chapter 4

"Hold!" The commander wiped sweat off his brow, glowering at the nearest pair of boys clustered around the sandy courtyard. "Look at this. Look at what you're doing." He seized on one youth's hand over the hilt of his wooden practice sword, and wagged his wrist so that the sword-point flopped up and down exaggeratedly, bringing a ripple of laughter from some of the other students. "It's a sword, not a goat-goad! An extension of your own arm. Stop batting at flies, Phidias."
His son ducked his head in a tight-lipped nod, and Apheratos dropped his hand roughly and turned away, still scowling. He shifted his attention to the others, slowly forcing one pair of eyes to drop and then the next as he panned over the group. "Funny, eh? It's not so funny when your opponent sidesteps your clumsy hammering and slices your side open." His listeners quickly returned to full attention, waiting for his signal to begin the drill again with smiles faltering and fading: all but one.
Lyra was slouched against one of the columns supporting the narrow porch that circled the courtyard. She carried a tray with a large water-ewer balanced on her arms. Her body was veiled from sight by a shapeless long-sleeved drab brown tunic which she hadn't bothered to belt. A traveller's hat with downturned brim shaded her eyes, but her head was cocked so that he could just see the faint sneer lingering on her lips.
"What do you want?" he demanded gruffly.
As other eyes turned her way, her manner changed subtly. Dropping her shoulders and chin, she walked towards him meekly, kneeled, and set down the tray like an offering. "Water for the team, O my master."
Her painfully mocking tone set his teeth on edge, but he was in the middle of a drill and simply shook his head. "Thank you very much, Lyra." She bowed exaggeratedly at his feet and backed away, returning to her post and lookout.
Apheratos had just enough powers of concentration to ignore the unwanted observer, and conducted the rest of the afternoon drills without so much as a glance in her direction. Perhaps, in truth, he was a little harder on the team than usual, but their own mistakes and carelessness could explain that away. At last, as the boys filed out of the courtyard towards the front gate and their respective homes, Apheratos stalked in the opposite direction to confront his guest.
She was just turning back into the great house when his gruff call stopped her.
"Well?"
Lyra folded her arms and tilted her chin up at him, saying drily, "You find fault with your son much more than with any of the others. I'm surprised he hasn't decided to take up farming."
Apheratos snorted. "Opinion noted. Now if you're trying to avoid a slavegirl's sandals, could you please explain why you're acting like one? Or at least, feigning it to make a mockery of me."
She continued right along as if he weren't speaking. "Of course, a truly just man needs no show of impartiality to prove his integrity. But that's why I'm here too. Sometimes it takes a lot to ease sprained honor." Turning a shoulder in his face, she ducked behind the last two columns and into the open doorway before he could reply or stop her.

"Come, Dagus, dost thou remember none of thy schooling?" Eusobius scolded, knee to knee with his grown son on the stone bench in the yard. "Even scatter-skulled Merra can find her way through a maze of letters more quickly. And this is simple, plain-written speech."
Dagus sat up quickly from his hunched position over the unfolded wooden tablets stretched across their laps. "That's not fair! She's one of--"
Eusobius cleared his throat with a violent sound that was almost a bark of irritation.
Dagus ran a hand through his touseled sandy hair. "All right, all right, I just need time to think on this bit. `Potnia, in summer grant us food from thy bosom, in winter's cold forget us not as you travel the wise depths of earth where green, er, where living mortals come not.' Or something like that."
"Better," Eusobius grunted. "At least you remember your prayers."
"Praying is not forbidden," Dagus reminded him. "Only reading and writing. Do you know how precious hard it is to practice, with nothing to read save one's own name scrawled on the back of the king's statue which no one--you hope-- will ever see? And what's the good, anyway? I can't write a poem. If I've got one to share I can sing it, or ask someone else to sing it for me. Tavian, for instance. He drinks and breathes the stories. Wants to be a bard, says he. Did you notice?"
"How could I not," Eusobeus said wryly, moving his finger down to the next line on the thin brittle panel of wood. "He hangs on Merra's every word at the hearth like a puppy licking its mother's muzzle. And I've heard him practicing them, lately."
