But that assumed reaver ships were just hanging around, patrolling frequently. In fact, lookouts had seen only two distant sails in all the days since their maroonment. It would take a major coincidence for pirates to show just when the raft set forth.

Unless they were warned, somehow.

Maia found the whole situation ridiculous on the face of it.

Why would they intern a bunch of experienced sailors on an island without supervision? They'd have to know we'd try escaping. Try to get help. Alert the police.

Naroin's sullen mutterings after the crucial vote had set Maia on the path. There had to be a spy among them! Someone who would guide the inevitable escape attempt in ways that made it more vulnerable, easier to thwart. And, especially, someone well positioned to warn the pirates in time to prepare an ambush.

What's their plan? I wonder. To capture those on the raft and bring them back? The failure would surely cause morale to plummet, and hamper subsequent attempts.

But that won't guarantee against other tries. They must mean to transfer any escapees to a more secure prison, like where they took Renna and the rads.

But no. If that were the case, why not put the sailors there in the first place?

Coldly, Maia knew but one logical answer. As ruthless as they seemed after the fight, breaking the Code of Combat and all, they couldn't go so far as deliberately killing captives. Not with so many witnesses. The men of the Reckless. Renna. Not even all of the reavers' own crew could be trusted with a secret like that.

But to take care of things later on? Use a small ship, manned by only the most trusted. Come upon a raft, wallowing and helpless. No need even to fight. Just fling some rocks. Gone without a trace. Too bad …

Maia's anger seethed, evaporating all lingering traces of alky high. Lying as if asleep, she watched through slitted eyes the dark lump that was Inanna, waiting for the lump to move.

It might have been better, safer, to check out her suspicions in a subtler way, by going to bed when everyone else did, and then crawling off behind a tree to keep watch. But that could have taken half the night. Maia had no great faith in her attention span, or ability to be certain of not drifting off. What if it was hours and hours? What if she was wrong?

Better to flush the spy out early. Maia had decided to make it seem as if she intended to stay up all night long. An irksome inconvenience, perhaps causing the reaver agent to feel panicky. Speed up the spy's subjective clock. Make her act before she might have otherwise.

And it worked. Now Maia had a target to watch. Her concentration was helped no end by knowing she was right.

The dark blur didn't move, though. Time seemed to pass with geologic slowness. More seconds, minutes, crawled by. Her eyes grew scratchy from staring at barely perceivable contrasts in blackness. She took to closing them one at a time. The patch of shadow remained rock-still.

Smoke from the smoldering coals drifted toward her. Maia was forced to shut her eyelids longer, to keep them from drying out.

Panic touched her when they reopened. Sometime in the last . . . who knew how long . . . she might have strayed — even dozed! She stared, trying to detect any change on the far side of the camp, and felt a growing uncertainty. Perhaps it wasn't that faint blob she was supposed to be watching, after all. Maybe it was another one. She had drifted and now her target was gone. Oh, if only there were a moon, tonight!

If only I'd found whatever she plans to signal with. That had been Maia's ulterior reason for performing circuit after circuit of the island, ostensibly studying the hourly tides. She had poked her head under logs and into rocky crannies all over the perimeter. Unfortunately, whatever lay hidden had stayed that way, and now she must decide. To wait a little longer? Or try moving into the woods and begin searching for someone who might already have a growing head start?

Damn. No one could be this patient. She has to be gone by now.

Well, here goes …

Maia was about to push aside the blanket, but then abruptly stopped when the shadow moved! There was a faint sound, much softer than young Brod's stentorian snoring. Maia stared raptly as a blurred form unfolded vertically, then slowly began moving off. At one point, a patch of stars were occulted by something with the general outline of a stocky woman.

Now. As silently as possible, Maia threw off the blanket and rolled over. She took from beneath her bedroll the things she had prepared earlier. A stave thickly wrapped at one end with bone-dry vines. A stone knife. The cup containing a warm, barely glowing ember. Following a carefully memorized path, she hurried quietly into the forest, to a chosen station, where she stopped and listened.

Over there, to the east! Pebbles crunched and twigs broke, faintly at first, but with growing carelessness as distance fell between the spy and the campsite. Maia forced herself to pause a little longer, verifying that the woman didn't stop at intervals, listening for pursuit.

There were no lapses. Excellent. Cautious to make as little noise as possible, with eyes peeled for dry sticks on the forest floor, Maia started to follow. The trail led deeper into the woods, explaining why her surveys on the bluffs had found nothing. It had been reasonable to hope the signaling device was kept where a flasher or lantern might be seen from another island. But Inanna was clearly too cagey to leave things where they might be discovered by chance.

Maia's foot came down on something parched and crackly, whose plaint at being crushed seemed loud enough to wake Persephone, in Hades. She stopped dead still, trying to listen, but was hampered by the adrenaline pounding of her heart. After a long pause, at last Maia heard the soft sound of footsteps resume, moving off ahead of her. Something lit only by starlight briefly cut across a lattice of trees, disturbing their symmetry. She resumed the pursuit, wariness redoubled.

That was fortunate. As clouds thickened and darkness fell even deeper, it was a faint odor that stopped her short again. A change in the flow of air, of wind. Her quarry's footsteps took a sudden veer leftward, and Maia abruptly realized why.

Straight ahead, in the direction she had just been moving, a thick cluster of stars briefly emerged, casting a thousand gleaming reflections from a face of sheer concavity. The crater — far more intimidating than it had seemed by day. The glass-lined precipice yawned not meters away, like the jaws of some mighty, ancient thing, hungry for a midnight snack. Maia swallowed hard. She turned to the left and continued, watching the ground more closely than ever. Fortunately, the trail soon receded from the terrible pit. Some distance onward, there came a faint sound, like a scraping of stone against stone. Maia paused, heard it repeat. Then she waited some more.

Nothing. Silence. Just the wind and forest. Grimly, in case it was a trap, Maia extended her frozen stillness for another count of sixty. At last, she resumed her forward stalk, concentrating to keep a bearing toward that final, grating sound. A break in the cloud cover, near the horizon, showed a corner of the constellation Cyclist. She used it for reference while skirting trees and other obstacles, until finally concluding that something had to be wrong.

I must've gone too far. Or have I?

She could not see or hear anyone. The idea of an ambush was not to be dismissed.

Two more steps forward and her feet left loam. They seemed to scuff a flat, sandy surface, scored at regular intervals by fine grooves. Peering about, Maia realized she stood amid massive, blocky forms, in a clearing where not even saplings grew. She reached out to the nearest pile of weathered stone. Worked stone with eroded, right angles. It was one of many ruins peppering the island plateau. Few places were better suited for springing a trap.