For two days I pretended to be prostrate with grief, too stunned to do more than silently wander the college buildings and grounds, and to bravely hold back tears when Tanwen took me to the hillock from which she had supposedly cast my mother’s ashes to the wind.

Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Una stalking me, keeping to the shadows and slipping around a corner if I turned to look. A few times I gestured to her or spoke, inviting her closer, but that seemed to alarm her. I sensed that she wanted to observe me while remaining unobserved herself, and that in her own time she would speak to me.

My days of false mourning gave Maerlin and me time to become familiar sights to the women of the college—the “acolytes,” as they were called—our hope being that they’d eventually speak freely when we were near, rather than guarding their words. From them we might get a sense of what Akantha and Tanwen expected of us.

It quickly became clear that the Phanne mother and daughter were held in a holy awe, as if they were goddesses who had temporarily taken mortal form. There was a lot of worry about what would happen when Akantha died, leaving only Tanwen as their head priestess—one goddess plainly being not as good as two. And who would succeed her, when the time came?

Which, Maerlin pointed out, was one possibility for what they wanted. If I believed my mother to be dead, then I would stop trying to find her and be more likely to stay and help run their so-called college.

It seemed a thin reason for such a vicious lie.

“They care only for themselves,” Maerlin had said. “Don’t ever forget that, whatever truth they pretend to tell you.”

As they sought something from us, so we sought things from them. I put on my “still suffering but ready to move on” face and went looking for Tanwen. There was a small part of me that doubted my mother was alive, and that feared Tanwen and Akantha had told the truth; there was a larger part of me that knew they lied and was murderously angry at being manipulated in such a cruel manner for their own ends. It was as evil as their having told Una that Maerlin had raped his sister.

While I approached Tanwen, Maerlin was going to brave Akantha’s bedside. As she was sipping poppy juice throughout the day, we thought she’d be less on her guard, less careful in her answers, especially without Tanwen there to control her. She would also be less coherent, but one had to try. And perhaps reestablishing contact with her estranged son while on her deathbed would soften what Maerlin called her “cold black pebble of a heart” and loosen her lips.

An acolyte brought me to Tanwen in her chamber, a lushly decorated room much like Akantha’s, where the goblets were gold instead of the silver of the hall, the bedding was fresh, and half the room was taken up by shelves heaped with finely embroidered clothing in rich hues, racks of glimmering jewelry, pots of perfumes and mysterious beauty creams, and a silver mirror as tall as I was.

The mirror startled me. It was so perfectly smooth and polished that I had not seen it at first: I’d mistaken it for a doorway into another room. It was only when I passed in front of it and saw my own form that I jumped, thinking another person had suddenly appeared.

Tanwen laughed from her couch, where she was rubbing red cream onto her fingernails, giving them a rosy stain. “I doubt they have anything so fine in either Rome or Byzantium. Have you ever seen its like?”

“Never.” I stared at myself. This was how I looked? I’d seen my face in small mirrors; even seen as much as my head and shoulders. Never, however, had I seen my whole body at once. I looked shapeless, like a chubby child, in my warm layers of clothing. “I don’t have as nice a figure as I thought.”

Another laugh from Tanwen, and she heaved herself up and came to stand behind me, a head taller and half again as wide. Her lush curves had been fed too well, yet she retained the in-and-out silhouette of femininity, and I knew there would be many men who saw such mounds of flesh as an irresistible feast to be devoured. “That’s every woman’s reaction.”

“I didn’t know I was this small, either. I could have sworn I was only a hand’s breadth shorter than you.”

“Your mother was even smaller. The same lovely hair, though,” she said, and ran my thick black braid through her hand. “What I wouldn’t give for such a mass of hair, rather than this thin, fading stuff on my own head.”

I made the necessary murmurs of denial, and forced myself to turn away from the mirror. “I don’t know that I’d want to see myself in that every day.”

“You get used to it. I wouldn’t advise watching yourself have sex in it, though. The idea seems erotic, but reality is . . . jiggly.”

I forced a laugh, wanting her to think I liked her.

“No woman wants to see the pimples on her bottom,” Tanwen went on, encouraged, as she led us back to the couch, “or the way her breasts fall off to the sides, sloshing back and forth while she’s on her back with a man’s hips smacking against her thighs. Not that the men notice, as long as they’re getting their swords oiled. I’ll count that in their favor.”

I laughed again as we sat at either end of the couch, legs drawn up inside the warmth of skirts and elbows resting on pillows, as if settling in for a sisterly chat. Tanwen’s raunchy, frank humor was disarming, and if not for what I knew about her I would have been charmed.