Dagus' brows knotted together. "I remember Silenus' stories when I was little," he said dubiously. "And I suppose they didn't do me any harm. But I heard from Tavian that he's been teaching the tale of Actaeon, and even some about the Master and the Mountain."
"It is his right," Eusobeus said in an odd, quiet voice, then laid his hands on his son's arm. "They mean no harm, and yet suffered great harm at our people's hands. If he teaches truths that these latter days have hidden, then I will humble myself at his knee to learn the old mysteries."
Dagus drew his breath in sharply and drew himself away from his father. "You think they are gods?" he asked, stunned.
Eusobeus creaked with faint laughter. "No, and I never did, even before your son's owl-eyed Lady came to nest here. Have no fear of that, my son." The merriment faded again. "But they had great store of wisdom, and magic, too, though my friend Silenus insists it was only skills and knowledges now lost. Like this." He nodded gravely at the jointed wooden tablet.
Dagus turned this over in his mouth with a thoughtful frown, chewed and swallowed it. "Where did she come from, anyway? Is she really the old man's daughter? I thought his family was killed during the war."
His father smiled. "Now that is a strange tale, and some of it is yet a mystery to us all. In the spring after you left, she was brought to us by a messenger almost as odd as herself. He was half darkblood, and a travelling bard, and perhaps an oracle too, for how else could he have known she belonged here? He said she had been kept by a remnant of the folk who once served the Mountain and now hide in the foothills. They called her the Master's daughter, and thought because she never spoke a word that she was in mourning for her people. Which I suppose is true enough. Anyhow, the rumor had filtered back to the coast that one darkblood had survived and was being treated with honor. Soldiers were sent to seek her. The minstrel spirited her away and brought her around the western mountains to our northern fences. I cannot fathom how he managed it. She barely understood speech, and would suffer none to touch her, when first she came."
"The Master's daughter?" Dagus breathed. "Is it possible?"
"Silenus assures me not," Eusobeus answered heavily. "Merra is older than she looks, but not so old as that. He fervently wishes she were his, for she is of an age and aspect to match his eldest child. But she cannot tell us, and there is no way to be sure."
"And the minstrel? Where is he now?"
"Wandered on. He said he had news of a few other survivors. But he has never returned."
Dagus' brows furrowed in thought. "I think I'm going to have a talk with those two. I should find out what strange tales they've been teaching my son, not to mention my father."
Eusobeus smiled sadly. "But gently. Of old their people hid themselves on the Mountain, and allowed themselves to be seen but little by the rest of us. Silenus is still shy, although now we live on the Mountain with him. Be gentle with him. Ask him whatever thou hast a will to, but I beg one thing of thee. Do not question Merra on anything touching her people. She will not answer thee, for her memories of what she has lost are a broken arrow-tip in a wound that has only healed upon the surface."
Dagus laid his hands flat on the wood as if bracing himself. "I could almost believe," he said slowly, "that she was a god. My son thinks she is a spirit."
The old man made a warding gesture absently with knobby fingers, obeisance to any true gods or spirits nearby. "I have come to see her only as Silenus does: a child, a troubled child, for all that she is older than I."
"She is mad, you know."
Eusobius sighed. "Yes. 'Tis unfortunate. Yet perhaps it is easier for her. Unless the wound is prodded, she remembers only these mountains, this sky."
"And this place," Dagus reminded him gently, tilting his head to survey the cluster of long buildings, the grassy courtyard, and the whispering wall of dark trees enclosing his father's tiny country. "Sanctuary: shelter, food, and clothing for the forsaken. You made those words real, Father, and the rite a thing one can touch and see and live in. You turned it into roofs that keep out the deepest snow, a garden and fields to plow and weed, and goats and sheep on the high hills to give us meat and milk and cloth. You made a kingdom old Minos himself would have envied."
"He would indeed, old friend," murmured a soft dry voice. They looked up to see the blind man leaning on his stick in the shadow of the spreading fir beside their bench. Under the band of cloth across his eyes, Silenus' wrinkled face was bunched into a faint smile. "For Minos' palace was a prison to his children, not a home, and when they fled its walls, they did not love him enough to return."

