"You re not imagining it. One sect of priests in F'talezon says that that star was built; by their god, of course. It's always in the same spot, like the north star. We have lots of stories about it, no one knows for sure what it is. To me, it means I'm home."

Shkai'ra slung an arm around Megan's shoulders, feeling somehow set at arm's length. Home. The only one I've had is more than a year's journey away. She sighed. "Well, a whole town of witches ought to be interesting, at least." A glance at their wake: star-images tumbled in the broken water.

"I'm a very long way from home," she murmured. The constellations looked the same from the gaunt stone towers of her kindred's castle... How far away... oceans and mountains and rivers, cities and years? "It's cold," she said, pulling her arm away from Megan's shoulder, drawing her cloak about her.

The Zak looked up at her and her hand tightened on the spyglass. In searching for my own way home, for my own revenge, I've forgotten to think of my steel-sister. I've been assuming she'll stay. "If you want to, any home I have is yours, akribhan." She clamped the fear down under the locks and bars in her mind.

"Well, let's make your home city safe for you first, nia?" A sour chuckle. "Making Stonefort safe for me again would be more difficult; you'd have to kill all my relatives to do it." She pulled Megan closer, shivering slightly; went down on one knee to bring their faces on a level. Their eyes met for a long moment before they kissed; Megan's hands cupped the Kommanza's face, the razor nails resting with infinite delicacy in the angle of her jaw.

"Hmmp. Not so cold," Shkai'ra said, nuzzling into the thick black mass of her other's hair. "Home is where I choose, love: and I chose to be beside you. Haven't regretted it."Megan closed her eyes and leaned on the other's shoulder, then shivered and pulled away as she hadn't done for months.

Habiku, I'm going to kill you. She didn't see Shkai'ra's worried eyes.

Chapter Nine.

NYSNY TVER.

FIVE DAYS NORTH OF BRAHVNIKI.

TENTH IRON CYCLE FIFTEENTH DAY.

"Captain! Mateus!" Yvar Monkeyfist called before he set foot on the wooden dock; there was someone slung over his shoulder, wrapped in a old red satin coverlet faded to a dirty salmon pink.

The crowd along Nysny Tver's muddy main street ignored him.

They were Aeniri, or mostly, managing to make even the straggling little trade town seem crowded; they did not make way for him either, and the Zak dodged between their stolid, baggy-pantalooned height like an eel among salmon.

The Zak ducked under a horse's belly and its rider shouted.

The horse bucked, and she gathered the reins close as it squealed and half-reared, and Yvar was forgotten. His footsteps boomed on the oak planking of the dock.

The first mate had been speaking to the bosun, Agniya. Both turned to watch the sailor as he trotted toward them. They gave each other a single glance as they saw his face, strained and sweating and white under the rusty-black knitted sailor's cap, came to the gangway at a run. Yvar staggered up with one hand clutching the rope sideguard, the other looped about the body on his shoulder. It shifted bonelessly as they lifted it from him; Mateus wrinkled his nose at a heavy smell of mustiness, old sweat and a cheap herbal scent.

"Bosun, you don't know her." Yvar let Agniya take the weight, fell to his knees on the deck and panted. "Mat-First Mate, you'll need your kit." He raised his voice again. "Captain!"

Megan came up the ladder from the Zingas Vetri's narrow hold, with the supercargo's Arkan pen behind one ear and ink onher fingers. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the shrouded body; her face didn't alter, but suddenly the blades at her belt were more noticeable than the clerk's tool. "Yes, Yvar, what is it?"

"Captain, it's Katrana. Healheart." He stopped and swallowed, setting his jaw. "She was in the brothel, I've asked Mateus to get his kit."

She looked at the vaguely stirring pink bundle and her eyes went blank as slate. "In my cabin," she said and led the way.

Sova started guiltily as Megan opened the door in front of Yvar. "Sova, out," she said. "I'll see you later." The girl backed up, her hands behind her, her eyes big. She sidled around the table, out into the corridor, as Yvar edged around to lay his burden in the bunk.

Mateus came in with his bag, closing the door. Yvar stood back, his hands clenching and unclenching. "Katrana doesn't recognize me, or anyone," he said, tightly. "The madam gave her to me because I was Zak and she didn't want any of the other girls or boys touched by one of the witch-folk."