I did seem to like a lot of people whom I shouldn’t. Terix probably had an unflattering theory about why; likely my greedy loins were at the center of it, in regards to the men. My urge to like Tanwen did at least make it easy to act as if I were taken in by her and ready to believe all she said.

“I have so many questions for you,” I said, “about my mother; about the Phanne; about this place, and what you can teach me.”

“You’ll want to start with your mother, I’m guessing.” Her face took on a somber cast and with deep sympathy in her eyes—she looked like a weeping puppy—she reached over to touch my clothed arm and give it a squeeze. “How are you doing?”

I pressed my lips together to still their false trembling. “Holding on.”

She nodded and patted my arm. “I will soon share your loss. You are forging the path that I will soon tread. You’re being very brave.”

I lowered my gaze as if embarrassed by the compliment, but more to hide the fury I was sure would show in my eyes. “Did she leave any message for me? Did she know I would come here, looking for her?”

“I’m so sorry, Nimia. I wish I had something I could tell you. She was sick when she arrived, worn-out. She’d been seeking Phanne, seeking a trace of her own family. She did mention you, and said that you’d been taken as a slave by a Roman general in Gaul, and that it was for the best.”

“My mother wanted me to be a slave?”

“She meant it was best to be with the Romans. Civilized people. You’d been living more or less as slaves in a crude band of Ostrogoths, hadn’t you? She thought it better that you grow up in a rich household, protected and well fed.”

I still couldn’t imagine my mother wishing slavery on me, but there might be a grain of truth in what Tanwen said. “She always told me to wring the most I could out of any choice I was given in life. Being taken as a slave wasn’t my choice, but I took all the advantage I could of my position.” I had learned music, and to read and write. And I’d learned far more than I would say about sex, and the perversions that slicked the loins of female nature.

“Spoken like a true Phanne,” Tanwen said, nodding in approval. “Men think they control us, but they don’t understand the least part of what we are thinking and what we are capable of. They don’t know how their hunger for our bodies, and our willingness to part our thighs, are their undoing.”

“I’m only beginning to understand it, myself. There was a man . . .” I said, thinking of Mordred.

Tanwen grasped her hands together and leaned forward. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, looking unsettlingly like a snake tasting the air. “Tell me.”

I was getting a feel for her now, getting a sense for how she enjoyed power and control. I wanted her to believe I felt the same way, and got the same thrill from it. Keeping his name out of the story, I told her what I’d done to Mordred, emphasizing how excited I had been to humiliate him and making him do my bidding. I wouldn’t tell her how revolted I had been at my delight, and how frightened I was of the cruel monster that lurked inside me.

Tanwen was a living embodiment of that monster.

When I finished, Tanwen released a long breath and half-closed her eyes. “I’m wet just hearing about it.” She smiled. “I am so happy you found us, Nimia. You and I are going to be great friends, I can sense it.”

Her Phanne prophetic gifts were clearly not omniscient.

“That will stick a thorn in Maerlin’s backside,” I said, giving her a mischievous, sidelong look. “He hates you.”

Tanwen studied me, and then tilted her head. “What do you think of my brother?”

I thought it safest to distance myself from him, and make her think I was in her camp, not his. “He’s strange. Not Phanne strange; just strange, like he doesn’t possess normal human emotions. I had to bribe him with a promise of sex to get him to bring me here.”

She laughed. “That sounds absolutely normal for a man.”

“You know what I mean. He’s not as he should be.” I thought the blame for that could be laid on Tanwen and her mother. Maybe he would have been far more normal if they hadn’t taken gross advantage of him when he was a boy.

“I’ve often wondered if the Phanne gifts were never meant for a male body,” Tanwen said. “They seem to have warped him. He gets outlandish ideas in his head, and thinks things are real that are not. Once he has an idea, he can never shed it, either. Una, for example. You know that she is our child?”

I nodded.

“Akantha forced us together, controlled us both. Ah, I see by your face that he told you differently. That it was me?” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t think it now, seeing her the way she is, but Akantha was a force impossible to be denied. Neither of us was safe from her.”

“And yet you’ve stayed here with her, all these years.”

“The danger of being a viper is that your offspring are vipers, too. I learned from her, and I have the energy of youth on my side. Relative youth, anyway.” She ran a hand down over her round hip, clearly enjoying the feel of her own luxurious body. “She has no power over me now. And truth be told, we needed each other. We needed Maerlin, too, but he left us to fend for ourselves.”

In what seemed another lifetime, Sidonius Apollinaris had told me that there was always more than one side to a story, with one rarely more good or bad than the other. Perhaps Maerlin’s youth had had him see Tanwen as the aggressor, and he had not the maturity to see how she was controlled in turn by their mother. She may have been as innocent as he.