Lyra did not reappear at dinnertime, and Apheratos brooded over his meal while his wife and youngest son talked quietly. Both knew his moods as well as a sailor the sea's, and knew also when it was the season to keep well away. Eventually he pushed back his chair and stomped out of the hall, heading for the stairs up to his rooms to fetch a cloak and boots for walking in the city. He was beginning to suspect Lyra had slipped out again.
She had not. When he lit the oil lamp in his chamber, he was dumbfounded to find her curled up on his bed like a cat, clothed only in the blankets themselves. She stirred and rolled over, blinking against the dim light with an unguarded, uneasy shiver, face raw as that of a child woken from a nightmare. Next moment, however, the muscles of her face and jaw tightened into a defiant, mirthless grin. She sat up languidly, stretching her arms and legs and curling her feet against the bunched coverlets.
"What," he snarled, "in the name of the Lady and all her children do you think you're doing?"
With an equally casual gesture she flung off the cover from her thin form, baring white skin marred by scars and half-healed bruises to his baffled gaze. "Awaiting my master," she replied smoothly, not meeting his eyes. "For is not this the proper duty of a slave?"
Apheratos heard soft footsteps arrested in the stairwell behind him, and took a step towards the bed with hands raised either in supplication or anger. "I did not take you in for a slave or servant. Rings, have none of my words reached you? None?"
She shrugged against the bedding. "Oh, every one, even those you did not say aloud." Now she gazed up at him with eyes half-lidded in a sneer, or faint fear. "You were looking for a slave when you found me; don't deny it. But you won me instead of buying me, a body for no price! Another conquest, another victory, booty for an `old soldier'? I'm just another proud girl to line your bed with, like that priestess you stole from her father's temple. After the battle is too late for squeamish kindness; go ahead and claim your prize."
There was a sharp gasp behind him, and he knew his wife had followed him up to their apartments. Fury flashed through his craggy features, and his raised hands clenched to fists as he loomed over her. "Mock me from my own bed, you gnawing rat--"
She braced herself stoically, although the buckling of half-healed skin around her eye and cheekbone betrayed the squint of well-masked fear. As he glowered at her in the flickering candlelight, he noticed other puckered scars and lines and blotches marring her skin, the graffiti of past masters.
"Go on," she taunted, at his hesitation. "Tamnos wasn't the first, and he won't be the last."
His hands fell without striking the blow. "You're testing me," he said grimly, casting the blanket back over her. "Testing to see what I'd do. Tapping at the walls to learn their strength. Well, peck at me as you like, but leave my wife out of your foolery. She's done nothing to merit your scorn, now or ever."
Lydia stepped forward to his side, resting a hand against his forearm and looking down at Lyra with a mixture of dismay and understanding. She did not speak the gentle remonstrance in her grave face. Lyra huddled back against the covers with a scowl as the woman approached.
Apheratos kept glaring at Lyra levelly for some minutes, until finally his exasperation burst out with another sigh. "Gods! Lyra, haven't we done enough to deserve a small whit of candor? A tiny sliver of trust?"
Lyra snorted and turned her eyes up towards the darkened ceiling, watching the light flicker there. At length, she spoke quietly and distantly, with that flat carelessness that cut like a fish-bone. "Candor, you're wanting? It will taste as bitter to you as it does me. Fine. Here's what I see. You've doctored my wounds. You've given me a roof--and walls to keep me in. You've given me a lot of fine and lofty words, and a few threats and blows to remind me I'm a hostage to your mercy. Trust, you ask of me? How? Who are you? I want to know the truth. And truth isn't proved by words."
Apheratos' shoulders hunched. "I'd thought perhaps," he said tiredly, "some of what we've done for you these last few days might count more than words."
Low and softly, she answered with blunt questions. "Will three days erase a lifetime? Will they make good the betrayal that brought down my people? Is this newest cage so much better because it's crafted of pity not hatred?"
He thought he caught just a trace of something glistening at the corners of her eyes, perhaps some trick of the lamplight, but enough to give him hope, or at least to ease the edges of anger from his voice. "We will see about opening the doors to that cage as soon as I'm sure you're not going to hurt yourself or others. I'm sorry, but this I must know."
