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me with terrible clarity; the gap, the widening void of water and Hyacinthe receding, his boy’s voice crying out my name in vain. “What is it?” I made myself ask, forcing my voice to steadiness. “Hyacinthe, when you tried to step off the island, there was a presence, in the water. Is it Rahab?”
    “Him, or an invocation of him. Yes.” Hyacinthe went still. Our ship bobbed gently on the water, lines creaking, wavelets churning and milling. “You do know a way.”
    “Yes and no.” I took a deep breath and gazed into the empty blue sky. “There is a word. The Yeshuites claim the One God is nameless and unknowable, but it is not so. Adonai, they call him; Lord, nothing else. But He has a name, and it is a word, spoken, that all His servants must obey. Even Rahab.” I looked at Hyacinthe. “That much, I have learned. But,” I shook my head, “the Name of God eludes me. I do not have the knowledge.”
    Something moved in Hyacinthe’s oddly changeable eyes; power, mayhap, stirring in the depths … or mayhap only hope. “You can find it.”
    “Hyacinthe.” His name caught in my throat. “I’ve been looking, for ten years! There are Yeshuite scholars who have devoted their lives to it, going back in an unbroken line since before Blessed Elua walked the earth. I will never, ever stop looking, I swear to you, but after ten years, I do not hold a great deal of hope.”
    Hyacinthe looked away.
    “Tsingano.” Joscelin’s pragmatic voice broke the silence. “You have the dromonde . What does the gift of sight tell you?”
    “The dromonde .” Hyacinthe gave him his dire smile. “I see an island, Cassiline; I see wind and sea. What do you think? I have seen naught else since I came here.”
    “What of Phèdre?”
    The question hung in the air between them. The intense black pupils of Hyacinthe’s eyes blurred, losing focus. “Phèdre,” he whispered. In the old days, he would never speak the dromonde on my behalf. “Ah, Phèdre! It is a vaster pattern than I can compass. There are branchings beyond which I cannot see, and each one lies in darkness. Kushiel bars the path, stern and forbidding, his hands outstretched. In one hand, he holds a brazen key, and in the other …” His gaze focused abruptly. “And in the other, a diamond, strung on a velvet cord.”
    I touched the hollow of my throat.
    “It is my dream.” Sibeal’s voice spoke softly in Cruithne. “It is as I have seen.”
     

 
    Five
     
    IT WAS a somber journey back to Pointe des Soeurs.
    We parted ways with Drustan mab Necthana and his entourage at sea; they would sail east, putting in at the harbor of Trevalion, where Ghislain and his wife Bernadette looked for their arrival. Evrilac Duré’s men were in restrained good spirits, uncertain what had transpired, glad of their survival. I leaned in the prow and watched the water part before us, thinking.
    Joscelin interrupted my thoughts only once, leaning beside me. The hilt of his sword jutting over his shoulder cast a wavering cruciform shadow on the water below us. “I know of only one such diamond,” he said softly. “Melisande-”
    “ I know .” I cut him off sharply.
    What had Melisande to do with Hyacinthe’s fate? Nothing. Of the many things for which I blame her, that is not one. Ill-luck, it was, a destiny laid down eight hundred years gone by, and my Prince of Travellers caught in it. I could not shake the memory of my final glimpse of him. Hyacinthe had raised his hands, and the seas had answered, a limpid, rising swell that caught our vessel and turned us, carrying us plunging through the narrow entry and into the open seas. I had seen his lips moving as he did it, uttering words of command.
    How could he, who now held such power in his hands, look to me for aid? It had grown unreal to me in his absence, this role in which he was cast. Now, having seen, I doubted the measure of my own meager skills. In ten years, what had I found? A rumor, nothing more; a tale buried