Megan sat on the edge of the bunk as Mateus gently pulled back the coverlet. She made a sound, wordless, less of an exclamation than a belly-deep grunt.

Kat was naked, bruised around the shoulders, but the worst was that her head turned aimlessly, blank eyes staring past the ceiling, her fingers picking at the raw skin on her knuckles.

When the coverlet pulled free she shifted to open her legs, raising her knees. A vague little smile appeared on her face and a trickle of saliva glistened at one corner of her mouth where red paint almost covered a lip sore. Her skin showed chalky pale against smeared face-paint and her hair had been cut and frizzled around her face, curls matted at the nape of her neck.

She smelled of the herbal perfume and burned dreamdust. She hummed an aimless little tune that wandered up and down and around, again and again and again.

"Kat," Megan called. "Katrana?" There was no answer.

"Katrana, you'll be all right."Mateus tried to get her attention and when he failed, began examining her. Megan stood up abruptly and turned her back, facing Yvar. He unclenched his jaw when she faced him and said, "They drugged her with Thall and Gods'Tears, maybe dust, to keep her docile, stunt her witch powers. The madam was quite proud of her. I paid to get her here but I didn't have enough to buy her outright."

"I'll see to it, Yv. Off with you."

"Aye, Captain." Megan put her hands flat on the table and looked down at them. "Mateus, when you're done, tell me how bad she is. I'll try to reach her mind, if she's strong enough."

"Aye, Captain."

"Zemelya," Megan called to the supercargo as she came on deck.

"Captain?"

"Talk to Yvar; I'm authorizing the purchase of a bondservant from the..."

Yvar looked up from a coil of rope. "The Bucking Mare, Captain."

"That's it. Debt bond; see to the cancellation." Her voice was calm, a little abstracted; she squinted slightly at the birds wheeling over the choppy blue-brown of the river, folding her hands in the wide cuffs of her cloak. A spot appeared on the dark-grey wool of the sleeves, then another; blood, where the razor steel of her fingernails was slitting the desensitized skin over her shackle scars.

Zemelya, whose gift was to sense emotions, shivered and looked after the Captain as she turned away from him; like a breath across the shoulders and neck. Like something stirring under dark water, under the rotting pilings of an old wharf-he shook himself. It's the cold, he thought.

Megan turned away from him, wanting to get away from thepressure of crew around her. Pressing, like a city crowd that touched and brushed at back and elbows, or a soft net muffling- Nobody was touching her, but they were there.

There was no place to be private on an arrowboat, except the cabin and Katrana was there. Shkai'ra was ashore with the boy.

No place I can be alone to think. Her skin felt tight enough to split, her head hurt as if there was some machine of steel and screws inside, driving bands out against the skull; the need to be alone was like the thirst she had felt in the slaver's hold in mid-Lannic, drifting in the doldrums with the water-butts dry.

Ten-Knife looked up from the after rail and growled as she passed, but didn't move.

She paced the deck, and though her step seemed as light as always, it rapped on the pine boards; she scarcely stopped to vault the sterncastle railing: Ran along the deck, out along the bowsprit to stand face into the wind with her hands on the forestay. The breeze was like ice on burning cheeks. Katrana was the first to treat me like something else than Captain's toy eleven years ago. "-here now, lassie. He's bad." She told me.

"But he'll hurt you less if you cry when he wants tears."

Megan looked up through the ragged ends of her dirty hair.

He hadn't cut her hair again after he bought her and it was growing out again. She hadn't felt clean in days and had stopped caring. "I don't cry." Her tone was flat; no inflection at all. Her hands curled and uncurled, flexing and restless, never still and always empty. He was careful never to allow knives.

Katrana, ship's healer, pulled at one of her own long brown braids, making the Aeniri hairbells chime, sat down beside her and pulled out a knife and a chunk to whittle on. "Well, pretend," she said quietly. "You're still alive and have decided to stay that way." Silence for a time, then... "You'll have to learn how to use one of these," she gestured with her knife. "Once you get too old for him." The older girl smiled at Megan, bitterness in the expression. "We get some time, I'll show you." She'd shown Megan the way to really handle a knife. In her hands the blades were like water or sparks jumping from grip to grip.