Lydia had stepped a little apart from her husband during the confrontation, and now stood with arms folded lightly before herself, studying Lyra with a resigned frown softened by sympathy. "You're both right," she interjected quietly. "We cannot change the past. But remember that you are in Sanctuary now, and even if it is no temple, such sacred rites are heeded here."
But Lyra closed her eyes and sagged back against the pillow. "You forget your own stories, my living truths. Aias raped my grandmother Kassandra before the very altar. We shall see."
"Speak no inauspicious words," Lydia murmured reflexively, face paling at that old tale. She touched the girl's hand respectfully. "But come, child. If you are tired, you have a bed and room all your own. Here is one place you do not belong."
Lyra sat up and slid her feet to the flagstones with a grimace. "True speaks the priestess," she muttered. "Truth indeed." She slipped out without another glance at Apheratos.

Lucien almost threw the tongs at Mercius in exasperation, lurching up from his anvil like an exploding volcano. "That isn't funny at all!" he snapped. "How soon are we leaving? The race is barely more than a month away, and it will take that long to make the voyage around the Barrier Isands and and up the coast!"
Mercius was pacing and poking absently around the small square yard behind the stable where Lucien labored at the forge to fashion everything from axeheads to cloak-clasps for Tulli's great household. He turned over a crumpled scrap of bronze absently and pocketed it. "There aren't any ships, Lucien. Port Aero's been taken by the Tygellians; the islands, too. We're shut in."
Lucien arrested his movements and stared at Mercius, forgetting the hay-fork glowing a dull orange on the anvil. Out of the corner of his eye he could see one of the slaves had come in with another bundle of wood for the fire, now standing leaning against the fence wide-eyed. Lucien motioned him over with an impatient grunt, muttering, "I wonder if Jimnos made it out of Aero before the attack."
Mercius shook his head. "No idea," he said with a moment's sober grimace, then pushed on, youthful excitement spilling over into his voice again. "Tulli's more determined than ever to go, though; he's going to be taking supplies north, overland, and stands to make a fair sum if he gets through. Besides, that means fewer rivals than ever for the races at Hippo. He could take first through fourth."
Lucien picked up the tongs again with a resigned snort. "He could also be bones to pick for the buzzards." He started tapping irritably again at the obstinate metal that refused to lie flat. "Even if we got through the pass, it's long days of desert before the mountains on the far side. And nothing can survive there a day."
"If you listen to sailors' tales, don't ask for news of dry land," Mercius retorted. "The tablelands west of Aero are desert waste, too, and yet nomads and water-hunters have been there forever. And I've heard tales of the bird people--"
"Now who's listening to travellers' tales?" Lucien retorted with a grim shake of the head. "But Tulli's a fool. How are we going to carry supplies for Hippo, let alone water enough for ourselves? Pack-beasts need drink too."
"There's the river that flows from the pass," Mercius said excitedly. "It's true. It's small this side, but it cuts straight northeast across the barren wastes like an arrow, deeper as it goes, right through the ridge on the far side. It comes out in a canyon behind Hippo facing the sea. Plenty of water, and grass and wild animals and food for at least half the distance where it broadens out. Tulli's done it before. His brother lives in Hippo; they've kept trading through the storm-harvests when no ships could get through. It's a chance, Lucien."
"It's a madman's greed," Lucien said glumly, over-working the tip of one prong past repair and tossing it back into the fire to soften. "But I'll go with you. Your luck's held so far, Mercius; let's just pray the rope doesn't fray through now that you're headed into the storm."
Mercius grinned cheerfully. "I promise you won't be around, if it ever snaps." He hopped up and skipped out towards the door, whistling above Lucien's bemused protest.

Lyra heard strained voices echoing in the stone stairwell one afternoon as she stalked restlessly up to her small room. She stormed in with a well-honed scowl, but found only two backs turned towards her, so the effect was quite lost. Apheratos and Lydia stood side by side on the floor behind her bed, looking through the large window in the alcove out to sea. They were not speaking now. Each had an arm around the other, waist and shoulder, and their heads were leaning together like a couple of old trees. Lyra could see the sag in Apheratos' spine, and the way his wife stood stiff and still as an old beacon-tower.
