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“That’s not so different.” He rose and handed the delicate cup carefully back to Lal. “I must go. Perhaps—I may visit another time?”
    Jiroannes leapt to his feet and escorted Mitya out to the edge of the encampment. “Assuredly. I would welcome it.” And followed with other effusions, until the boy took his leave and walked out into the night, away into the jaran camp. Jiroannes returned to his chair and sank down into it with a sigh of contentment. Perhaps there was hope for this friendship after all.
    “Eminence.” Lal touched his head to the carpet and waited for Jiroannes to notice him.
    “You may speak.”
    “Eminence, I beg your pardon for this indecent request, but the girl insisted I bring it to your attention.”
    “The girl?” He thought for an instant the Habakar captive had importuned Lal. “Did you discover anything more about her?”
    Lal was quick. “About the Javani? Nothing, eminence, except that it is a title, not her name. It is Samae who demanded I ask of you if you wish her to go to the young prince tonight.”
    The young prince. Jiroannes could not for an instant imagine what Samae meant by this puzzling request. Then, of course, he knew exactly what she meant. The damned whore wanted to go to Mitya. In the four years he had owned her, she had never once come to him without being commanded to. Never. And now she begged for permission—no, for an order—to go to a damned barbarian. He felt a red rage building in him. How dare she make her first request of him now, she who had refused her freedom in order to stay his slave, and make it this? She mocked him. She preferred a half-grown boy to him, who had proven his manhood many times over, with her, with all his concubines, with the quickness of his intellect in the palace school, with his prowess on the hunt and even, once, in battle.
    “Tell Samae that the women who run this camp have decreed that she may do what she wishes,” he snarled. He got to his feet in one sharp movement and stalked over to the entrance to his tent. “Send the Javani to me.”
    Lal bowed with his hands crossed over his chest and scurried away. Jiroannes thrust the curtained entrance aside and strode into the seclusion of his tent. There he paced up and down, up and down, along the thick carpets that cushioned the interior. When the Javani came at last, she was still afraid of him, but her fear only whetted his appetite.

CHAPTER FOUR
    D EPRESSION HUNG OVER THE Company’s camp like a miasmal fog. Each day they traveled with the wagon train farther on through the devastated Habakar lands. Each evening Owen drove them through rehearsals, rearranging parts to cover for Hyacinth’s absence, doubling lines, changing bits of stage direction, but there was no spark. Each day took them that much farther from the place where Hyacinth had left them and that much farther from any hope of seeing Hyacinth alive again.
    Gwyn flung a tangle of ropes and stakes down onto the ground in disgust. “Who packed these?” he demanded of Diana as she unrolled the Company tent.
    She glanced incuriously at the shapeless mass. “Phillippe.”
    Gwyn shook his head, frowning. “At least he remains a professional with his music.”
    “Oh, he’d never be that sloppy with music, Gwyn. You know that. There is a point beyond which one can’t go, as an artist.” She managed to draw a smile from him, which was astonishing, considering the mood everyone had been in since Hyacinth had fled over twenty days ago.
    “Anahita is sick again.” He crouched and began the laborious task of unraveling the tangled skein. “She spent all day throwing up over the side of the wagon. Yomi took her to see Dr. Hierakis. Diana.” Hearing an odd note in his voice, she looked up at him. His gaze measured her. “You ought to ask Owen if you can take over the leading roles.”
    “But—”
    “Don’t protest that you don’t want them.”
    “Of course I want them!