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a special thing, rarely shared with anyone. I knew what she was trying to say: she trusted me; she felt the fire too, but she had her secrets … as I had mine.
    I nodded, choked by the fire in my blood. “Kore will be fine.”
    And she left me.
    My mother and I slept in our blankets under the stars, with the rest of the commercial travelers and deck passengers. The cabin class slept below in airless dens. The staterooms, usually reserved for the filthy rich, were given over to refugees. I didn’t know where Kore was. At dawn I went to check the mules. Dolly and Music were good travelers: they were bored but comfortable. Brainy was convinced he was going to feed the fishes this time, but I managed to cheer him up.
    When I came back, Moumi was talking to Taki and the
Afroditi’s
first officer. I joined them in time to hear that it was a wealthy cabin passenger who’d convinced him to get all charitable. “As the young lady said, it’s good to beknown as generous,” explained Taki. “It’s excellent advertising.”
    Nobody was talking about the earthquake itself. That would have been a very ill-omened topic. Moumi and I winked at each other, and the first officer gave a cough he hid behind his hand.
“How
did she persuade you?” said my mother. “Come on, ’fess up.”
    Taki looked smug. “Well, gold did come into it. My personal generosity,
plus
a fair weight of well-worked gold, extremely pure.”
    I remembered Kore’s bracelets. They’d struck me as very Egyptian, very flash, maybe gold leaf on wood.
Solid gold
on her arms? And looking for work in our taverna? What kind of mystery was this? Moumi shook her head at me, just barely. I understood I should keep my mouth shut; but I didn’t need to be told that.
    “Oh, Taki,” sighed my mother. She glanced wryly at the Blue Star Marines, in full armor, who were sharing the foredeck with us. They were necessary. Every ship that put to sea these days had to be ready to meet pirates, or worse. “Do you really need more treasure? You should have got her to pay you in water.”
    Two generations before I was born, the island of Fira had exploded in a gigantic volcanic eruption. It must have been like the end of the world. No one alive now could remember that day, but the old people, the ones who had heard the tales from actual survivors, said that our world would
never
recover from the Great Disaster. The windswere not the same, and the wells had dried. That was the real reason why there was no more peace or plenty for the islands of the Middle Sea.
    Taki laughed. Very rich people, I’ve noticed, are often great optimists. The fat of their wealth cushions them from rational fear. “Don’t be silly, Danae. How can we run out of water?” He spread his muscular arms, and his fine copper armlets glinted ruddy as flame in the sun. “The sea is all around, the fountain of life and joy! The mighty sun draws up the salt water and it falls again as sweet rain, for ever and ever. The Great Disaster was a long time ago. Probably it wasn’t so bad, and soon there’ll be no one alive to moan about ‘all the changes,’ which will be a good thing! Life is what you make it! If there’s really a drought, you landlubbers just have to figure out which Supernatural you’ve annoyed. Sacrifice a few pretty young people; that’ll fix it.”
    Nice. Human sacrifice was Taki’s idea of an efficient, modern solution.

T he name of the girl in the red dress was Andromeda.
    To her dismay the earthquake victims all chose to disembark at Serifos. She understood a few words of their language, she’d heard them talking about it. Either their hearts failed them, at the thought of a longer journey to nowhere, or they were afraid to stay on board when their benefactors were leaving the ship. They knew about the generous offering that had been made on Naxos waterfront. She hoped they didn’t know how their fares had been paid; she’d asked Taki for discretion.
    The ship
Afroditi
was too