Several snide or scathing remarks came and went behind Lyra's lips, none quite stinging or witty enough for her to excuse. Finally she scuffed a sandalled toe against the floor. She didn't feel particularly satisfied when Lydia started at the sound and turned, clutching the folds of her gown over her heart like a talisman.
"We should not be here," Lydia said quietly, laying a restraining hand on her husband's shoulder as he, too, turned to stare. "I am sorry, Lyra, but it was the only place we could see out."
Lyra wrinkled her brows skeptically and paced across the room, pushing between them with her hands and startling Apheratos out of his own reverie as he received a bony jab from one of her elbows. She flung herself on her belly over the pile of cushions, bracing herself on the sill to peer out at the red-flecked sunset reflected by an ocean as smooth as an offering bowl of blood. "At what?" she demanded.
"Nothing," Apheratos growled. "There's nothing to see."
Lyra caught the stony chill in his tone and hunched around to glare at him, stealing the opportunity to look him over. Something seemed to have fallen out of his face, like the pin that keeps a child's toy together. Without it, his features were no more than a loose and comical collection of sagging lines and bags.
"That nothing," Lydia explained finally in a low voice, "used to be Port Aero."
Lyra blinked once, owlishly. "And now it's not there?" she repeated slowly, as if trying to understand the story of a small and earnest child.
"The Tygellians attacked," Apheratos said with sudden anger. "Boiling out of the sea like locusts. There wasn't time to defend the harbor. Everyone but the king's own squadron was in the fields pulling the last harvest. Only a few merchants escaped before the Tygellians set fire to the docks. All the ships that travel the sea from Aero to the Islands now are theirs, and it's said they're carrying every slave, woman, and child from Aero back to their own islands. The only harvests the fields will yield this year are the bones of men."
"Too bad you didn't send me to the mines there like you told the mob, then," Lyra quipped. "I've always wanted to try a voyage at sea."
Apheratos gave an enraged snort and stooped his head into his shoulders like a belligerant dog. His wife touched his jaw lightly and he muttered into his chest. Lydia's strained grey eyes met Lyra's stubbornly unsympathetic gaze. "Or eldest son was stationed in Aero. His ship will be burning in the shallows."
Lyra fell silent too, in spite of herself, some shuttered part of her expression acknowledging with a faint tightening of her eyes the intimate understanding of this kind of loss. She twisted around then to watch the final rays of sunset, the last glimmers of red and orange touching the sea.

Bright laughter, shrieks and exclamations, were not customarily heard in the wee dark hours of the morning when the mountain air was cold as the black night sky and even the moon had taken cover behind the peaks in some warmer southern country. Such sounds, however, were what woke Dagus in the chill hours before dawn. He mumbled sleepily for Tavian to find the oil lamp, got no response, snorted to himself, and fumbled for a while with the thick wooden shutters. Quite a few creaks, squeaks, and thuds later he craned his head through the deep window and peered out into the grassy central yard.
"Father! Come out and see! The sky's falling, just like in the stories!" Another fit of giggles succeeded his son's voice.
He blinked twice, squinting into the dark. All he could see at first was the dim grey walls of the buildings on either side and the spreading shadows of the great old fir tree behind the stone bench. Then he caught the flicker of a single flame near the bench, and figures standing beside the tree, all around, probably a dozen. He could see the flash of eyes craned upwards.
The crowd collectively gave another shout of excitement and several hands raised to point at something he could not see. Grumbling, he rolled out of the sleeping furs, scrounged around for a warm cloak, and stomped out of the small room he usually shared with his son to the hall.
