TLucky for me, the rainy season dragged on, turning the roads impassable for the elephants' feet. Praised be Divine Mansoora for Their torrents from the sky!

While the Tigress waited, I was on the road. The endless travel occupied me with a thousand concerns. Where to stop, what to eat, how to chase down this or that petty Captain-Commander. What to offer them for their assistance—glory, Idezza's gems, vengeance against the Empire. It would have been so much easier with Ondrey by my side. Or Taffiz. Yes, yes, Taffiz would have been... useful. But Ondrey was on the other end of the world and Taffiz schemed in the Palmyrian headquarters of the Deadhead Company.

By night, Xenophonta read me to sleep with the reports on the Southern Empress and her spawn. If I awoke, I stared at the water-stained canvas overhead and thought about the Tigress. I worried that the rainy season wouldn't last forever. Idezza thrived on the borrowed time, a peacock opening its tail in front of a crouching predator.

Once in a while, I made my peace with being paid to go out in a blaze of glory on the gutsy side of this conflict. During such times, I returned to Idezza. I sent messages ahead to Kozima, telling him when I'd arrive. There was no need to do the same for Nirav. The Duke always sensed my approach. I found him in my tent, handling one weapon or another, each and every time I laid over in the camp.

For once, Kozima didn't complain, as if my younger lover didn't exist. Perhaps, it should have warned me of the brewing storm, but Nirav's body made me crisp in this soggy world. His hair was soft, warm and dry whenever I plunged my face into it. It smelled musky, not musty like everything else.

And... and his head would make a fine prize for the Tigress if she won. So, I sprang out of his arms, remembering someone else I hadn't talked to yet or something else I could offer. I hit the road again, seeking to save the blessed city for Nirav.

If I thought of Kozima's indifference at all, it was with relief that he understood my soldier's needs in Ondrey's absence.

By the middle of the Eighth's month, the clouds started to break for hours at a stretch, allowing the sunshine in. The rainy season was coming to an end. I made for Idezza post-haste.

Nirav was waiting for me as usual in the tent. I pushed him to the bed and relaxed on his chest with a happy sigh. He wriggled underneath, until his head was level with mine. My finger traced his lips: the wickedly recurved bow on the top, the taught longbow on the bottom and the tempting gap in between. His mouth smelled like cedar shavings they chewed here instead of the mint leaves. It yielded under the light pressure of my fingertip, then trapped me in a sweet betrayal.

Before I could counter this dastardly feint, Nirav's thigh plunged between mine. I closed my eyes to better savor every pressure point he exerted on my body. His hand took a hold of mine, guiding it away from his mouth and down the curve of his chest and stomach, but I still had his thigh trapped. He rubbed it into me, searching my body with his palms to convince me to trade off the hostages.

"Even your flesh is armor," he whispered ecstatically, "not soft like others, except, except..."

I let my legs fall open for him to reach the parts he was referring to. But when the dizzying spell was over, as I was soaking in his seed, a needle of suspicion pierced my mind. Just how recently did he have a chance to make a comparison?

"What is the Council's word on your marriage, sweetheart?"

He smiled in his half-dose. "Beating back the Tigress comes first. Vanozza wants it that way too."

"Vanozza..."

"She's brilliant, right?"

His words burned like the red-hot iron that cauterizes torn flesh. I didn't have a surgeon's stick between my teeth, so I bit into the pillow to stifle a scream.

Yet, if anyone was in the wrong, it was me. A nobleman like Nirav should have wed years ago to someone like Vanozza. Exactly like her. I was an anomaly here.

Kozima, with his sixth sense for where people fit according to their station, recognized it the moment he set foot into Idezza. Never, never should I've ignored Kozima's moods!

I spat out the silk of the pillowcase, sobering up. "I should have been more careful with your reputation, Duke. Does Vanozza suspect our involvement?"

Nirav nuzzled my neck. "Ismar, there might be a couple of holy recluses in the isolated fiords of the Nortlungen who don't know that I'm your favorite. I considered sending a bird to them, but it slipped my mind."

His black ringlets twirled so easily over my fingers. I couldn't have this anymore or pretend I didn't know all along that I couldn't have him. "I'm sorry."

He rolled onto his back and folded his arms under his head. "Vanozza wouldn't have wanted me, if I wasn't yours. You've bedded me and won a triumphant victory. It's a good omen."