Or it might be convenient for Tanwen to place the blame for her own misdeeds on the woman about to leave this world. Akantha could take the guilt with her to the grave, and leave Tanwen free.

“It’s not what Una thinks happened,” I said. “She thinks he raped you.”

“My mother told her that. I went along with it because I thought it would be easier for Una; she loves her grandmother. We all had to live together, after all, and Maerlin was gone.”

“Kinder still to tell her that her father had been a brave Briton soldier, who died in battle.”

“Of course it would have been, but vipers aren’t known for kindness, are they? Akantha was hurt when Maerlin left us, and Una’s hatred of him is her revenge. It’s an unhappy story, and I’ve let it go on for far too long.” She gave me a pleading look, pressing her hands together. “I’ve felt so guilty about the harm my mother’s lie has done, I’ve let Una run wild and have her way when really I shouldn’t. She’s been indulged far more than is good for her. A mother is helpless before the pain of her baby, isn’t she?”

From our few days here, I’d gotten the sense that Una was forgotten or ignored far more than she was indulged. I’d play along, though. “Love that strong can feel like pain,” I said, thinking of Theo.

Tanwen’s face melted into glowing warmth. “You do understand.”

“That leads me to what I came here to learn. I have a son, in Gaul. I want to know if I can reach him with my mind across this distance, and talk to him.”

“A son?”

“Theodoric. Less than a year old. His father’s family took him from me.”

Tanwen’s eyes narrowed. “Bastards! Of course, you would have eventually given him up anyway if you’d been with your tribe, as he’s a boy. That would have been different, though. No one takes a child from the Phanne.”

“I’ll get him back, when I’m stronger. I need your help with that, Tanwen. I don’t know how to use my gifts, or even what they are. Can I reach Theo? Can I see through his eyes, feel what he feels? Can I speak to him, or even with him?”

She chewed her lower lip. “I don’t know. I doubt it. Even with a daughter, it’s not possible if she’s without the Phanne talent. I can’t reach Una. The girl is impenetrable as a stone.”

My hopes fell, shattering on the tile floor. I scrambled to salvage a shard. “Did you ever try to reach your father?”

She tucked in her chin. “Him? Why? What would I have cared of him?”

“I was wondering, given the tie of blood . . .”

“The seed from a lover forms the most powerful mind-bond. That between family members is weak, barely worth the effort.”

“But your mother could control you?”

She set her jaw. “Not anymore; not unless I let her. Which I don’t.”

“Can you reach Maerlin, across distance?”

“He won’t let me. But once, before everything went bad . . . yes. The tie of blood and his talent allowed it.” She sighed. “It was like nothing I’d ever felt. Such closeness! Two minds speaking without words, as if in one body, while miles apart. It only happened a few times, and I’ve missed it ever since. It’s probably why I never fell in love. What bond with a normal man could compare?”

I blinked and tried not to show my thoughts. To say that no man could compare to the closeness shared with one’s brother . . . Could she not see that these should be different types of love? “I’ve felt something similar in bed with a man, though. I could see into his mind, sense his wants, and tell him mine.”

“And yet he could not see into yours. Not the same, is it? It shows the man for the basic creature he is. A woman cannot respect or lust for a man so easy to control. It goes against our nature. We need an equal.” She nodded at her own words. “Have you had sex with Maerlin yet?”

My face flushed. “No.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Close, though? Close enough to know it was going to be unlike any other joining. Never mind that he’s barely human, you can sense that it will be sex that turns you inside out and makes you beg for more.”

My loins throbbed and swelled at the thought and I shut my eyes as if to deny it.

Tanwen laughed. “You are Phanne!”

I shrugged sheepishly and opened my eyes. “I do love a good cock.”

Tanwen howled.

This lusting that had started for Maerlin, it was only tied to our shared talents, surely. It had nothing to do with him as a person. He was too warped, too cold to love me, or me him.

“There’s no sating our appetites,” Tanwen said. “Our curse, and our blessing.”

“Maerlin told me that you could teach me to see into the minds of past lovers.”

She touched her chest in surprise, her mouth going round. “You don’t know how? You mean you’ve been having sex just for the fun of it?”

I shrugged.

“Nimia, Nimia, Nimia.” She shook her head and sighed. “What a waste. It’s a very good thing you’ve come to us; you’ve got to put all that man-seed to use.”

“Maerlin doesn’t know how to do it and can’t teach me; I guess it doesn’t work for a man.”