Coming out of the low building, he nearly slammed the door into a tall solitary figure standing apart from the others right up against the wall. She pivotted and withdrew with the startled grace of a deer, and he jumped too, face to face and almost eye to eye with the strange pale girl who usually kept her face veiled. He saw no obvious flaw nor mark that needed hiding on her fine, fair features, but during that brief glimpse he found himself blushing redly and whispering an apology like Actaeon himself facing the goddess by the pool. Not that she was so beautiful, but the simple glance had been enough to make him more afraid of her than ever. There was wildness in her gaze which did not see him at all although he was only an arm's length away. Again his stomach clenched with the quiet certainty that hers was a mind not sane.
Then she laughed along with the children, a shy, cautious laugh he wouldn't have heard from even a few paces away, so natural and human a sound that he felt as it was the first thing he'd seen or heard clearly since he tumbled out of bed. Only now did he hear the voices of the others rising and falling in whispers across the yard, and he wondered if he had still been dreaming a moment ago. He did not, however, raise his gaze for a second look.
"Look up," she said with soft wonder. "There. Another torch dropped from the utmost peak of heaven. The children say the sky is falling, but I think `tis rain from clouds as high and holy as the stars. What seeds sprout from it, think'st thou?"
The man ran a hand through his touselled brown hair in consternation, not quite sure how to respond to her words, even as he found himself looking up, unconsciously eager to obey her command. Then all thoughts were forgotten, as a brilliant streak of light seared across the stars and fell behind one of the shrouded peaks.
"Gods!" he said, standing erect and amazed.
A boy hurtled into him, grabbing his hands and tugging him farther out into the yard. "Come on, Father! Silenus says it won't last much longer. It only happens twice a year. The stars are falling! Merra, Merra, did Ikaros look so?"
For once she did not flinch at the question, replying only mildly, "I was not alive back then, Tavian. But perhaps so. Certainly he shone as brightly as that in his father's eyes."
Dagus suffered himself to be led over to the main company: his own father was there, and Geian the cook, and the old woman who supervised all the older children in tending the sheep and goats, and the head gardener, and a few of the men who worked the high fields, and a whole mob of children delighted to be up at an hour when the adults were blinking and bleary-eyed. The whole assembly was wrapped in blankets, furs, cloaks, and boots, so that it looked like a poor village's Bear festival with hand-me-down costumes. Silenus stood there only in his customary long robe and threadbare brown cloak, leaning on a stick and listening to the excited chatter with a smile. He was not looking up, of course; his eyes as always were covered by a band of cloth.
Dagus took his son's hand and watched the sky, as more brilliant flecks of light came shivering down and winking out just overhead. Not a few children leapt into the air, hands outstretched as if trying to catch them like fireflies. They tumbled to the grass giggling and hooting again.
Dagus felt a hand on his shoulder. "What thinkest thou, my son?" Eusobeus asked with an almost boyish chuckle. "Are they not beautiful? Silenus has roused me for this apparition each year. I did not think I would live to see another."
"But what are they?" Dagus asked in reverent and hushed tones. "Is it the gods?"
"Nay," Silenus said, lowering his voice and shuffling over, going carefully so as not to trip over one of the ubiquitous youngsters. "^Tis but falling motes of dust and rock that drift through the heavens like gnats over a stream on a warm day in spring. We are running through a cloud of them, and they flare a bright protest as they tumble from the sacred aether into the heavier air of our world. It is said there were many long ago, when the redstar was still young and golden and our world was more water than land, but that all the sky-motes of heaven long ago fell into the suns, or floated out into endless night and were lost, or perhaps even came to rest here to make the mountains upon which we now stand."
Dagus raised eyebrows skeptically at the odd man stooped over a twisted staff, then snorted. "Another story," he said, half-hopefully, not particularly comfortable with the idea of things as solid as rock tumbling from heaven or floating off again. He tilted his head back to watch the comfortably remote points of light, too strange, too fair, and too small to have any bearing on matters at his own doorstep. "Not as good as most of your wild tales, old man, or at least the ones Tavian here has seen fit to tell me." He thumped Tavian's shoulder with a knuckle.
"Tell me about Ikaros!" Tavian cried, clapping his hands as the whole sky lit up with a bright blue light before flickering to black again. "Tell us a story, Silenus!"
"Speak no inauspicious words," the blind man urged gently. "Just watch, Tavian. Watch and remember. All thy world may be different, and thine own children watching with thee, when next thou seest that even stars can fall."