I'm not a screamer, but... Nirav, by Indara's veils, Nirav! He was always Vanozza's. More importantly, he was always theirs. He belonged to Idezza and its nobility. I overestimated the scale of his rebellion. It was considerable, but he didn't aim to change the world beyond the walls of his hometown, while I... I didn't know what I wanted. All I knew I would have screamed , except an invisible elephant crushed my chest.

After I dislodged this monster from my chest and crawled out of my bed, my first instinct was to find Kozima.

I turned to his loyalty once before in a moment of romantic confusion, and he soothed me with the promise of ten thousand years together. This time, however, his love wasn't enough to erase my turmoil. As powerful as it was, it just... It couldn't.

I took my head into my hands. My young lover's schemes didn't render my heart asunder. Idezza's Duke was a distraction from another, long-festering wound. What I needed to heal wasn't a man's love, but something else. Something impossible. Something more valuable than a night of passion or a triumph in battle.

Instead of my husbands' house in Idezza, I went to a tent in the middle of the camp. Its occupant would be awake even in this early hour, as she rarely slept more than four hours a night since the day she was born.

Her corner remained cramped the same way it was in childhood. Back then, it used to be 'funny' rocks and dried clumps of grass, poisonous animals, dead and alive, worms, egg shells, pot shards, scraps of parchment and glass beads.

Now it was leather-bound books, quills, inks, parchments, and polished gems.

The mess was illuminated by three torches: blue, white and green. The overpowering smell of cloves and cardamom made my nose itch so badly that I sneezed.

"Good morning, Mother." Xenophonta put her finger in a worn book to hold her place, the same way Kozima always did.

"This is far too strong." I pressed my hand over my nose against the smell. "How could you breathe?"

"At least it's not the Ashanti. You'll get used to it." Xenophonta snapped the fingers of her free hand. The torches all turned blue and burned lower. "The fragrance helps with keeping the vermin out. Some of it, at any rate. The climate here is dreadful."

The smell lightened up a little.

"Thank you." I felt genuinely grateful. "Does the torches' color help against vermin as well?"

"Not directly, but some vermin believe the qualifications for my job must include white hair. This..." She indicated the eerie light in her tent and a partly rolled up canvas over the tent's window. "This convinces them otherwise."

The colored light spilled through the flaps of her tent, mysterious. I nodded in approval.

My wise daughter made no attempt to further the conversation, quiet like a ghost in the spooky light of her torches.

I moved some scrolls from one of the chests to her bed and sat down. "Xenophonta, could you tell me what you've learned about the old Duchess?"

She snapped her fingers again, changing one of the torches' colors to purple. "Do you want to understand your boy-toy or know his sister's fate?"

"Nirav is eight years your senior," I muttered indignantly to avoid answering her question.

"Mother! I'm not Vanozza, nor you to split hair."

"Mythra's fangs, does everyone know that Nirav bedded Vanozza behind my back?"

She rolled her eyes. "Mom! The old Duchess? What do you wish to know about her?"

My chin jerked up, but bickering would only expose my weakness further. And she would never understand anyway. She had a heart of a Scribe. "Tell me everything you know."

She put a strip of silk into her book and set it aside. "While still only a heiress, Lukka the Mad of Idezza gave birth to twins. There was a living son and a stillborn daughter."

"Lukka? Is this a tragic tale? The heroines tend to have pretty names in them." Not that I had to ask. I witnessed what Lukka's family had come to. Of course it was a tragic tale!

"If you have plans for the boy, I would pay more attention to the moniker the Mad. Lukka the Mad." Xenophonta pursed her lips—a fine art all the High Scribes perfect in their Halls. "After this calamity, Lukka was pressured by her mother to divorce Nirav's father. They exiled him. I'm told she chose him for his looks, not his lineage, so she might have been weak-willed even before the stillbirth.

"With Nirav's father gone, Lukka shunned all the proposed matches and became overzealous in her devotion to the Divines. She stayed in the old cave temples for days, meditating and praying for the boon of a half-divine child."

"Hence, Lukka the Mad." So that's why no noble clan picked Nirav for their daughter. His mother was unstable. He had no aunts or able sisters to seek an acceptable betrothal for him. The black mark against his father who sired a stillborn daughter, made Nirav even less desirable.

Vanozza had been brave in her own way to bed him. Generous to even consider including him in Ornatti's succession.

