“Give me strength, Blessed One,” I murmured, “for you have already given me my heart, and for that I am grateful. Protect us, your travelers. Let us rescue those who need help. Let us find a place we can call home.”

Adurnam was no longer home. I wasn’t the girl who had run to the academy without her coat that day when everything I thought I knew had fallen apart. Hearing Bee’s distant laughter, I smiled, for having her gave me all the courage I needed. I pressed my right hand to my locket and my left to the cane as I shut my eyes. For a few breaths, or for hours, or for years, I heard only silence. Then, faint as a whisper, the pulse of Vai’s being brushed mine.

He was still alive.

When I opened my eyes the stone statue of Tanit stared at me with the head of a lion, in her aspect as the giver of fierceness and strength. The cat who never gives up.

As I never would.

The path led on to the priestess’s quarters. Bee sat on the sleeping-house porch drinking coffee with six humbly garbed priestesses ranging in age from a bent crone to a slight girl seated in a rickety chair with a crutch at her side.

“The cacique is the ruler. The ruler is usually a man, but it may be a woman, like the didos who once ruled in Qart Hadast. The cacique administers the kingdom. But all the women of noble lineage and all the elders have the right to rebuke the cacique if he acts in a way that hurts the kingdom. It is the council of women who approve the choice of heir. And in Expedition, with the new Assembly, women will be allowed both to vote and to serve as representatives, just like men. The trolls insisted on that proviso, because they are citizens of Expedition also.”

The bent crone gave a skeptical snort. “I can’t imagine the prince of Tarrant, or a Roman legate of patrician birth, or even that old bastard of a high priest in the temple here, allowing a woman to stand over them and give them commands. How can it be so elsewhere?”

“There were once queens in Qart Hadast, and there’s no reason there can’t be again,” said Bee. When she realized I was standing there, she set down the steaming mug she had cupped in her hands. “My dear cousin is come to hasten me on my way. My thanks for the coffee, holy ones.”

“You didn’t tell us about the architecture,” said the chair-bound girl with a yearning sigh.

She kissed them all around, and whispered something in the ear of the girl that made the child blush with the pleasure of having been given a secret treasure to cherish at her frail breast.

The bent crone escorted us to the withy gate.