Dagus followed the trail of another setting star down to the level of the treetops and below, and his gaze fell upon one white thing glimmering there like an after-image against the shadows. There was the strange spirit-woman, standing quite still and alone like a seed washed out of the ground by heavy rains.

Lydia's soft-sung prayers fell short in astonishment as a light streaked overhead while she stood by the pool in the central court of the great house, seeking answers from the sky. She folded her arms into her robe and watched in silence for a long, long time, while the lamp burned low and sputtered on the stone rim of the pool. Finally she began her prayers again, but this time not for her son, but for all the children falling from the sky, for all the lost gods to find their way home, for all travellers stumbling on strange roads. She wished them a soft landing. She willed for them to find unexpected shores of rest. She prayed brokenly in the old tongue, struggling to remember the words for a chant she had not heard since childhood in the temple.
A second voice joined hers, harsh, subdued, sullen, as if every word were a grudging betrayal of a secret long kept. She did not lower her gaze, however, transfixed by the spectacle above. Gradually the second voice eased and loosened, matching her notes and filling in the words she could no longer remember with sure sincerity. The lamp had long since gone out, and her every joint was stiff and numb before the beads of light began to fall less often, and the pink of day slowly chased the rest away. Lydia lowered her chin and rolled her shoulders with a faint gasp at sore muscles, then stole a glance at her visitor.
Lyra stood with arms loose at her sides in a thin white tunic with neither shoes nor belt, but was watching Lydia, not the sky. The girl's face was tense and wary and challenging as ever, but her eyes were human, sharing only the simple moment.
"A reminder of where we have all come from," Lyra said in a cautious whisper, "and where, eventually, we all go."
Lydia nodded. "For their wings, in time, melt in the sun like any mortal's," she replied respectfully.
Lyra squeezed her arms a little tighter around herself and looked away at the water. "So it's said." She retreated a step, and Lydia thought that might be the end of the exchange, until the blunt girl queried with more belligerence, "Why did you not call Apheratos to watch, when you saw what night it was?"
"The falling lights will be there for a few nights, won't they? I'll bring him out tomorrow. I'm not about to wake my sleeping hound at this hour."
Lyra's brows folded as if in disappointment.
"Also," Lydia confesed, "I didn't want to look away. I don't really know if I'll tell him. It reminded me of the first time I saw them, in the temple."
"Ah. I suppose you still have some things you call your own, and don't give to him." Lyra grinned mockingly, but the expression faded again. "You speak the words well, for one only half-trained a long, long time ago. You were speaking them for your son?"
"Partly," Lydia replied, a little stiffly. "And for the others named in the Prayer for the Fallen."
"As is proper. If you wish," Lyra said in a low growl, still not meeting her eyes, "I could help you with vigil. I know the words to be spoken for one lost whom you cannot find to bury. It has been a long time, but I do not forget."
Lydia was becoming deft enough in reading the subtle tense shifts in her stance and tone to recognize what she meant, and for whom the girl had last said such words. The older woman's brow crinkled in silent respect for Lyra's own precious dead, but she carefully did not name those of whom Lyra chose not to speak. "I would be honored," she said simply, "if you would add your voice to my prayers. My son did not know your people, but I do, and it would give me comfort."

The field before Tulli's main stables was a boiling ant's nest of activity, as slaves readied the pack train for travel. Hooves had to be trimmed, horses inspected for health, and all manner of foodstuffs piled into baskets and storage jars. Lucien had set aside his smith's tools in the cold forge in order to pitch in with the preparations. Of all the household, only Mercius was not there.
Lucien could sometimes catch sight of the boy's slight form down on the pasture below, no more than a small gray blur on the frantic mare that zigged wildly across the field trying to escape the other horses being raced with her. The older man frowned. She sailed straight as an arrow when the track was empty, but the skittish creature was going to be the death of his friend, if he didn't soon find a way to hold her steady near others. And there were only two days left before they had to leave. Lucien set down another amphora of oil with a groan, wondering if his back would last that long.
"You can rest when we've gone," said the one voice he had heard all day that wasn't out of breath or irritable. "You'll have earned it."
