An aircraft.

"Relax, virgie," Tizbe Beller told Maia as they trussed her into a padded seat. "Might as well enjoy the view. Not many varlings like you ever get to fly."

Journal of the Peripatetic Vessel

CYDONIA –626 Stratos Mission:

Arrival + 53.755 Ms

I have watched and listened ever since the explosion. Ever since receiving warning of Renna's desperate gamble. Official Stratoin agencies say different, often contradictory things, and all appears in chaos, down below. Yet, at least one thing has been achieved. The fighting has stopped. With the irritant removed, warlike preparations among the factions have subsided, for now.

Was Renna right? Was a sacrifice necessary?

Will it suffice?

It was urgent not to disrupt Stratos any more than we already have. Yet, sometimes duty requires of us more than we can bear.

I, too, must do my duty. Soon.

27

After the initial tussle, it proved Maia's most comfortable abduction, by far. Tied down, with no option for resistance, she made the best of things by gazing through a double-paned window at the vastness of Landing Continent. Soon, even her headache went away.

Luminous yellow and pale green farmlands stretched as far as the eye could see. These were combed by long fingers of darker forest, interlaced to leave migration corridors for native creatures, from the coast all the way to mist-shrouded mountains that began to loom in the north. Small towns and castlelike clanhold manors appeared at periodic intervals, squatting like spiders amid spoked roads and surrounding hamlets. Strings of lakes were punctuated by regularly spaced fish farms that shone glancing sunlight into Maia's eyes.

Stubby barges with gray sails leisurely plied the rivers and canals, while throngs of quick, flittering mere-dragons flapped in formations of two hundred or more, warily skirting farms and habitations on their way to fallow rooting grounds. Lumbering heptoids wallowed through the fens and shallows, their broad back-fans turned to radiate the heat of the day. And then there were the floaters — zoors and their lesser cousins — bobbing in the breeze, tethered like gay balloons to the treetops where they grazed.

Maia had traveled far in recent months, but now she realized that one can only gain true perspective from above. Stratos was bigger than she had ever imagined. In all directions were signs of humanity in rustic codominion with nature. Renna said humans often turn whole worlds into deserts, through shortsightedness. That's one trap we avoided. No one could accuse Lysos, or Stratoin clans, of thinking short-term.

But Renna also hinted there are other ways to do it, without giving up so much.

Maia watched the pilot touch switches and check small indicator screens as the plane entered a gentle bank and turned west well short of the mountains. The aircraft interior was a finely wrought mix of handcrafted wood panels and furnishings, accoutered with a compact array of instruments. If she had been in friendly company, Maia might have frothed with questions. Her bound hands were adequate reminder, however. So she kept silent, mildly ignoring Tizbe and yawning when the young Beller tried for the fourth time to initiate conversation. The implication couldn't be missed. She had escaped Tizbe twice before, bringing ruin to her plans, and thought nothing of doing so again. Maia sensed the attitude upset the Beller clone.

I'm learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.

At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.

The pilot warned her passengers of turbulent air. Soon the plane was bouncing, pitching, and yawing in abrupt jerks. Tizbe and her ruffians blanched, turning discolored shades, which Maia enjoyed watching. She helped worsen the symptoms by staring at the Beller courier like a specimen of unpleasant, lower-order life. Tizbe cursed with flecked lips, and Maia laughed, unsparing in her scorn. Curiously, the tossing didn't seem to affect her like the others. Even the pilot looked a bit ragged, by the time they finally regained settled air. The storm aboard the Wotan was much worse, Maia recalled.

Then a golden light seized her attention, causing her to squint in wonder at what lay beyond the forward windscreen. A shimmering reflection, coming from a spacious, dimpled territory surrounding and covering a cluster of hills at the intersection of three broad ribbons of river.

Caria, she realized. Maia watched the capital city glide nearer, its skirts yellow with the tiles of countless roofs, its tiara of white stone girdling the famed acropolis plateau. Atop that eminence, twin basilicas swam into view beyond measure. Any schoolgirl knew the pillars on sight, the Universal Library on one side and on the other, the Great Temple dedicated to guiding worldwide reverence of Stratos Mother. All of her life, Maia had heard women speak of pilgrimages to Caria, of venerating in solemn awe the planetary spirit — and her apostles, the Founders — under that vast iridescent cupola on the right, with its giant dragon icon cast in silver and gold. The other palace, built to the same glorious scale, was unadorned and hardly ever mentioned. Yet it became Maia's focus as the aircraft circled toward a field, south of the city.

Lysos never would have built the Library co-equal to the Temple if she intended a seedy clubhouse for a few smug, savant clans.

She contemplated the grand edifice until descent removed it behind a nearby hill covered with middle-class clansteads. From that point until final landing, Maia concentrated on watching the pilot, if only to keep from helplessly worrying over her fate.

Her kidnappers installed her in a room with floral wallpaper and its own bath, unpretentiously elegant. A narrow balcony stepped down to an enclosed garden. A pair of stolid, servant-guards smiled at Maia, keeping her discreetly in sight at all times. They wore livery with fine piping on the shoulders and a gold-chased letter P, for the name of their employer-clan, she supposed.

Maia had expected to be taken to one of the pleasure houses operated by the Bellers, perhaps the very one where Renna had been abducted. From there, perhaps she would be sold to Tizbe's Perkinite clients, in revenge for what she'd done in Long Valley, months ago. This didn't look like a business establishment, however, nor did the hills near the rolling compound seem the kind of precinct where one found bordellos. Colorful silk banners flew from fairy turrets, and crenelated battlements rose above the tall, elderly groves of truly ancient estates. It was a neighborhood of noble clanholds, as far above Tizbe's hardworking family on the social ladder as the Bellers towered over Maia. Beyond the garden wall on one side, she often heard the strains of a string quartet, along with shouts of playing children, all laughing the same, syncopated trill. In the opposite direction, coming from a tower room whose lights remained on late into the night, there were recurrent sounds of anxious adult argument, the same voice taking on multiple roles.

After the landing, and Maia's first-ever ride in a motor car, she saw no more of Tizbe, or any other Beller. Nor did she particularly care. By now Maia realized she had become a pawn in power games played at the loftiest heights of Stratoin society. I ought to be flattered, she thought sardonically. That is, if I survive till equinox.

At her request, she was brought books to read. There was a treatise on the Game of Life, written three hundred years ago by an elderly savant who had spent several years with men, both at sea and as a special summertime guest in sanctuary, studying anthropological aspects of their endless tournaments. Maia found the account fascinating, though some of the author's pat conclusions about ritualistic sublimation seemed farfetched. More difficult to plow through was a detailed logical analysis of the game itself, written a century earlier by another scholar. The math was hard to follow, but it proved more orderly and satisfying than the books provided in Ursulaborg, by the Pinnipeds. Those had emphasized rules of thumb and winning technique over basic theory. It was a mental meal that left her hungry for more.