Katrana had held her the first time she cried real tears afterthe Arkan had raped her. She helped me stay sane.

And later, much later when Megan was fourteen. "Kat... it hurts... Koruuuh! Hurts..."

"Shush, Megan hush. Here're my hands. Breathe... one and two... breathe deep and push."

"No... mine... hurts... Kat, it hurts. Ahhi, I can't..." Megan clenched her teeth on the scream tearing its way out of her, just as the baby was. "... has claws! Killing me... it's..."

"No, Megan, hush. It's only a baby... think of it as your baby.

You're its mother. Here, lass, drink this." The world dissolved into a wavery blur where Kat argued with Samgeld, stood up to him when he suggested that they let both girl and brat die.

Wavery, hazy woman's hands that held her and blocked something gruesome happening somewhere below her waist that she couldn't feel.

Blood and swinging in and out of darkness and pain seeping back. Katrana held me to life when I thought I'd die; held me when I knew that I'd never have another child. She held me when I cried, always swearing never to cry again. Katrana had helped her when the Arkan had sold her son away. I remember his crying as Sarngeld dragged him out of my chained hands, remember screaming his name as I tore at the links, trying to free myself. Kat came down with the keys, that night, and a set of knives. Kat.

Megan backed down to the solid deck and paced, remembering, then went below to see if she could help Kat.

Sova dropped the dead rat over the side. When Francosz gets back I'll just tell him that I couldn't hide it in their bed. Not this time.

She saw the Captain come up and talk to Zemelya, then start walking the deck as if there were witches after her. But that's silly, why would witches chase a witch? I wonder what's going on. Who was that?She washed her hands in a bucket dipped from the harbor; Piatr had told her that rats could make you sick if you weren't careful. Then she jumped, grabbed a ratline and climbed; not as quickly as Francosz, or the crew, but she could do it now. Right up into the rigging. Out of the way when the ship was at anchor, away from the crowding and jostling of deckhands and rowers.

Down below, the hull was almost steady, with hawsers at bow and stern loop to timber balks on the dock. At the masthead, every quiver was amplified, a slight swaying roll and pitch, the surge and rebound of the northing wind catching masts and hull and rocking them against the cables.

I like it up here, she thought. Mother never let me do anything like this. The wind was blowing up the river; Nysny Tver lay south, sprawling over the hummock of rock that jutted out into the stream. The wind ruffled her hair and she squinted into it; Mateus had told her she'd get sailor's wrinkles from that.

Sova climbed the final arm-up-and-scramble to the lookout's post, a simple crossbar three feet below the whalebone cap of the mast, and wound her legs around the wood, locking her heels.

The breeze was chilly enough to bring gooseflesh to her arms and legs inside the wool trousers and shirt. She pulled the knitted cap down over her ears and shaded her eyes with a self-consciously sailorly hand.

Maybe I can find out who that was, she thought. There were plenty of ships on the river, spread out below her like a map from the seventy foot height of the mast.

Sova rose to stand on the crossbar, looked down at the tiny narrow shape of the deck far below; the houses of the town beyond were scattered helter-skelter, new-built since the town was burned out in Enkar's War three years ago. There was a steep-roofed wooden temple with eaves carved with the head of Bogor the horse-god; a pair of flittercats dived and swooped around the yellow-painted spires, crowding a hapless pigeon.

The triatic stay stretched out before her, linking the mastheads. Sova looked down again and swallowed. It was a long way down... She bent, pulled off the rope sandals and stuck them into her belt, beside the sharp deckhand's knife with thesaw-back for cutting heavy cordage. Fear is useful as a warning, Shkai'ra had said to her. If you let it rule you, you're its slave.

The cable dipped slightly under her weight. She grabbed the stay and swung her feet up, breathed deeply, then spidered over with a whooping yell. The rough surface was a brushing reassurance; she ended the crawl with a swing, smack against the foremast and clutched it, laughing.

