Sygarius has taken refuge in Tolosa, at the court of Alaric, king of the Visigoths,” Clovis said.

I sucked in a breath. “So he lives.”

We were back on our separate couches, clothes arranged, and the food had been cleared away by servants. My cunny felt warm and well loved, but my mind couldn’t let go of the sensation of having my throat cut. I kept feeling it over and over, and dreaded what it meant.

My visions couldn’t be counted on to be literal representations of the future, yet sometimes they were. I needed to keep this one to myself until I had a better sense of what it meant.

“I never doubted he survived,” Clovis said. “Nor am I sorry: it would have been too easy a fate for him to crawl off under a bush and die of his wounds. I’d like the pleasure of gutting him myself.”

“There are times, Clovis, when your bloodthirstiness makes me melt with adoration.” I meant it, too. Bastard Sygarius, forcing me, trying to breed on me as if I were his farm animal. And then ordering his soldier to kill me as a distraction so he could flee from Clovis, tossing me aside to save his own skin. I had hated him before that, but despised him after. My emotions for my former master had once been a mixture of sexual desire, resentment, and awe, even affection. It was probably that former tenderness that made my emotions so violent now. “I want to watch while you gut him.”

“Once I have him, you can do it yourself if you wish.”

I blinked at that; a mental flinch against the thought of cutting into human flesh. I’d never wounded anyone before, much less disemboweled someone. “Is Alaric giving him to you?”

Clovis sighed. “No. Not yet, anyway. Letters and emissaries have been going back and forth for months, but Alaric says it is his Christian duty to give sanctuary to those who seek it; especially to the ‘rightful’ ruler of Soissons.”

The majority of Visigoths were Christian, although not the same type of Christian as Remigius and the other bishops I had encountered here in the north of Gaul. The Visigoths were Arians, whatever that meant, while the Roman Christians were Catholic. I had no notion of what this great religious divide was, but it was a point of friction between the Visigoths who ruled central and southern Gaul, and the Romans—both noble and common—who still lived among them.

Whether Arian or Catholic, followers of the old Roman and Greek gods, or of the Frankish, all peoples I knew of shared this belief: that their rulers were either chosen by the gods, or descended from them. And the Romans had once believed that their rulers became gods. It was all very odd. Any woman with sense could point out that all rulers were but men, who drank too much, fucked whomever they could, and took a peculiar joy in farting.

“What will you do?” I asked. “Leave Sygarius there?”

“To form an alliance with Alaric, and attempt to retake Soissons? No. I can’t leave him free. Nor am I ready yet to invade Visigoth territory.”

I held out my hands, palms up. “Then what?”

He smiled, though it looked more like a grimace. “You.”

I shook my head, not understanding.

“I want you to be my ambassador. Go to Alaric’s court, and persuade him to hand over Sygarius.”

“Me!”

Clovis leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Yes. If righteousness is truly such an issue with Alaric—though I have my doubts; he’s probably using it as an excuse and intends to join forces with Sygarius—then you, who have been so wronged, can argue that Sygarius must return to Soissons to face justice.”

“He won’t listen to a woman! No king would, and especially not a Visigoth. I lived among one of their tribes when I was child, and they did not impress me as men who valued the opinions of women.”

“You speak their tongue, don’t you? That is another reason to send you.”

I pressed my lips together.

“If you went alone,” he said, “then, yes, I could see how Alaric might not give you the degree of attention you deserve. However, I’m arranging an illustrious escort for you—or rather, Remigius is. He still feels badly about his inadvertent role in your abduction.”

So this plan was already in motion. Had he come up with it as soon as I recovered? “Who is this illustrious personage?”

“Sidonius Apollinaris.” He looked at me as if that was supposed to mean something.

I raised my brows in question.

Clovis gave a short, dry laugh. “I hadn’t heard of him, either. He’s a Roman bishop in central Gaul, in Clermont. Old now, but for a brief moment he was the son-in-law of the emperor in Rome, and he is a poet of great fame. More importantly, he once spent time at the Visigoth court, and wrote several famously glowing letters describing Alaric’s grandfather. Alaric will be eager to please him, and will not want to appear a hypocrite in front of such a witness. He will want to be immortalized in Sidonius’s writings as a righteous ruler, as his grandfather was.”

“Why not just send this Sidonius to plead our case? I don’t know that I will be any more persuasive.”

Clovis look at me incredulously. “Do you know men so little?”

I remembered Sygarius setting me to spy on Clovis’s father, Childeric, and telling me that men lost the ability to think around a woman they desired. “You think that if I make puppy eyes at him, he will give me what I ask?”

“I know it. Nimia, you are not a beautiful woman, from an objective point of view—”

I snorted. “Thank you very much.”

