She sipped calmly before speaking. “Since you avoid the rest of us, a few of the Chosen will be coming here. I came first so you would know it is not an attack.”

“Others? Some plan of yours? What need have I of someone else’s designs?” Suddenly he laughed, a deep, rich sound. “So it is no attack, is it? You were never one for attacking openly, were you? Not as bad as Moghedien, perhaps, but you did always favor the flanks and the rear. I will trust you this time, enough to hear you out. As long as you are under my eye.” Who trusted Lanfear behind him deserved the knife he might well find in his back. Not that she was so very trustworthy even when watched; her temper was uncertain at best. “Who else is supposed to be part of this?”

He had clearer warning this time—it was male work—as another gateway opened, showing marble arches opening onto wide stone balconies, and gulls wheeling and crying in a cloudless blue sky. Finally a man appeared and stepped through, the way closing behind him.

Sammael was compact, solid and larger-seeming than he truly was, his stride quick and active, his manner abrupt. Blue-eyed and golden-haired, with a neat square-trimmed beard, he would perhaps have been above the ordinary in looks except for a slanting scar, as if a red-hot poker had been dragged across his face from hairline to jaw. He could have had it removed as soon as it was made, all those long years ago, but he had elected not to.

Linked to saidin as tightly as Rahvin—this close Rahvin could feel it, dimly—Sammael eyed him warily. “I expected serving maids and dancing girls, Rahvin. Have you finally wearied of your sport after all these years?” Lanfear laughed softly into her wine.

“Did someone mention sport?”

Rahvin had not even noticed the opening of a third gateway, showing a large room full of pools and fluted columns, nearly nude acrobats and attendants wearing less. Oddly, a lean old man in a wrinkled coat sat disconsolately among the performers. Two servants in filmy bits of nothing much, a well-muscled man bearing a wrought-gold tray and a beautiful, voluptuous woman, anxiously pouring wine from a cut-crystal flagon into a matching goblet on the tray, followed the true arrival before the opening winked out.

In any other company but Lanfear’s, Graendal would have been accounted a stunningly beautiful woman, lush and ripe. Her gown was green silk, cut low. A ruby the size of a hen’s egg nestled between her breasts, and a coronet encrusted with more rested on her long, sun-colored hair. Beside Lanfear she was merely plumply pretty. If the inevitable comparison bothered her, her amused smile gave no sign of it.