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"You're sure?" I asked Noemie d'Etoile at the Temple of Naamah.

"I'm sure." She patted my hand. "Don't fret, Moirin. It's not unusual for Phanuel to be gone for months at a time. Like as not, he's solving some other lovers' dilemma. Problems needing to be solved have a way of finding him."

"I wish he were here, that's all."

The priestess smiled. "Of course you do. Is everything all right with you otherwise? Does being in the Queen's service suit you?"

"Oddly enough, it does."

Noemie laughed. "Not so odd. It's in your blood, after all. By all accounts, it seems to suit her majesty. They say you're a calming influence."

That I hadn't heard. "They do?"

She nodded. "It's been over a month since she made a chambermaid cry. Thirty-two days and counting. That's a new record. They're taking wagers on how long it will last at Bryony House."

I had to smile. "Folk in this City really need to find new pastimes."

At the Academy, Master Lo Feng praised my progress in the Five Styles of Breathing and began teaching me the rudiments of herbal medicine. To the disappointment of both of us, I didn't have a knack for it. Despite my affinity for the plants themselves, I didn't have a head for the complex formulas he taught me—nor any talent in diagnosing ailments. Thanks to the breathing exercises, I did better at sensing the flow of energy and its blockages, but I didn't have Raphael's gift for manipulating it.

Whatever I was, it wasn't a healer.

At least not of humans.

Plants were another matter. Master Lo Feng was particularly intrigued by the Camaeline snowdrop, a rare white flower that grew in the mountains of Camlach province and blossomed in the snowdrifts there once a year. The flowers were pressed and their essence distilled to make joie, a liqueur that was traditionally served on the Longest Night.

"Very tonic," Lo Feng said in approval. "And you foolish people have not even begun to explore the properties of the bulb!"

To that end, the King had arranged to have a shipment of living snowdrops collected in the high mountains and delivered to Master Lo Feng. I was there in the courtyard the day they arrived, delicate flowers already drooping in the burlap sack that held them.

I touched one. It sang a frail, fading song to itself.

Master Lo Feng watched me. "His majesty says no one has ever kept one alive. They only grow wild in the mountains."

"They're pining for deep snow and thin air," I told him. Bao—

Bao was already in motion. He thrust his omnipresent staff over his shoulder through a loop of leather and began scooping up snow that had gathered in the corners of the courtyard. I helped. Together, we packed the sack full of snow.

"Better?" Bao asked me.

"Better," I agreed. My diadh-anam pulsed in my breast. I knelt gingerly on the cold flagstones and listened to the snowdrops' frail song. I closed my eyes and breathed the Breath of Trees Growing, feeling the energy spread throughout my body and thinking about the cycles of giving and taking that linked all living things. And then I breathed the Breath of Wind's Sigh, drawing air up and up behind my eyes, thinking about the cold, high places where the snowdrops grew.

I summoned the twilight, touched the flowers, and blew on them.

Their song grew stronger and clearer.

And I felt less drained than I ever had exercising my gift. I felt the rightness of it. Master Lo Feng had been right about teaching me to breathe and right in his analogy of the waterwheel. What I had given would be returned to me. I could feel the surety of it in the marrow of my bones. When I opened my eyes, my mentor was smiling his subtle smile.

"Magic," he said serenely. "You could keep them alive all the way to Ch'in."

"Oh." I laughed. "That's a very long way."

"Indeed it is," Master Lo Feng agreed, folding his hands in his sleeves.

I wondered if he were jesting.

I didn't think so.

* * *

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

I knew the very day that Jehanne took Raphael back.