Yvar was beneath her; she cupped her hands to hail him, then swung into a shroud to slide to the deck. Suddenly she was hungry, pleasantly conscious of her own sweat. Funny, I always hated sweating before, she thought. It doesn't really smell bad if you don't let it get stale. Father's sweat had smelled of beer, sour somehow: she could not imagine her mother doing anything but... glowing, that was how she'd said it.

"Yvar!" she called again, dropping the last six feet and landing in a ball. Yvar was a friend, the best ropemaster and knotsmith on the Zingas Vetri; he'd promised to show her how to do the Monkey's Fist.

"Yvar, who was that you brought on board? Was it a robber?

Did you have a fight?" The sailors would talk about dockside brawls and riots, sometimes; it sounded like fun.

Yvar looked up at her, and the brightness faded from the day.

"No," he said slowly. "It wasn't a robber. Someone who'd been...

robbed. Robbed of everything." His eyes focused, and he became conscious of the Thane girl's mouth making a shocked O of surprise. "It's all right, Sova-child. An old friend of mine and the Captain's; she's... sick, very sick, and we're worried about her.

Don't talk about it to the Captain, she's upset. Look, don't you have anything to do?"

Sova swallowed; a vendor had come on board with hot honey-pancakes and set up near the gangplank, but she didn't feel hungry any more. I wish Francosz was back, she thought.

"I'll find something, Yvar," she said.

Mateus closed his kit with a click. "She has lung-clot in one lung. A venereal disease. Someone broke a rib, but it's healed up well. She doesn't have anything that I can't treat. The problem..."He trailed off. Megan didn't react.

"Is she strong enough for a mind-healer to help her?" Her hands came out of her sleeves.

"I think so. I'll stay while you try." She shook her head, but he held up one hand. "It's safer for her."

Megan nodded and sat down next to Kat. Mateaus had washed the face-paint off, gotten her cleaned up; she looked almost like the old Katrana, except for the short hair. Megan brushed a curl off Kat's forehead, then took one hand in both of hers, took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Center. Cool blue space behind my eyes . . . Megan reached for the place in her mind where all Zak alive were gathered. I have just enough power to know that it exists. An orange-red glow, like the sun seen through closed eyes... That's me. This place was like a sea, or ice crystals blowing on the steppe, a shifting curtain, or waves that surged and flowed around her.

The dim spots near her were Mat and further away were the Zak crew. Far and yet not far was the whirlwind of fire that was F'talezon, weeks away up the river. Sparks drifting in and through the manrauq, the sea of power. Katrana was lost here somewhere, mind gone, driven out by the drugs.

Kat! Megan called and watched a mint-scented line of red coil out into the manrauq. Kat, where are you? Katrana Healheart, Daughter of Wynn Nethand, Daughter of Binah Sailspinner.

Kat. Koru, Lady Goddess, help me. Dark Lord turn your eyes away. Kat!

There! No. The manrauq rang with Kat's presence, and her loss. My edges are fading. I'm becoming one with the power, one with the cool... blue... CRACK!

Megan shuddered, blinked and ducked under Mateus's hand.

"You... you don't..." She couldn't stop the tears. "I'm all right. I'm back." Her headache was back, like a band of damp rawhide drying around it, her eyes hot as she tried to stop crying. "You don't have to slap me again, Mat. I'll have you up for striking the Captain..." She laughed like porcelain cracking, like a ship'stimbers splintering on rocks, and put her forehead on Kat's hand. "I couldn't... I tried, Mat. I couldn't find her. I couldn't."

He put out a hand but didn't quite touch her back. She cried, and Kat stared at the ceiling humming her tune that went in and out and around and around.

Chapter Ten.

ON THE RIVER BETWEEN NYSNY TVER AND RAND.

FALSE DAWN, TENTH IRON CYCLE,.

TWENTY-SECOND DAY.

Sova snuggled deeper under the feather tick, pulling it higher up her cheek against the cold. Francosz sighed and rolled over.

He pulled the covers half off and when she yanked them back only muttered and stuffed his head under the pillow. It was never completely dark here in the companion way; the Captain kept a kraumak, one of the eerie glowing stones that only the Zak could make, slung in a glass globe from the ceiling. That heatless glow was safest belowdecks on a ship. Sova had grown used to it, no longer waking up and imagining the baleful eye of witchcraft staring into her soul.