For the first time in my life, my body failed me. The garden of my Char-Kermen manor blinked. All the colors of the Knowable World changed to the shades of gray. The horizon tilted... Next thing I saw was the pebbles of the gravel path in front of my nose. I gritted my teeth and pushed from the ground, willing the shakes in my elbows to stop. There was a bench to my right. It was right there, three paces at most, or however long it took me on all fours. I should have woken the nurse who nodded off by my sick bed before descending into the garden, but I was so tired of being lifted, turned and propped by others. I made it down the staircase on my own, chased outside by the piteous cries of my newborn daughter.

The shakes calmed down, replaced by a powerful crump in my calf. I could crawl with that. So I crawled through the flower-studded grass, in the shade of a gigantic mango tree, and pulled myself up on the bench. I couldn't help my third child, but I could make it to the bench. Another glorious triumph of Ismar, Who Kills Elephants. Hurray!

I swallowed tears, despite being in the right place to spill them. Before me was Gala's shrine threaded by vines that over years split the bowl of tears in pieces. It chipped away the owl's wings of the Divine of Wisdom and Mercy. The rainwater still collected in what was left of Gala's vessel, dripping in a meditative rhythm. Ancient calm wafted from it more than it would have from a newly carved stone. The older the shrines, the more spiritual assurance they gave a troubled soul.

Here, the smell of medicines couldn't distract me from the thoughts about the River Vash, but all I could think of was Basilissa. My eldest, Marezhka, pushed her way into the world ready to eat the bleeding livers of her enemies. Xenophonta has never been a problem until she started reading, practically at the same time as she started talking. But Basilissa wouldn't suckle.

My milk dried up. She wouldn't suckle her wet-nurse either. She threw up the goat's milk. The High Scribe was now dribbling meat bone broth into her petulant mouth, mixed with sweet herbs. My body failed me. She was my daughter and my body failed her. 'Thrive,' I prayed, 'thrive.'

A weight landed on the other side of the bench.

"Should you be outdoors?" said the last person I wanted to see. How could Taffiz be an assassin? With the stink of Ashanti coating him, the only place where he could sneak upon unsuspecting victims was the Halls of the High Scribes.

"I should," I replied firmly. This was not the time to be bedridden. "I just need to clear my head and I'll be fine." Then I'd go back inside and make my daughter survive. Somehow.

Even through my closed eyelids I felt his doubting glance on me.

"What do you want, Taffiz?"

"I came to meet the youngest daughter of the family I serve. She has all the fingers and toes," he said.

His tone made me shrink into the bench. The husky quality of his voice always insinuated something. I didn't know what he knew, what he had guessed and what he was trying to pry out of me.

"And," he finished, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the air, "she is a tiny copy of her father. All but his tattoos."

"The cursed magic has nothing to do with my daughter being born sickly. Don't you dare breathe as much as a hint of suspicion in Parneres' presence," I warned him. "He is wracked with guilt as is. It'll destroy him!"

My stomach lurched with a horrible guess. I didn't want to believe it. Paneres and Taffiz were friends, lovers even... but Taffiz wanted to be my husband, and I could only afford to keep three.

I fixed him with a glare. "What poisonous barb did you plant in his mind?"

"Me?" He shook his head slowly. "Think, Ishmara! Think!"

I whimpered, because I didn't want to think.

"Do you know someone who is pious and versed in Scripture and Tenets? Who is attached to you so desperately that he'd go to any length to secure your love? Who had lived in fear of being second to Parneres for years?"

"Stop it," I begged, but he was merciless. "And who, on your command, had recently spent many moons as Parneres' chaperone, while Ondrey and I fought by your side in Bhar?"

Taffiz' finger-pointing made my stomach turn, bringing up a burp of the medicines they made me drink to stop the bleeding. I spat out a wad of bitter saliva. "I don't believe Kozima would do anything like this."

"Yet you were quick to accuse me." The corner of Taffiz' pinched mouth quirked.