“It’s the man’s seed inside your womb that does it. It becomes a part of you. So much so that I’ve even heard of Phanne women giving birth to children who look like a lover they had years earlier, instead of their present man.”

I imagined giving birth to a child who bore the face of Sygarius, and felt my stomach turn. It would be a ghost of the past coming back to haunt me. “Then you’re never free of your old lovers!” I said in horror.

“And they’re never free of you—which is the great gift of Phanne women. The more men you sleep with, from the farthest reaches of the world, the more eyes you have, the more ears. If you could sleep with men of high enough power, just think! The secrets you would know, the fates you could change. Sleep with a general, and forever have access to his battle strategies. Sleep with a king, and know whether he planned to betray a treaty or wage war on a friend. Even a soldier or trader or merchant knows information that someone, somewhere, would pay good coin for.”

I looked around the wealth-filled room in speculation.

Tanwen crossed her arms over her belly, looking pleased with herself. “You didn’t think this all came from fucking, did you? What a lot of work that would be.”

“I thought the acolytes took on that duty.”

She snorted. “The acolytes are for the lower ranks, and as far as that goes, they just manage to earn their keep. I try to teach them to anticipate a man’s wants and secret wishes, but they’re not Phanne. They don’t have an instinct for creative sex.”

“I imagine they’re mostly poor girls, with nowhere else to go. This can’t have been their first choice of a way to live.”

“Outcasts, victims of evil men, horny girls who got into trouble, widows, escaped slaves.” Tanwen shrugged. “Each one has her tale of woe, but they’re safe here, and they know they’re not common prostitutes. I see you looking at me like I’m spouting nonsense, but it’s true. They’re acolytes, serving powers beyond their understanding. Each sexual act is part of a ritual; it’s a form of worship. They know that their participation in the banquets matters.”

“How so?”

“For the prophecies, of course.”

I raised a brow in question.

“You’ll see, tomorrow night. A group of Britons are coming, a dozen or so men. One of them is getting married soon, and this trip is their daring celebration of his last days of freedom.” She rolled her eyes. “They think they’re so wild, so naughty. I was hoping you’d take part.”

My first instinct was to protest. Twelve strange, drunk men intent on taking every woman within reach, believing they had paid for the right to do so? I’d be too vulnerable. If Tanwen had plans that boded me no good, she might choose that time to act.

“We’ll find a comely boy with a nice thick cock and use him to teach you how to contact a former lover. It’s good to start with someone whose seed is fresh, and his mind close at hand.”

“A thick cock, you say?” I said, and gave a comic leer to hide my anxiety. I tried to persuade myself that if I only had to deal with one of these Britons, maybe there wouldn’t be so much danger. I could keep control of myself, and him. If Tanwen intended to lay a trap for me, better to spring it while I was expecting it, than to be taken unawares.

“Thick as you want it. Though I can’t guarantee that ‘comely’ will be paired with ‘thick.’ ”

“Comely is as comely does,” I said. “And I’ll make sure he comes the way I want him to.” I was glad Terix wasn’t here to scold me, and say that I was more intrigued by the promise of riding a new mentula than by learning how to contact ex-lovers.

Tanwen grinned and rubbed her hands together, a gleam in her eye. “I am so looking forward to this. Nothing will be the same afterward. Nothing.” She saw me staring and laughed, slapping me lightly on the knee. “For you, I mean. Same old cocks with their small village stories, for me.”

“Are the men from Fort Seiont?” It was the closest town I knew of.

She waved her hand toward the east. “Farther inland. The reputation of my college of delights has reached all the way to Londinium, although tomorrow’s leading old boar, Druce, grunts around a den much closer to us. It’s one of his sons who is getting married.”

Druce! The man Maerlin had said was at odds with Ambrosius Aurelianus’s plans for an all-Briton alliance. It had been while passing through Druce’s lands that Maerlin had killed the robbers.

This banquet had seemed risky.

Now it had the potential to be deadly.

“Do you know him?” she asked, examining my face. “You look worried.”

“Never seen him.” I forced a smile, and gestured at my clothes. “I’m thinking what a mess I look. I have no gowns suited to a banquet.”

“It’s not really a banquet, Nimia.”

“I have no gowns suited for that, either.”

“I’ve never known them to be needed.” She laughed at her own joke. “Though a meal always tastes better when it’s presented prettily, doesn’t it? We’ll see what we can find to serve you up in.”

“I thought I was to be the diner, not the meal.” I stuck out my lower lip. “You promised me fresh cock.”

Tanwen hooted and I laughed along with her, hoping that she’d forget the look on my face when I heard Druce’s name.