“—but you are stunning. I do not know what it is about you, but no man can keep his eyes from you. No man can see you and not want you. It’s as if . . .”

“As if what?”

“I don’t know. It’s as if you give off a scent that begs a man to fuck you.”

My mouth dropped open. “I do not!”

“It’s why I’m sending your two maids with you, and a cadre of soldiers as bodyguards. Terix and Bone Cruncher, too. If all else fails, that dog will rip the prick off anyone who tries to touch you.”

I was warmed by his display of protectiveness, but knew better than to trust that he was telling me everything. I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking. “Is there more to this than you say? You don’t expect me to sleep with Alaric, do you?”

His nostrils flared. “No!”

“That’s a relief.” I cocked my head, remembering Basina’s lecture and wondering what it might mean about discussions between her and Clovis. Scenarios they had toyed with, possibilities explored. “But what if it were the only way to persuade him?”

Clovis’s face colored, and his jaw tensed. “I don’t want another man to touch you.”

“But if it were the only way . . . ?” I didn’t know why I was pushing the question. Perhaps only for the pleasure of seeing his jealousy.

“It would be your decision,” he said between clenched teeth.

“So it would depend on how badly I want to see Sygarius’s guts on a platter.”

Clovis nodded stiffly.

I didn’t dare ask which he would prefer: me untouched, but without Sygarius; or me soiled by Alaric, but with Sygarius in chains.

I didn’t dare ask, because I didn’t know which I’d prefer, either. I had a score to settle, and I didn’t know how far I would go to do it.

“I would ask that you do not speak of your visions to anyone at Alaric’s court,” Clovis said.

“Afraid they might try to steal your seer?”

“Yes.”

I tilted my head, acknowledging the truth of it.

“I would also ask that you pay attention to anything that might prove of use to me.”

It took me a moment to fully understand, and then I blinked. He wanted me to spy. No wonder he wouldn’t be content to send only Sidonius as his ambassador. A Christian bishop would not spy for him. “You really do mean to take all of Gaul for the Franks, don’t you?”

He looked at me as if I were a simpleton. “Of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed. I didn’t understand the why of it. There weren’t so many Franks that they needed so much more land. Why this need to invade and conquer? It made no sense to me. I better understood dead Childeric’s contentment with a purse of gold and a comfortable life, than I did Clovis’s ambition.

On the other hand, I had ambitions of my own that Clovis might not understand. Those ambitions had been set aside during my pregnancy, and now I couldn’t see how I could take Theo with me while I pursued them. I wanted to find my lost tribe, the Phanne; only by finding them could I learn to control and develop my gifts. I also harbored a secret hope that if I found them, I might be reunited with my mother. I didn’t know if she lived in this world or the next; as a mother now myself, my heart hollowed at the thought of being separated from my child. She surely had felt the same.

“You mentioned my two maids,” I said, changing the topic. “The nursemaid must come, as well. Theo cannot be without her.”

“The child will remain here.”

I pulled my chin back. “Then so shall I.”

“You would expose your baby to the dangers of the open sea?”

“If it’s so dangerous, why do you send me?”

“Nimia, the child is but a month old. He is not strong enough to endure travel.”

“Nor is he strong enough to be without his mother.”

“He will be well cared for. Basina will see to that; you know it.”

I felt a rising flood of panic at the thought of being parted from Theo. “Why do you care? You don’t believe him to be yours, so what matter to you if he should perish?”

Clovis looked away and I saw the muscle in his jaw working. “I do not know that he is not mine.” He met my eyes again. “On the chance that he is, I will not risk his life at sea; I will keep him here, safe. Nor will I risk that Sygarius might take him, believing the child his own.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And if all else fails, I suppose you expect me to use Theo as bait, to lure Sygarius into your hands.”

Clovis’s eyes opened wide. “That’s brilliant, Nimia! You wouldn’t even need Alaric’s approval if Sygarius was willing to return on his own, to see his son. I hadn’t thought of that.”

I was surprised he hadn’t. His avoidance of thinking about Theo must have blinded him to using the baby as a lever against his enemy. The whole point of Sygarius’s kidnapping of me had been to father a child. And as Sygarius had taught me, if you knew what a man wanted and offered to give it to him—or to take it away—you controlled him.

Too bad I’d given Clovis the idea. Now there was no chance at all of persuading him to allow Theo on the journey.

And maybe he was right not to. There were dangers on the road that one could not always foresee.

Given what I had foreseen, I reluctantly conceded that I would rather have my son in the arms of Basina than exposed to whatever atrocity Fate had in store for me. Basina would snap the spine of anyone who dared look sideways at my child.

Meanwhile, I would have a Christian poet-bishop as protector.

God help me.