By the River Vash, why wouldn't he just smile if the need took him! I survived battle charges, I could survive his broken teeth.

The longer we sat in silence, the more I mulled over his argument. It made sense. Yet it didn't. And it did. My fingers clenched my knees.

Taffiz nodded to whatever he read in my face. "I wouldn't have delivered your heart's desire with one hand only to crush it with the other."

I pinched my lips too.

"This is all I'm trying to accomplish, fulfill your desires!" He captured my hand and pressed it to his chest. "Would you like me to kill Kozima?"

How? How did he move so smoothly from sweet nonsense to 'do-you-want-me-to-kill-your-husband'? Unbelievable!

Alas, if I jumped up to throw Taffiz out of my house, I'd collapse again. So I slipped my hand from his and squeezed his knee. As if I could pinch the seriousness of the consequences into him. "If you touch one hair on Kozima's head, I'll destroy you."

"Interesting," he said, his eyes fixed on my spasming hand. "I'll leave this task to you then."

World spun again, but I bit my lip to stop the shrine from tilting precariously. "Don't hold your breath, Taffiz."

"No worries, I love breathing too much to do that. But how long do you think he can wait? Tell you how you're the one for him and hope only to be disappointed time after time? All that without crumbling to dust?"

"I told him the truth," I said pointedly.

He smiled, in his thin-lipped, close-mouthed way. "Who do you think our devout Kozima believes, you or the Divines? The child is not his. The only thing you could do is to carry another child—"

It was a rare occasion—Taffiz stumbled in the middle of his long winded, smug, condescending tirade. His already pale skin drained of color until it assumed a grayish tint. He squeezed my hand harder than I did his knee. "Don't do that. Remember Serket. The cautionary tale is the only inheritance she left you beside your name. You can't risk another child, not for anyone. Do you hear me?"

I took my hand away. I had always been good at detecting what could kill me. Next time the Divines would claim my life for the child's. Or both. So he was right, and it put me at a disadvantage. If I argued, if I lied that I wanted twenty more daughters, it would be without genuine conviction. If I agreed—

Usually, Taffiz was good at letting the silence run its course, but he was fidgeting. His freed hand diced the air.

"Was I wrong to think that it was Parneres and a daughter with Parneres that you had to have? Was it your heart's deepest desire? Or was it Kozima? No! Can't be. Can't be..."

He stared me with wide eyes. "Dilectisima ame, you would be an Empress of the Knowable World and Kozima would still close his pretty eyes and dream of you herding the priestesses in Gala's Temple in Palmyr to the vespers prayers!"

"So Kozima is just a human man, not a saint. But, Taffiz, that's why I married him in the first place. If I'm reborn a hundred times, I'll love him."

"He has cunning, yes. He has a fixation on you, yes. But his dreams had never grown up. He doesn't understand you!"

"I'll put my house in order, if there is foul play," I told him coldly. "You can leave now."

He shifted on the bench. "Parneres is trapped between secretly yearning for his past and being ashamed of it. Nothing short of a miracle will free his mind. And your talents are not in the spiritual sphere. Or you would have fulfilled Kozima's fantasies."

There were evil servants of Bhutas, creatures of the night, who couldn't attack you if you didn't look at them. I hoped the same applied to Taffiz. I would close my eyes—and poof! He'd be gone from my garden. "Leave."

"You need me, Ishmara. Particularly when Marezhka is old enough to strike out on her own and Ondrey follows her. His loyalty will always be to his daughter first, to you second."

"And that's what I need from him," I said before realizing that I didn't have to justify myself to Taffiz. So, I kept to myself the next thing I was going to say. Ondrey would leave and he would return, because Marezhka wouldn't want her father hovering over her shoulder for long. Was I weak to hope for this?

"Yes, he'll come back," Taffiz said as if he read my thoughts. "But in the meantime you'll be left with Kozima. He'll drag you into the quagmire of men's games that Ondrey always protected you from."

