"I’m a busy person," said Osfik without preamble. "I’m sure you can appreciate that. Do me the courtesy, therefore, of dispensing with protocols. I accept that we have bowed at each other, that we’ve acknowledged how we cast shadows in each other’s presence, that you wouldn’t have bothered me if it wasn’t important, and so on. Now, quickly and precisely, Nav-Mokleb, what do you want?"

Mokleb felt off balance, as though someone had lifted her tail and she was tipping forward. Niceties were always observed; every encounter was an intricate social dance. She was not quite prepared for this, and, on the whole, she thought she didn’t like it. Nevertheless: "I’ve but one question, Osfik: is there such a thing as a purple wingfinger?"

Osfik looked up, nictitating membranes fluttering. "This is the Emperor’s business, you said?"

"Indirectly. His Luminance has asked me to treat a member of his staff. I’m a healer of sorts."

"Oh. I know who you are, Mokleb. You’ve taken more than daytenths of my time, what with these books and tracts you’ve published. The study of the mind always fit neatly under philosophy before, but I could not see putting your works on the same shelf as those of Dolgar or Spooltar — no offense; quality is not the issue. Content is. You treat the study of the mind in a more medical matter."

Mokleb was surprised that her work had attracted Osfik’s attention. "I don’t wish to add to the burden I’ve already created for you. I simply need to know whether there is any species of wingfinger with purple wings."

"You’re in luck," said Osfik. "I’ve got most of the books on wingfingers right here. Since Toroca discovered those unknown wingringer forms on the southern ice cap, I’ve been trying to fit them into the Sequence." She snorted briefly. "He’s another who has made my life difficult. His evolutionary model has required a complete reordering of the sequence of life."

Osfik rummaged around until she found a large, square book bound in leather. "Here it is. The Wingfingers of Land, a collection of paintings by Pal-Noltark." She handed the heavy volume to Mokleb. "Have a look. It’s not a great book; Noltark ordered it by geographic region when properly wingfingers are arranged by increasing maximal adult wingspan. Still, he boasts to have painted every species. If a purple one exists, it’ll be in there."

Mokleb began turning the stiff paper pages. There were more varieties of wingfinger than she’d ever imagined: some had pointy crests off the backs of their skulls, others did not, but all had wings supported on incredibly elongated fourth fingers, and all had fine hair covering most of their bodies. There were scarlet wingfingers, green wingfingers, copper wingfingers, white ones, black ones, ones with striped bodies and ones freckled with colored dots, but nowhere was there one that was purple. She closed the cover.

"Find what you were looking for?" asked Osfik.

"No — I mean, yes. I found that there is no such thing as a purple wingfinger."

Osfik nodded. "I never saw a purple wingfinger," she said, "and I never hope to see one, but I can tell you anyhow I’d rather see than be one." Then the old arbiter clicked her teeth. "Say, that’s good. I should write that down."

Mokleb thanked Osfik and left. The purple wingfinger was symbolic, obviously, of something that was troubling Afsan. But what? The sky was purple, of course, and some kinds of flowers were purple, too. Some shovelmouths and thunderbeasts had purple markings on their hides. The blue-black pigment used in hunting tattoos could look purple in certain light.

And what about wingfingers? Flying reptiles, they came in all sizes. They laid eggs. Some ate insects, some ate lizards, many kinds ate fish, and many more fed on carrion.

Purple.

Wingfinger.

Mokleb shook her head.

Novato had dreamed of flying before. Indeed, after a ride in one of her gliders, she often found herself feeling as though she were still soaring. But that sensation of flight had always been accompanied by a feeling of forward motion, of slicing through the air. Now, well, it was simply as if she were hovering, floating, a cloud.

And then she awoke, with a start, as her head banged against the lifeboat’s ceiling.

Banged against the ceiling…

Novato’s heart skipped a beat, and she scrunched her eyes tightly closed. She felt her whole body go rigid as she prepared to crash back to the floor. But that did not happen. Instead, her back touched the ceiling again, gently this time, like a piece of wood bobbing in a calm lake. She opened her eyes. At first she’d thought perhaps she’d been slammed against the roof by rapid deceleration, but in the light of the countless stars and eight visible moons she had no trouble making out the rungs of the tower’s ladder-like sides as they passed. They were going by at steady rate.

She was neither accelerating nor decelerating.

And yet she floated.

Floated!

She wasn’t completely weightless. She was drifting slowly downward, and her equipment still sat stolidly on the floor. Still, she now weighed so little that her tossing as she slept had been enough to lift her off the floor and send her drifting toward the ceiling.

It was a giddy sensation. Her arms were spread like loosely folded wings, her legs were bent gently at the knees, and she could feel her tail swaying behind her.

She’d been aboard the lifeboat for almost nine days now. The world below looked like a giant ball, filling most of her field of vision. About two-thirds of it was illuminated; the other third was in the darkness of night. Breathtaking as that sight was, even more spectacular was what was slowly becoming visible behind the world. Orange and yellow light spilled past the edges of the illuminated disk, and already she could see a hint of the vast colored bands of cloud.

The Face of God. The planet around which the Quintaglio moon orbited.

The lifeboat continued upward. As the sight of the world with a single equatorial landmass diminished, more of the Face of God beyond became visible. Her world looked now like a vast blue-green pupil in the center of a yellow eye. As time went by, she could see the two superimposed spheres — the Face and the Quintaglio moon — waxing and waning through phases in unison. When they were both full, as they were at high noon, the glare from the ring-shaped Face behind was so intense that Novato had trouble looking at it without her inner eyelids involuntarily sliding shut.

It was spectacular. When seen from the deck of a pilgrimage ship, the sight of the Face, with its roiling bands of cloud, its infinitely complex array of swirls and vortices and colored whirlpools, its vast majestic grandeur, was enough to induce an almost hypnotic state in a Quintaglio. But to see her own world, with its cottony clouds, its shimmering blue waters, and the endlessly convoluted shoreline of Land, and at the same time to also see beyond it the glory of the Face of God — that was almost too much beauty, too much wonder, for the mind to grasp. Novato found herself transfixed, mesmerized. If she hadn’t already been floating on air, she would be now.

Emperor Dy-Dybo was lying on his dayslab in his ruling room, hearing the appeal of a young Quintaglio who had been accused of theft. He couldn’t deny the crime, of course: his muzzle would betray his lies. Still, he sought clemency on the basis that what he had taken — spikefrill horn cores from the palace butchery, items often used in Lubalite ceremonies — would simply have been thrown out anyway. Penalty for theft was to have one’s hands amputated. This fellow’s lawyer contended that such an act would be cruel punishment, for the youth apparently had a flaw that would prevent the hands from regenerating. As proof, he offered his client’s left foot, which had only two toes; the third had been lost kilodays ago and had never regrown.