Roshnani looked up from her embroidery when Abivard stepped into the doorway. The smile she gave him reminded him of the one he had seen in the scrying bowl not long before. "What brings you here at this hour of the day?" she asked.

Her smile grew mischievous as she thought of the obvious answer, then faded when she got a better look at his face. "Not that, surely."

"No, not that." Abivard turned to the serving woman who hovered behind him.

"Fetch my lady mother and all my wives to this chamber at once. I know the hour is yet early, but I will have no excuses. Tell them as much."

"Just as you say, lord." The serving woman bobbed her head and hurried away. She knew something was wrong, but not what.

The same held for Roshnani. "What is it, husband of mine?" she asked. Now her voice held worry.

"Just wait," Abivard answered. "I'll tell the tale once for everyone."

Roshnani's chamber quickly grew crowded. Burzoe looked a question at her son as she came in, but he said nothing to her, either. Some of his wives grumbled at being so abruptly summoned from whatever they were doing, others because they had had no chance to gown themselves and apply their cosmetics. Most, though, simply sounded curious. A couple of Abivard's half sisters peered in from the corridor, also wondering what was going on.

Abivard brought the flat of his hand down onto the chest of drawers. The bang cut through the women's chatter and brought all eyes to him. He pulled out the two pieces of the curse tablet, held them high so everyone could see them. Quietly he asked, "Do you know what this is?"

Utter silence answered him, but the women's eyes spoke for them. Yes, they knew. Abivard dropped the pieces of lead onto the chest. They did not ring sweetly when they hit, as silver would have. The sound was flat, sullen.

He pushed a corner of the chest of drawers away from the wall and bent down to scoop up the image that went with the tablet. It was no longer than the last two joints of his middle finger, easy to conceal in the palm of a hand. He held it up, too. Someone-he didn't see who-gasped. Abivard removed the four cords that bound the image. Then he let it fall to the top of the chest. It broke in pieces.

He took out one of the black pebbles. He dropped it not onto the chest but onto the floor: the forms here had to be observed precisely. In a voice with no expression whatever in it, he said, "Ardini, I divorce you."

A sigh ran through the women, like wind through the branches of an almond grove. Ardini jerked as if he had stuck a sword in her. "Me!" she screeched.

"I didn't do anything. This is Roshnani's room, not mine. If anyone's been in your bedchamber enough to try bewitching you, lord, she's the one, not me. You never want the rest of us, women who've been here for years. It's not right, it's not natural-"

"In a scrying bowl, I saw you hide the image here," he said, and dropped the second pebble. "Ardini, I divorce you."

"No, it wasn't me. It was somebody else. By the God I swear it. She-"

"Don't make your troubles in the next world worse by swearing a false oath." Formal and emotionless as a soldier making his report, Abivard told exactly what he had seen in the still water.

The women sighed again, all but Ardini. Roshnani said, "Yes, I remember that day. I was working on a bird with the bronze-brown thread."

"No, it's a lie. I didn't do it." Ardini's head twisted back and forth. Like so many people, she had figured out what her scheme's success would bring, but she had never stopped to think what would happen if she failed. Her voice sank to a whisper: "I didn't mean any harm." It might even have been true.

Abivard dropped the third pebble. "Ardini, I divorce you." It was done. With the fall of the third pebble, with the third repetition before witnesses of the formula of divorce, his marriage to her was dissolved. Ardini began to wail. Abivard clenched his jaw tight. Casting loose even a wife who had betrayed him was wrenchingly hard. So far as he knew, Godarz had never had to divorce one of his women, and so had left him no good advice on how to do it. He didn't think there could be any easy way.

"Please-" Ardini cried. She stood alone; all the other women had invisibly contrived to take a step away from her.

"I would be within my rights if I sent you forth from the women's quarters, from this stronghold, from this domain, naked and barefoot," Abivard said. "I will not do that. Take what you wear, take from your chamber whatever you can carry in your two hands, and be gone from here. The God grant we never see each other again."

Burzoe said, "If you let her go back into her chamber, son, send someone with her, to make sure she tries no more magic against you."

"Yes, that would be wise, wouldn't it?" Abivard bowed to his mother. "Would you please do that for me?" Burzoe nodded.

Ardini began screaming curses. Tears ran down her face, cutting through paint like streams of rainwater over dusty ground. "You cast me out at your peril," she cried.

"I keep you here at my peril," Abivard answered. "Go now and take what you would, or I will send you away as law and custom allow."

He thought that would shut Ardini up, and it did. She cared more for herself than anything else. Still weeping, she left Roshnani's room, Burzoe with her to keep her from working mischief.

Roshnani waited until the other wives, several of them loudly proclaiming undying loyalty to Abivard, had left her chamber. While they, Abivard's half sisters, and the serving women exclaimed in the hallway over the scandal, she told him, "Husband, I thank you for not thinking I set that image when you saw it. I know something of scrying; sometimes I can even make it work myself-"

"Can you?" Abivard said, interested. So much he still did not know about this young woman who had become his wife…

"Yes, though far from always. In any case, I know you would first have looked to find the image. When you saw it behind that chest, it would have been easy for you to look no farther and cast me out with the three black pebbles."

Abivard did not tell her how close he had come to doing just that. She thought better of him because he hadn't, and that was what he wanted. He said, "Tanshar-the town fortune-teller and scryer-said love magic was never sure to work, because it depended on passion. And my passion seems to have turned long since away from Ardini."

Roshnani cast down her eyes at that, but her face glowed. "I'm very glad it has," she said quietly.

"So am I." Abivard sighed. "And by now, I think Ardini has had enough time to gather whatever she would, so I shall have the delightful task of escorting her out of the women's quarters and the stronghold and ordering her out of the domain. By the God, I wish she could have been content here."

"Beware lest she try to stab you or some such," Roshnani said.

"She wouldn't-" Abivard stopped. He would never have done anything so foolish. But Ardini might indeed think that, with her life ruined, she had nothing to lose. "I'll be careful," he promised Roshnani.

The women parted before him as he strode down the hall to Ardini's chamber. She looked up from the bulging knapsack she had filled. She wasn't crying any more; such hatred filled her face that Abivard almost made a sign to avert the evil eye. He covered his brief alarm with brusqueness, jerking a thumb toward the doorway that led out of the women's quarters.

Muttering under her breath, Ardini walked up the hall toward the bedchamber where she had left the lead tablet. Abivard thanked the God it was the last time she would ever go there. He did his best not to listen to whatever she was saying, for fear he would have to take formal notice of it.