Taffiz, from all men, whining about intrigues? I didn't even dignify his complaints with a response, not even the one that hung on the tip of my tongue. 'And your straightforward honest ways is why we all love you so much, Taffiz.'

I just scoffed. It was easier than talking and saying the same thing.

"You misunderstand me, why do you always misunderstand me?" Taffiz leaned in, his face so close to me, so painstakingly plain and... was it earnest? "I'm not like the other men. I don't seek children, I don't seek a safe haven, I don't seek protection."

Mythra's fangs! "Then what do you want from me?"

"I want to see what happens when all your worldly desires peel away, fulfilled or lost. Your spirit burns me, Ishmara, even through all those layers. You're a force. A chaotic force with no purpose, but a force nonetheless. Wherever you go, storms brew up. Wonderful things happen. I want to be with you when all is revealed."

"You should cut back on Ashanti and the sooner the better. I'm just a mercenary Commander."

He shrugged. "The world is on the cusp of change. The Empress is growing old. Her five daughters are coming into their own, the wild Half-Divine blood broiling in their veins. Something is about to happen—maybe wars almost as bad as the Primordial War. And every drop of my blood, every heartbeat tells me that you'll be riding that storm."

"A war means nothing more to me than good money and good death."

"Liar!" He softened the accusation with a smile. "Since Ratne, it didn't. I saw it, Ishmara, and you had never had a watcher more inane than me."

An Ashanti addict proselytizing the new Primordial War and the end of the world.... I saw dozens of them before every temple in Palmyr and even more in Char-Kermen. The only difference between Taffiz and them was that they didn't include me in their delusions.

"Or, maybe, you are a liar," I said. His eyes came very close. A hot sensation tore through my already torn body. Dizzy from it, I... kissed him. A starving woman wouldn't have grabbed bread with less restraint than he did my lips. For all his talk about not being like the other men!

"Liar," I concluded with satisfaction and giggled.

The string of curses Taffiz replied with, would have made Saffic pirates on shore-leave blush. I giggled even harder.

"You're delirious," were the first gentlemanlike words out of his mouth. "You're delirious!"

He scooped me off the bench—not in an easy motion Ondrey would have had—heaved me and cradled to his chest.

I thought he was about to kiss me again, but that was delirium talking. Now I recognized the haze of fever. With it came fear. Birthing fever killed my mother. She had survived being a scorpia assassin and betraying the Cult... Was it also my fate? Basilissa was dying too. Had the Divines abandoned me?

They must have, for they sent Taffiz to keep me company in what might have been my last moments in the Knowable World as Ishmara. I was so sure that I would die in Kozima's arms. Kozima, I wanted Kozima!

Taffiz carried me to the house. His steps were laborious, but he kept them even, thanks to a verse he murmured repeatedly as he walked. I listened in—all in vain. I didn't pick out a single familiar word, for it was gibberish in the Mother of All Tongues. Taffiz was a pretentious homme fatal to the end.

He opened the door with his foot, let me slip along his body to half-standing, though leaning against him. Then he yelled. Howled. For priestesses, medics, High Scribes, men-servants, the nurse and, in all probability, for the Divines and the Bhutas too. I could no longer care who he was calling for, because the dark-red clouds of fever swallowed me whole.

***

There was a voice. It was faint at first, as if coming from afar, then it came closer and closer, though it never became loud. I recognized it: this was my middle daughter, Xenophonta. The words were familiar too or at least their rhythm. She was reading the Scripture. She never once stumbled, even on the longest words.

With some difficulty, I peeled my eyelids. This wasn't a hallucination. I was alive, in my sick room and Xenophonta sat by my bed with a thick book in her lap. She paused to leaf a page over.

I used this break. "Basilissa?"

What came out of my throat was a croak. I coughed, sending a jolt of pain through my body, and tried again. "Basilissa?"

Xenophonta darted a look at a dozing nurse—apparently, I hired exceptionally sleepy nurses—jumped off my sickbed, poured a cup of water and fed about a tablespoon to me. Then she jerked it away.