Or, perhaps, more cunning than I gave her credit for. The Council had the power to award Soffika's guardianship to one of the matrons. Since there was no clear leader for so long, this marriage could nudge the vote in Ornatti's favor after Nirav had fathered a healthy baby girl. While the others wrinkled their noses, Vanozza spotted the opportunity and snatched the Duke before his value went up.

"And?" I asked, realizing that Xenophonta was waiting for me to reason it all out. Or pull my hair in clumps regretting my liaison with the Idezza's cursed boy-Duke.

"The Divines' children are always daughters. I guess, initially, there might have been a rational kernel in the Mad Duchess' zealotry," Xenophonta went on. "Her mother used the pretext of a mudslide to build the new temple on the Piazza Divina. She was desperate to curb Lukka's obsession and keep her inside the city."

I rubbed my chin. "That monstrosity of a building is a monument to despair, not hubris then? I would have never guessed!"

"It takes time for the holy sites to become infused with their worshipers' piety. Lukka was willing to wait for the Divines to establish Their presence. With a cunning of an ill mind, she outwardly curbed her fervor and promised to marry a mortal. But as soon as she donned the Duchess coronet after her mother's death, her obsession returned. It worsened after she succeeded to conceive Soffika from a Divine parent."

The torches in Xenophonta's tent changed to green. For some reason, the flames colored anything but their natural red-and-orange mesmerized me more.

"Soffika can't transform because the Mad Duchess' desire was that of a sick, scared woman. Her womb and her spirit were not strong enough to nurture a half-divine child," I mused.

My daughter lifted her eyes to Heavens, leaving such things in the Divines' hands.

I sat in a stupor, staring into the bewitching flames. One stupid part of me yearned to ride out, deliver Nirav, carry him on Breva's saddle away from Vanozza, from the Tigress and from Idezza. I would have done it, were it possible that he was deceived. He knew what Vanozza wanted. He'd never told me the truth.

He must have also guessed that there was little hope for his sister and he still hired the Deadhead Company. The Duke drew up a contract with me, he supplied whatever I wanted... whoever I wanted. Why should I care for his reasons to cling to the lost cause? It was probably a nobleman's greed for power all along.

One thing was clear. Once I defeated the Tigress, Nirav would wed Vanozza and Idezza would crown them.

My daughter reached back for her book. I'd never before given her a reason to sit idle for so long, waiting on my musings. The mind of a Commander must be swift, or her ax counts for nothing.

"Xenophonta," I said at last, "what does a woman need to make an appeal to the Divines to manifest Themselves?"

Xenophonta didn't lift her eyes from the yellowed pages. "It depends on the Divine whose favor you're seeking."

I said Mythra's name before she could finish her sentence. It's to Them that I prayed from my deepest, truest heart.

"This country doesn't venerate Them, Mother. Hence, Their manifestation would be transitory even if They chose to appear before you," Xenophonta explained patiently, as if I were her child, not vice versa.

Her eyes were hooded, but I caught a gleam, like a blade hidden inside an assassin's sleeve. She wanted me to follow her lead but was yet too innocent to conceal it, particularly from her mother. I enjoyed the sight of my middle child growing up.

"Does Soffika have Divine Mansoora's essence in her veins?" I asked her.

No High Scribe worth her pay would give a woman a straight answer. "Yansara is also well-loved in Idezza, but..."

I huffed. "But?"

"Soffika was conceived in the middle of the rainy season."

I remembered Yansara's pools that flowed with her energy on the eve of the rainy season, but I kept my peace. Whatever else had happened, the memory was Nirav's and mine alone. He couldn't have brought a superstitious Idezzian there. Therefore Vanozza had never bathed there with him.

Keep telling yourself that.

I cleared my throat from a sudden obstruction. "What do you need to make an appeal to Divine Mansoora?"

A fleeting smile touched Xenophonta's lips. "A silver cup, red wine and a pearl."

I scribbled a note to the Company's Treasurer to release whatever Xenophonta wanted.

She took the note, then looked at me hesitantly. "Mother, are you sure? Taffiz is certain that you would die if you give birth to another child."

"Don't worry, I'm not Lukka. I don't need to conceive a half-divine child." I kissed her forehead. "And you should listen to Taffiz flapping his idle tongue less."

"I will once you listen to him more," she shot back with the same stubborn expression in her eyes as she had years ago, when she tried to convince me to marry Taffiz. He found a loyal friend in Kozima's and mine daughter. Who would have thought it was possible, yet the Knowable World turned up surprises at every step; and it would never stop doing so, no matter how long I lived.