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pear trees with a pruning hook. I wouldn’t have cared to cross him then, and that was before he learned to wield a sword. By all accounts, he was very, very good. And for some obscure reason, my cousin Sidonie was fond of him. Even before I left, there were rumors they were lovers and that she’d promised him the captainship of her Guard one day.
    “I wonder why,” I mused.
    Phèdre shrugged. “Some slight Maslin offered to Colette Trente. An ungentle rebuff, mayhap. Lord Amaury was angry, too.”
    “Hmm.” I tried to peer at the wax tablet on which she was scratching a list. “So no Maslin, which is all to the good. Who else is attending?”
    “You’ll see.” She covered it with one hand and smiled at me, one of those heart-stopping smiles that no poet could hope to describe. “There’s a surprise, somewhat I didn’t tell you in letters. You’ll like it,” she added when I looked dubious.
    “Will I?”
    Phèdre nodded, her eyes sparkling. She was still in the prime of her beauty, and when she smiled like that, she scarce looked older than Claudia Fulvia, whose husband I had so thoroughly cuckolded in Tiberium. “Don’t you trust me?”
    I smiled back at her. “Always.”
    It was true. There were only two people in the world I would trust with my life and beyond. If I were standing on the edge of a cliff and Phèdre or Joscelin bade me close my eyes and step off it, I would do it. It was why I struggled so with my feelings.
    “What about . . . the other matter?” I asked.
    “The Unseen Guild?” Phèdre lowered her voice, glancing at the door of her study. I rose and closed it. “I’ve not had time yet. But I found the reference to the blind healer’s notation you mentioned. I was thinking of asking Ti-Philippe to make a discreet inquiry at the Academy of Medicine in Marsilikos. They should have a copy in their archives.”
    That was the other thing I’d learned in Tiberium; that games of power and influence were played out across the face of the earth by a hidden consortium of players. I’d been recruited to be a part of it, a choice I had refused. I wasn’t entirely sure of the extent of their influence, nor was Phèdre.
    But whatever it was, my mother was a part of it.
    “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked.
    The frown-lines were back between her brows. “Nothing’s certain. But all the world knows I keep a vast and extensive library. There’s naught anyone should find amiss in one of my retainers seeking to add to it. And Ti-Philippe’s not a green lad, he knows what he’s about, even if he needn’t know why.”
    “True.” The healing welts on my back were itching. I worked my shoulders, feeling the scabs tug and crack. Phèdre’s expression changed, touched with rue. “What?” I asked.
    “Ah, love!” She shook her head. “ ’Tis nothing, only that you’ve grown so. I remember worrying, after Darsšanga . . . you were so small, so thin. Bird-boned.”
    “Not anymore,” I said lightly.
    “No,” she agreed. “Not anymore.”
    We were silent a moment. We had been victims together in that place, that dark place. We understood each other. But Phèdre had entered it willingly, knowing what she would face. It was worse, I think, than she could have guessed; but she endured it and survived. And after my visit to Kushiel’s temple, I understood us both more than I had before. His mercy was harsh, but it was not without purpose.
    “Well.” I leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I look forward to my surprise.”
    The days passed swiftly. I spent long hours sparring with Joscelin, feeling my skills return. Betimes I set aside the trappings of the Cassiline style and sparred with him using a sword and buckler, the way old Gallus Tadius had insisted we train. I surprised him a few times, too. Gallus had made a passable soldier out of me.
    I began brushing up on my Cruithne.
    I spoke the Alban tongue well enough, but I wanted to be fluent beyond reproach. Come spring, Drustan mab