I tracked the cup with my glance. The water was flavored with lemon and tarragon. It tasted better than any wine!

"It's bad for you to drink more," Xenophonta explained somberly.

"Basilissa?"

"Alive." My seven-year-old daughter thought for a moment, then shrugged. "As much as a baby can be alive."

I exhaled in relief and laid back, while she tiptoed to the nurse. A proud smile just about curled my lips, when Xenophonta yelled into the poor woman's ear, "My mother is awake! Bring the medic!"

The nurse's eyes and mouth flung open. She squealed, jumped to her feet and crushed out of the door with barely a glance to verify Xenophonta's claim. Obviously, my bossy child's word already carried weight. A mind this cold in someone this young... Divines help us!

Xenophonta returned to my bedside unperturbed. She fed me another sip of lemon water. "Shall I continue reading from the Scripture? Father said that if I do so for three turns of an hourglass daily, you would wake up."

Warmth spread through my chest. "And I did."

She tilted her head to one shoulder. "I rather think it's a coincidence, but I'm glad you're on the mend."

"You have done very well," I said. "But I want a bit of quiet time right now and the medic is coming. Why don't you run along to play with Marezhka?"

Xenophonta looked like I offered her to jump out of the window.

I relented. "Or maybe we can talk a little. For example, do you know this verse?"

What Taffiz had mumbled before I collapsed, stuck in my mind similarly to a burr on a horse's tail. I repeated the verse out loud, expecting the words to come out all wrong, but they rolled off my tongue with ease. He did say that I had an ear for the Mother of All Tongues once.

"This is from Naktymyana, mom." Xenophonta's huge eyes widened even further in exasperation with my ignorance. Things like that mattered to her.

I held back the budding smile to spare her sensitivities.

"Parneres sings it to lull Basilissa whenever she's crying." She rolled her eyes. "And this baby cries all the time."

"Oh." Maybe I should have remembered it then.

"Naturally, he doesn't sing it in the Mother of All Tongues, because he's an actor and just memorized everything like a parrot in the tongue the masses understand," Xenophonta explained.

I must have involuntarily quirked my brow or my displeasure reflected on my face in some other way, because she stopped repeating what sounded like men's judgments—was it her father's? Or Taffiz'?—and dropped her gaze down. She was still cradling the book in her lap.

"Could you translate it for me?" I asked gently.

"If the Mother of All Tongues interests you," she replied, "maybe you could marry Taffiz? He might be a man, but he is fluent."

Her brows domed over the not-so-innocent pools of liquid terracotta framed by batting eyelashes.

I prided myself on keeping my face straight. "I'm sure he'll be happy to learn that you commend his skill."

She chewed her lip. "Mom, he also knows how to poison a frog. It gets black boils, though."

"Aha."

My response must have been too tepid, because she hurried to add, "It's not a problem, because nobody looks that closely at dead frogs. It illustrates, however, why not all substances can be used on a human. He said that the next time he visits—"

There would be no next time, but that was for Taffiz to hear, not my precocious middle daughter.

"Sweetheart, I can see that my concubine made an impression on you with his ah... studies, but I have no intention of taking a fourth husband."

She tsk'd... showing that she was missing a tooth. So much like a crone already!

"Such a pity. Alas, at your age it's hard to change." She sighed. "You always did prefer good looks over education."

Amusing as this was coming from a seven-year-old, I put things into perspective for her. "Xenophonta, at your age, it's paramount to do what your mother tells you to do."

She looked doubtful.

"Otherwise, the only book made available to you would be Scriptures for a week," I added.

She pouted.

"Or a month."

Xenophonta already knew when to cut her losses. Softly, she recited the verse in the language of the masses.

The sands of time, the river of oblivion—

merely sand to shake from their sandals,

merely cool water to drink from their cup—

For the souls of lovers bound by love.

I closed my eyes and sighed contentedly. For all its flaws, the Knowable World was a beautiful place. If Taffiz was right, and there was a storm on the horizon, we'd ride it out.