

With a couple of hours of light left to us, we took our leave of Daršanga.

It was an unwieldy, polyglot caravan of riders and wagons and mules, inching and groaning along, flying the pure-white standard of Ahura Mazda and flanked by four unhappy Magi. Still, we were moving, and the grey walls and pitch-blackened roofs of Daršanga palace fell behind us. In the city, people stared open-mouthed, unsure what to make of our company, but leaving us unmolested. No one cringed or fled. In the open temple, the Sacred Fire burned, and a party of workers cleared rubble, cleaning the square, righting the marble benches. The forges had gone cold. We passed through the city and onto the open road.

Joscelin was right; it hurt to ride. If I had willed myself past the endless nights of torment, my body had not forgotten the abuse it had undergone, the ravages of the Mahrkagir’s iron rod. I was sore and raw, and the pressure of the saddle made me bite my lip in an effort not to scream.

I rode anyway.

Mayhap it was a punishment, a means of castigating myself for the pain I had inflicted in this god-cursed quest; I cannot say. It was foolish, I know that much, but it was somewhat I needed to do. I had ridden into Daršanga of my own will. I would leave the same way.

And behind me, straddling the saddle with his knees and clinging to my waist with determination, rising with a wince at every bump, rode Imriel. He’d refused the wagon-Joscelin had been right about that, too. I understood it, understood his folly better than my own.

He had his mother’s pride, and I could not help but love it in him.

How not, when I had loved it in her?

Thus began our long, absurd trek across Drujan, which does not bear telling. Enough to say that we made it, most of us. Betimes we saw soldiers, the wolves of Angra Mainyu, bereft and leaderless. Some of them came to seek the Magi’s blessing, penitent. Some saw the white flags and fled. I do not know who ruled in Daršanga, unless it be the Magus Arshaka.

Some of the injured died, despite our best efforts. Wounds took septic, or bled internally; one, with a blow to the head, fell asleep and never awakened. We lost seven in all, leaving scarcely fifty survivors from the
zenana
.

One was the Hellene girl I’d watched carried out, an islander sold at auction, traded to a
Skotophagotis
for a handful of coin. Ismene, her name was; I knew them all, by then. A sword-stroke had caught her beneath the armpit, and the gash had festered. I stayed with her the night she died, fever raging. Just before dawn, it broke and she grew lucid.

“
Lypiphera
,” she said, seeing me and smiling. “I thought it was you.”

“Shh, lie still.” I removed the damp cloth, feeling her brow as she sought to rise, finding it cool. “Ismene, why do you call me that? I’ve heard it before.”

“It is a story,” she whispered, watching me wring out the cloth. “A story that slaves tell in Hellas. Sometimes the gods themselves find the pain of existence too much to bear. Because they are gods, they pick a mortal to bear it for them; a
lypiphera
, a pain-bearer.” Catching my hand, she pressed it to her cheek and closed her eyes, still smiling. “Sometimes they take on mortal pain, too. It is a lucky thing, for slaves.”

“Ismene.” I swallowed my tears for the untold countless time, laying my palm against her soft skin. “Try to sleep.”

In the morning, she was dead.

I’d thought the danger past when her fever broke. I sat on a rock and stared at the dawn, brooding. Joscelin had to come find me when camp was struck.

“Phèdre.” His voice was cracked with exhaustion; we were all tired, then. “It’s time to go. You did what you could.”

“If I had studied medicine instead of-”

“You didn’t.” Something in his tone made me look. Joscelin sighed, dragging his good hand through his tangled, half-braided hair. “Phèdre, let it be. She died in freedom, attended by kindness. It’s a better death than any she would have found in Daršanga. Let it be.”

Since there was nothing else for it, I did, returning to our campsite. The caravan was waiting. A cairn of stones marked Ismene’s final resting place. Imriel, kneeling behind me, turned in the saddle as we rode away, watching it diminish. “Remember them all,” he said aloud, echoing my words. “Remember them all.”

