Maybe he was just feeling lonely because of the loss of Calandria. On the other hand, maybe he had found a part of himself here that he'd never known he was missing. It hurt to think that, as an offworlder, he no longer had a right to be here. The Winds would tolerate no tourists on Ventus.

"It's too bad there's these two positions," said Marya with a sigh. "If one of them were to be taken, my decision would be so much easier to make."

"Hmm?" Axel looked up. What was she getting at?

"I've been speaking to the diplomatic corps," she said. "Apparently you have a criminal record as long as my arm, and there's a thousand laws prohibiting people like you from holding a diplomatic position."

"Yeah," he said with a shake of his head. "I always did have a problem with big government."

"On the other hand," continued Marya with a wicked smile, "the Winds trust you. So does Choronzon, who has considerable pull with the Archipelago now that 3340's been defeated."

"What are you getting at?"

She sighed. "Axel, I'd love to take the Ventus posting. But I'd love to spend some time on Earth more. And I just can't think of anyone from my Institute who's got the experience or... streetwise nature, to take the post here."

"Are you offering me a job?" he asked incredulously.

"Me?" She pointed at herself. "Gods no, I don't have the authority. No, the Winds have asked for you. The diplomats are turning blue in the face over this, but they want to make the Winds happy..."

The ship shook slightly with takeoff. They had come to a lounge, and Axel found he needed to sit down.

Until this moment he had believed he would never set foot on Ventus again. He stared at Marya, stunned. "Well," he managed at last, "I guess it was a good idea to save you from the swans after all."

She laughed. "Then you accept?"

He rose and went to a viewscreen that was tuned to an outside view.

Ventus lay below, a vessel of light. Axel gazed down at the amber, green and white of Iapysian desert as it became one with the curve of the planet.

Calandria was gone; so, it seemed, was the rest of his past.

"I accept," he said.

The White Wind squinted at the glare and noise as the starship rose and vanished behind the clouds. Well, the moment had passed, and she had not shown herself to Axel. She would probably never know whether she had stayed hidden because of shame, or because she didn't want to have to explain herself to him.

She rolled over in the soft snow. The maelstrom she had fallen into had spared her, as she'd known it would. The Winds were efficient, they would not let her die needlessly. Now, though, they had no use for her, and she was her own creature at last.

It was perhaps the first time in her life, either as Calandria May or as the White Wind, that she really felt free. In the final analysis, it was this that she hadn't wanted to tell Axel. How could he understand that she had never been happy as a human in the first place? 3340 had been a seductive enemy; in fighting him she had fought that part of herself, successfully for a while. Here on Ventus, she had lost to it—and she was happy that she had.

She spotted a wildflower. It poked up bravely through the snow, and in the wan daylight it was like a little blue jewel, begemmed with beads of water and surrounded by crystals of ice. The White Wind crept up and lost herself in the contemplation of it. In her mind was a song, and the song was endless: all of Ventus sang a hymn of beauty and truth, and she was a part of that now. High above the sky she knew the Diadem swans were dancing, and they would dance forever.

She stared at the little flower until the tears in her own eyes made her shake her head and walk away.

A cold winter rain descended on the valley below the Titans' Gates. The flood had long since subsided, and remnants of the army now worked to make a new road across the blasted landscape. Of the forest that had once stood there, not a single twig remained; in their zeal to destroy 3340, the Winds had reduced everything in the flood down to its constituent molecules. Where pines had towered over needle-strewn loam, now there was only grey rock and a fine, black ash that shifted uneasily in the breeze.

High on the mountainside, a lone figure paused at a narrow window on the northernmost facade of the monastery. Here, where the ledge on the North Gate narrowed and vanished, the monks had long ago built a precarious, wedge-shaped tower that clung to every available contour of the mountain. The window looked out from this tower's furthest point, with nothing but a six hundred meter fall beneath it.

Galas turned from the window to inspect her new quarters. There were three rooms, all walled and floored in granite. Her new bed chamber was triangular, with a single slotted window. The room she stood in now was larger, and the third was larger still. Each had a fireplace, where some of the last of the available wood was crackling now. Generations of abbots had lived and died in these small rooms.

"Are they adequate for you?" asked the present abbot.

She smiled at him. "They were for you. Why shouldn't they be for me? —But are you sure you're willing to give them up?"

He shrugged. "Everywhere is holy now, your highness. We have no reason to stay here any longer."

Galas walked to a window and looked out. The pebbled glass gave a distorted view of the devastated valley below, and beyond it the desert of Iapysia, across which she had fled only days ago.

"Am I going to freeze once the wood runs out?"

He laughed. "I didn't. But I'm sure if you ask the rooms nicely, they will be warm in the future."

"Yes, of course." So simple, yet impossible to conceive.

She stood there, smiling at the possibilities in these three little rooms. After a while she heard the abbot cough politely and move to the door.

"Oh, thank you," she said before he could escape. "You don't know what this means to me."

He cocked his head at her and smiled. He looked years younger than the first time she had met him, over a decade ago. "May I ask?" he said hesitantly. "What does it mean? For you to stay here, that is?"

She laughed. "Peace and privacy, two things I have never had in my whole life. You should know that yourself, abbot; no one will make the trek up here lightly. I am negotiating with the vagabond moons to exclude these peaks from the tourist trade they are planning. Only those who really wish to speak to me will come—which excludes every courtier and most of the nobles of my former court. Parliament is cowed, now that the army has spread its tales. They call me the Queen of Diadem now, and far be it for me to disillusion them. —They'll all learn soon enough that their powers in this new world are equal to mine.

"I'll wait out the winter here. I have no stomach for travel right now. And come spring, I'll find a little cottage in a small town somewhere, and settle down quietly—with a new name, I think."

"Then you have no more wish to rule? The country needs you now more than ever."

She shook her head. "I've been crushed under the weight of power all my life. I think I'm going to enjoy missing it." She laughed at the lightness with which she dismissed royal power. Every moment was a surprise, these days. She hoped that feeling would never end.

"It seems that we have all been given new lives," said the abbot. "I wish you well in yours, Galas." The abbot bowed, and stepped backward out of the room.

Galas returned to examining her new realm. Hmm. Where to start? These rooms might be small, but she was happy to have them. She felt she deserved no more, after letting her kingdom fall into civil war. She had dared much, and lost it all; but she had never dared nor lost as much as the people she commanded, and knowing this humbled her.