"Listen to what he's saying!" Zaranda challenged the crowd. "What does this government intend for Tethyr that it need fear a people enabled to defend themselves?"

Enzo pounded the table and shouted for order. The crier grew almost apoplectic. City policemen seized Zaranda by the arms and hustled her from the hall.

"What are they planning to do," she cried, "that they know you'll resist if you can?"

The great bronze doors slammed shut on her words.

25

Through her barred window, Zaranda watched the blue planet Chandos, so near in its circuit about the sun that it showed not just a disk but a hint of roundness, rise up out of the east. Scarcely had it mounted the sky than the faint light of Anadia began to well up from the horizon. She thought of her observatory tower back home in Morninggold, wondered if she would ever watch the stars and playful planets from it again.

Blinking to keep back the tears, she said, "You seem concerned, Your Grace."

Seated at the table, the most recent of her steady stream of visitors raised his head sharply from his hand, like a man who's caught himself dozing off. "It is nothing, Zaranda Star. Or rather… but I cannot allow personal considerations to cloud my vision of duty to city and country."

"Which is to say the lord of the city pays too close attention to your daughter."

"Enough!" snapped Duke Hembreon, jumping to his feet with alacrity a younger man might envy. "I have taken pains to see that you are treated well, but you are still a prisoner. Do not presume too greatly upon my goodwill."

"Still a prisoner," Zaranda said, "and still charged with nothing."

Hembreon frowned. "As of today charges were formally levied against you in council. I have brought a bill of particulars." He held up a scroll tied with a purple ribbon.

"And why was I not present to answer those charges, as Zazesspurian law requires? I certainly didn't have any conflicting appointments."

He failed to meet her eye. "There were special considerations-extraordinary circumstances…"

"Just keep talking that way," Zaranda said mock-approvingly. "Well make a chaotic of you yet."

The old man's spine stiffened. "These are trying times. It is always easy to see which is the path of righteousness when one isn't actually called upon to make the choice."

"I appreciate that. But are you certain the path you want is the one marked, 'His Royal Majesty, Faneuil I'?"

"He stands for the rule of law. He stands for what Tethyr needs."

"Does he? I say he's unleashed disorder on Zazesspur. And it's due to get worse."

"On what do you base your reasoning, young woman?" He tried to sound sternly dismissive. He didn't quite make it.

Got you, you thin-lipped old pillar of rectitude, she thought. Doubt was her ally. "He wants you to go on and declare him king. Yet various of your fellow councilors already have second thoughts about the wisdom of acclaiming him lord of Zazesspur. Hell perceive that, or Armenides will. He needs some new crisis to catapult him onto the throne, and knows it."

"Crisis?" The duke was too polite to sneer.

"Crisis. I think Zazesspur's due for a dose of civil disorder, sooner rather than later. Something that will make the people cry out for a strong hand to restore order." She tipped her head to the side and tapped one finger against her cheek. "I think he'll use Ravenak's ruffians. They're like boulders balanced precariously on the very brink of a precipice, wanting only the tiniest zephyr to bring the whole mountainside crashing down."

"Preposterous!"

"You think so? Try this thought on for size: did anyone encounter a single darkling on Zazesspur's streets before Hardisty began his climb?"

"Woman, I will not stand to hear our new lord's name besmirched. Good evening. Officer of the watch, I wish to be let out at once!"

Immediately bolts began to slide back on the far side of the door. "All I ask," Zaranda said, "is that you remember what I told you."

He gave her a lambent-eyed look of disgust and went out.

Beneath her the bed turned to viscous blackness; without chance to react, she was swallowed up. And then she was falling, endlessly, endlessly-but not endlessly enough. Below her, vanishingly small but somehow clear, a shadowed shape writhed, greater black against blackness.

No matter how you fight it, no matter what you do, you will come to Me, that hated voice hissed. Why struggle against the inevitable? You might spare yourself no little pain.

Still she fell. As she fell, she seemed to glimpse scenes flashing past: a seething caldron whose contents she did not dare examine; foul creatures opening a grate that led to the streets from the sewers beneath the city; a procession of wailing children, yoked together neck to neck, shuffling forward toward a black galley lolling at anchor in some vast flooded cavern… And always the blackness below, yearning for her, reaching for her with tentacles of black…

She was dashed into consciousness as if by a plunge into icy water. For a moment she lay gasping, so coated in sweat that she seemed in imminent danger of slip ping off the bed onto the floor. Then her ears resolved the sounds that had brought her out of sleep.

Bells. And a faint murmur, as of many distant voices raised in anger.

She rose and walked to the window. No planets were visible, and the moon and its bright attendants were absent. But by pressing her face hard against one wall and staring as far to one side of the window as she could, she could see orange light staining the sky, as if Selune were trying to rise in the south.

Zazesspur was burning.

Zaranda sat back onto the sill. The morning sun lay warm on her back, despite being filtered by overcast. The smell of rain, past and future, came through the open window.

"I'm sorry," she said, "about your shop, and most of all, about your father."

Simonne Soiltender – "White Eyebrow" had been her father's nickname – sat on Zaranda's stool looking very small. She wore a leather jerkin over a saffron blouse and sand-colored hose. Her voluminous black hair was done up in a bun and covered by a bandanna whose gaiety clashed with her demeanor.

"You of all folk are the last who owe apology," she said. She was turning her toothed-wheel holy sign of Gond over and over in strong, capable fingers. It was finely milled of steel, which the god held the noblest of metals, preferring its utility to the showiness of silver, platinum, or gold. "You warned him time and again."

"And yet I might have helped precipitate his murder, by facing down those ravers in his shop last year."

"Just as likely you forestalled it. Such folk want victims, not confrontation; it's weakness that arouses their bloodlust. My father's confirmed passivity marked him as a target. Once we mustered opposition, ill-armed and untrained as it was, the rioters fell back smartly enough."

She let the medallion drop and buried her face in her bands. Tears leaked between the fingers. "Oh, Father, Father. If only I'd had the strength to disobey you before it was too late!"

Zaranda came to her and laid an arm around shaking shoulders. "Grieve, for you must. But don't burden your soul with regrets. You won't serve your father's memory by crippling yourself with might-have-beens."

The priestess clung to Zaranda, and her slight but sturdy frame was racked by great, silent sobs. Zaranda gently stroked her friend's head. Her blue-gray eyes leaked a few tears of their own, but silently; she would do her grieving for White Eyebrow later, if she were still alive.

At last the tremors dwindled, and Simonne pulled away. "You're right," she said. "Gond teaches us ever to took to the future."