In the mornings there was no time, but in the evenings, when the tents were pitched, the horses and mules staked and the cookfires burning, Joscelin sought to practice his Cassiline exercises, one-armed and clumsy. All of that flowing grace, all his long discipline, was centered on symmetry and balance-the weaving patterns of his twin daggers, the crossed vambraces forming a living shield, the pivot of his two-handed sword grip. Bereft of it, his movements were awkward. His bound left arm fouled the sweep of his blows, rendering them ungainly, leaving him exposed. Time and again, he stumbled off-balance, losing his form, unable to complete the complex patterns.

It pained me to watch him.

He never complained, not once. And he never ceased trying, pushing himself harder as the bones began to knit. During the first days of our journey, his hand swelled alarmingly. I watched it closely, breathing a prayer of relief when the swelling began to recede. After that, he began to carry a good-sized rock in his left hand as he rode, squeezing it rhythmically for hours on end, trying to keep his muscles from growing slack and useless.

Ten years old, Joscelin had been when he was exiled from the loving chaos of Verreuil to the grim rigor of the Cassiline Brotherhood. I never saw so clearly how it had molded him as I did on that journey, in his unflagging resolve. So young, I thought, watching Imriel; only a boy, wearing the fragile shape of childhood. And I … I had been ten when my lord Delaunay took me from Cereus House, beginning the long apprenticeship that had made me what I was.

Imriel had Daršanga.

Remember this
.

Twice, he had nightmares, awakening the entire camp with those terrible, piercing screams. The Drujani handlers nearly bolted in terror, and the Magi cringed in fearful reflex, recalling the iron chains of Angra Mainyu. Joscelin, wild-eyed, was on his feet in an instant, sword bare in his right hand, staring about for danger. The Akkadians and the women of the
zenana
only grumbled. I took Imriel in my arms, soothing him until he awoke and knew me. After that, the tears, and I held him while he shook with them, narrow shoulders heaving. Joscelin sat with his sword across his knees, watching wearily.

We did not speak of what had happened in Daršanga. It was too soon, too vast. Let us get out of this alive, I had said. What was to become of us afterward, I could not say. There was love, still; that much, I knew. My heart ached at the sight of him. And Joscelin … I heard it in his voice, saw it in his wounded gaze, felt it in his touch. Love, broken and damaged, mayhap beyond repair. I prayed it was not so. In the evenings, I watched his halting, faltering exercises, and knew fear. He had survived, and the arm would heal. Whether or not his skills would ever be the same was another matter. Some things, once broken, can never be made whole again.

I prayed we were not one of them.

Halfway through the journey, I found the jade dog, the Mahrkagir’s gift, stowed in the bottom of my packs. I sat on the floor of my tent in shock, staring at it. I remembered the Mahrkagir’s pleasure in making me gifts, his boyish delight. I thought I had left them all behind. I remembered the nights of anguished pleasure, the exquisite, rending pain and the sound of my own voice begging. And I remembered his eyes, black and shining and mad, filled with adoration, his heart beating steadily beneath my hand as I positioned the hairpin.

“I thought … I thought you would want it.” It was Imriel, sidling through the tent-flap, wary and unsure. “I didn’t know.”

“Yes.” I longed to hurl it from me. Instead I closed my hand on it, smooth and polished, the jade cool to the touch. “You were right. Thank you, Imri.”

I had killed a man, murdered his trust, taken his life. If I had to do it again, I would. I believe that. Still, I could not forget.

Should not forget.

For the others, it was different. They had not chosen their fates, and the shadow of blood-guilt did not lie heavy on their souls. Despite it all, despite the suffering and the madness, the scores of losses, the further we got from Daršanga, the higher their spirits rose. It gladdened my heart to see it, even though I envied them. Uru-Azag and the Akkadians had found in the battle some measure of their lost pride. If they were returning home less than men, still, they were more than slaves.

And the women …

At first, I think, a good many did not dare believe. By the time we reached the mountains, guarded fear gave way to hope, and thence to cautious rejoicing. Our company fractured into groups by country, echoing the divisions in the
zenana
, the zenyan argot fading as women began to speak of home in their own tongues, those who had family and loved ones remembering, speculating on whether or not they would be welcomed back.