Under her lustrous regard, my incorrigible peasant-boy actually blushed. “You are welcome, highness.” He shuffled his feet. “I hate poisoners. One of them killed me, you know. And… I fear you are only in danger because of Moirin and me. So I will do anything I can to protect you.”

“And I am grateful for it,” she said gravely, pressing his hand once more.

His blush deepened.

I raised my brows and smiled at him.

“What?” Bao scowled at me. “Don’t smirk at me, Moirin. We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to figure out how to save the Rani and her son.”

“Yes, my hero,” I said. “We do.”

SIXTY-SIX

Around and around we went, trying to conceive of a plan that would get us up the path to Kurugiri without sustaining untenable losses, and deal with the problem of Kamadeva’s diamond at the top.

Hasan Dar, Amrita, and Ravindra hadn’t had any success, the latter chastened and made uncertain by the failure of his first plan.

Bao’s knowledge was helpful, but it didn’t eliminate the obstacles facing us. I listened as he discussed the treacherous path with Hasan Dar, sketching out the likeliest places for assassins to lay in waiting on a map based on his tattoos.

“The problem is that they will always have the higher ground,” he said. “See, here, here, and here. We will always be coming around blind corners, where they can pick us off one by one.”

I thought of an offer I had made Snow Tiger once when we faced an ambush-and a warning my mother had given me. “Unless they can’t see us,” I murmured.

Bao gave me a sharp look. “Your twilight.”

I nodded.

“No.” He shook his head. “No, Moirin. I will not risk you again.”

“No, I do not like it either,” Amrita said unhappily.

“What is she talking about?” Hasan Dar asked, bewildered.

It was easier to show him than explain. I had them close their eyes and summoned the twilight, wrapping it around Bao and me, then letting it fade before their open eyes. Ravindra and Hasan Dar stared in awe; the Rani Amrita, who had seen me call the twilight before, just looked worried.

“And you could kill a man thus concealed?” her commander asked. “Or Bao could?”

My mother’s words echoed in my thoughts. It is a grave gift and one never to be used lightly. Only to sustain life. Do you ever use it for sport or any idle cause, it will be stripped from you.

Snow Tiger’s, too, her voice gentle and firm as she refused my offer. What you suggest is dishonorable.

But when I glanced at Amrita’s beautiful, worried face and her son’s thin, clever one, I knew I was willing to take the risk. “I could. I cannot speak for Bao.”

Bao frowned, fidgeting with the bands of steel that reinforced his bamboo fighting-staff. “I would have no trouble killing those men who serve them willingly,” he said. “They are assassins who kill by stealth, and it is fitting that they should die thus. But I would not like to kill those who were trapped as I was.”

In the end, it remained a moot point, for we could devise no plan for dealing with Kamadeva’s diamond.

“I could accompany you,” Amrita said quietly. “I am not affected by it, at least not with Jagrati wielding it.”

“No!” Four voices spoke in emphatic unison.

Bao reckoned we had a few more days’ grace before the Falconer and the Spider Queen decided that Divyesh Patel had failed and sent a new assassin in his place. After our initial attempts at group strategy failed, Bao suggested in private that he and I go alone. Since my diadh-anam had been twinned, I could hold him in the twilight as easily as myself. If I could hold it long enough, the two of us alone could approach Kurugiri without ever being seen, without alerting the Falconer’s assassins.

“We could steal Kamadeva’s diamond rather than take it by force,” he mused, stroking my hair.

Lying in his arms, I shook my head. “I don’t trust myself around it. Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Bao admitted. “Here, with you… yes. I walked away from it once. But…”

“What if Jagrati got me to betray myself utterly, Bao?” I shuddered. “What if she sent me against my lady Amrita and her son? I can summon the twilight. I know where the hidden room is located.”

“And you are rather deadly with a bow,” he added. “No, you’re right. It’s too dangerous.” He toyed with my hair, which had grown out well below my shoulders, but was still much shorter than it had been. “Why did you cut it, Moirin?”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

His brows furrowed. “Whose was it?”

For the first time, I told Bao the whole of what had befallen me after the Great Khan’s betrayal-the journey and the whole long, awful ordeal in Vralia, the chafing chains that bound my spirit as surely as my flesh, the Patriarch and his incessant demands that I confess the litany of my sins, Luba and her shears, cold water, and lye, the endless scrubbing of the temple floor, my knees aching, the ever-present threat of being stoned to death.

I wept.

Bao held me. “I could kill them ten times over for that!” he said fiercely, his breath warm against my temple. “Do you want me to?”

“No.” I sniffled and laughed. “No, I don’t ever want to go back there.”

“How did you escape?”

I told him about Valentina and Aleksei, although not the part about Aleksei and Naamah’s blessing.

Bao suspected it anyway, regarding me with a wry look. “I swear, Moirin, you fall in love as easily as other people fall out of a boat.”

“I don’t!” I protested.

“You do.”

None too gently, I tugged on a hank of his longish hair. “Why did you let it grow? I thought it gave enemies a handhold in combat.”

He didn’t answer right away. I withdrew a little, propping myself on one elbow and watching his face, watching Bao decide whether or not he was ready to talk about his time in Kurugiri.

“She liked it that way,” he said eventually.

“Jagrati?” I asked softly. Bao nodded, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Was it terrible there?”

“No,” he said after another long silence. “Or maybe it was. I don’t know how to talk about it. I was in a terrible place inside myself while I was there, thinking you were dead, thinking I had only myself to blame for it.” He shrugged. “It was a strange place. So much opulence, so much stolen treasure, hidden away in a stark fortress. Between her spell and the opium, it seems like a fever-dream now.”

“How did you get there?” I wanted to keep him talking.

“There’s a cauldron that hangs on a chain and a winch from a plateau above the trail,” Bao said. “I heard about it during my journey there. I petitioned Tarik Khaga to take me into his service. A day later, someone came to blindfold me and lead me through the maze. I thought…” He shrugged again. “There is a kind of honor among thieves and thugs when it comes to the rules of combat. I thought perhaps there was among assassins, too. When I was granted an audience, I said I had come to claim you. I offered to fight any man among them for the right to take you away with me.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Stupid plan, huh?”

“Better than none,” I said. “So Jagrati ensorceled you instead?”

Bao shook his head. “Not right away, no. My story, our story… it wasn’t what she expected. It intrigued her. She’s the one who rules Kurugiri, you know. Not him.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw.”

“So.” He blew out his breath. “No one had ever attempted to rescue someone they had taken before. She thought it was a piece of irony that the only living soul to do so had come on a fool’s errand. She wanted me to know it. She let me search to my heart’s content, questioning anyone I liked. She even gave me access to the harem. And there was no trace of you anywhere. By the end of the first day, I knew it must be true. The Great Khan had killed you, and sent me away in vain.”