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were waiting for them in the
rotunda, also clad in silver; they descended on the pair
immediately, all talking at once.
    “Shashei, the Archivist has a visitor; she
called herself the Unbroken, of all things—”
    “Archivist! Archivist!”
    “— and may the moon witness,
Shashei—”
    “— walked right in, just now! I
didn’t know she was real —”
    Shashei Cheriya tried to calm the excited
women and begin to sort out what they were jabbering about. Sanych
frowned. Her mind began piecing bits together from the Hyndi
histories she’d been perusing. The Unbroken…a Hyndi heroine from
two generations ago…a woman fell from the top of the Night Beacon,
taking with her an assassin. Though the other woman was crushed,
the Unbroken survived, alive and whole. Oh, Wisdom … Sanych bit
her lip and grinned, feeling a radiant lightness spread through her
body.
    One of the Hands pointed in the direction of
Sanych’s map room. Sanych turned and ran down the marble corridor,
sliding on her silk slippers when she tried to stop at the doorway.
Flinging the door open, she jogged inside and was soon crowded from
behind by all the other women. Her eyes scanned the stacks of
books, the tables piled with scrolls and small maps.
    The room appeared empty, save for
them.
    Her eyes found one detail out of place,
however. Sanych strode to her wall map and stood before it while
the women at the doorway waited. She reached out a tentative finger
and caressed a tiny paper streamer on a pin jammed into the dot
that represented Salience.
    It read Shanallar .
    “Meena,” she breathed, her heart
thudding.
    “Sanych.” The Shanallar’s laconic tone hadn’t
altered during her many weeks of absence. But after four hundred
years, Sanych doubted anything could change the stubborn, cynical
heroine anymore—not even being eaten alive by two sea monsters in
the same evening.
    The Hands murmured excitedly as Meena stepped
forward from a shadowed alcove and uncrossed her arms. Sanych
hesitated a moment, eyes closed, then opened them and turned
around.
    The Shanallar looked unchanged, except that
her hair was entirely covered by a green headscarf. She wore a
burnished breastplate that gleamed in the lamplight, and the
knurled pommel of her short Clan sword winked with silvery gleams.
Her clothing spoke of battle-readiness, and she smelled of the open
sea. Her eyes held a warm welcome.
    Sanych breathed deeply, excitement and relief
vying for control of her features. When she spoke, her voice
trembled. “I knew I’d find you.”
    Meena tilted her head toward the map. “Bet you
didn’t think it would be this easy.”
    “It wouldn’t have mattered.”
    “I know.” Meena quirked a corner of her mouth.
“Are you ready to go?”
    Sanych didn’t look away, didn’t even blink.
“Yes.”
    “Good. Let’s get your things. The harbor
militia are none too pleased with our entrance, and the sooner
we’re away, the better.”
    “‘ Our’? Who did you arrive
with?”
    Meena grinned, putting a hand on Sanych’s
shoulder and propelling her past the murmuring Hands. “Just some
old friends.”

Chapter Two
    “Does it
look like I’m attacking Salience Harbor to you?” Rhona m’Kora
demanded, hands on her hips below the edge of her brass
breastplate. She glared down at the furious harbormaster from her
place at her ship’s rail. The harbormaster, grimy-turbaned and
average in height, was backed by three dozen armed soldiers, and
three boats containing more soldiers floated nearby, but her stare
pinned him as if he were a sloppy seaman who had spilled his grog
on her boots.
    The man stroked his full mustache doubtfully.
“You’re the first pirate to get into Salience in three hundred and
fifty years, girl. I should kill you simply on
principle.”
    Rhona brushed that argument aside with an
irritable wave of her hand. Her curly dark red hair and the coppery
cordage braids at her temples blazed in the yellow glow of the
harbor ceiling fungus.