Lucien struggled to stand upright, wiping his brown face with the back of a grimy forearm. "Except I'll be one of those going with you, sir," he panted. "Still, at least the horses will be doing the hauling then."
Tulli slashed the air with a hand. "No need. Peiso knows the road; he's taken supply runs through the pass and the canyon for half a year now. We're travelling light as we can, save the food to sell in Hippo. Just him, me, and your boy; my brother's people will help us unload when we get there."
"I'll haul a basket myself and chew grass, but I am coming with you!" Lucien practically spat in the master's face, causing several heads to turn and Tulli's smile to lose its corners.
A knuckle jabbed Lucien's shoulder. "Hey, big brother, you'd stain your teeth green and lose your smile for the ladies."
Lucien turned tiredly, not really in the mood for Mercius' teasing today. Any counter-barb, however, was forgotten, when he looked down and sideways and caught sight of the boy's face and the deep purple bruise down his jawline. The edge of his hood was stained darkly on that side. "And you'll lose yours if you break your neck. Gods, Tulli, can't you put him on one of the others? That mare of yours isn't going to win; she's just going to shy and bolt. Why can't you use her for breeding stock?"
"I would, if she didn't outrun every stallion in the herd," Tulli said drily. "The one that takes her will have wings."
"I've gotten through to her now, though," Mercius said breathlessly. "She understands. She turned too hard today, and I fell, and she just stopped cold. She came back to me and stood over me until the others had passed by, and didn't move a muscle. She didn't realize she could hurt me until then. She'll be more careful now."
Lucien pinched the boy's cheek with a rough hand. "Mercius, she is a horse. A fine animal to be sure, but not human; don't expect her to act that way."
"Me neither," the boy reminded him with a quiet wink.
"Speaking of which," Tulli interjected gruffly, "Go get cleaned up, if you don't want everyone in the household to notice. Lucien, help him. And see to it he gets plenty of rest tonight; I'll not have him on the rooftop stargazing again."
"Sir," Lucien said guardedly, putting an arm around Mercius' shoulders and shooting the boy another sharp glance as they turned to head for the fountainhouse.
"It was just for half a night's watch," Mercius protested in a low voice as they marched away. "I couldn't sleep."
"You should help me at the forge, then," Lucien grumbled. "That'll wear out a body." He sighed. "Not that I expect to go back to it before we leave. I am going with you. I don't care what that man says; I'll follow."
Mercius slowed and tipped his young face up at Lucien with a thin frown. "You don't have to do this for me. Lucien, maybe it's time for us to part ways. I haven't always lived with your family, you know. Your grandmother took me in, but I've had other travelling companions. You don't have to spend your whole life protecting me. I'm not a child. And I remember when you were."
"Well, then, stop acting like a boy, like this is all some game and that you'll always be able to draw just the right tile. You're among beasts and men now, not bits of wood. You'll trip, sooner or later."
"I know." He grinned cheerfully. "So I'd better run with all sails to the wind until time catches up with me. And in the meantime, I'll see if I can convince Tulli to find you that basket and some good fresh grass."

Apheratos was just turning in as the last of the boys in the squad straggled out of the courtyard, numb and lagging from the merciless workout he had put them through this afternoon. Right on cue, Lyra's familiar growled whisper stopped him on the front steps.
"Killing them now won't stop them from getting killed later, Commander."
He scanned the double row of columns within the wide porch for spare shadows before realizing the voice had come from above. Sure enough, she was perched with knees tucked on either side of the apex of the low sloping tiled roof that stuck out from the main house. He thought fleetingly of the figures and faces of monsters sometimes placed over the doors of temples to scare off evil spirits.
"Maybe some of them will drop out and go back to being farmers," he said shortly. "Get down."
"Maybe I will drop down and go back to being a caged bird, eh?" she asked with a bright knife-edged smile. "No, I think I'll stay up here and admire the view. Perhaps a passing spirit will lend me its wings."
Apheratos stopped short and folded his arms, tone wearily resigned as he picked up the weekly argument that was rapidly becoming a ritual between them. "And where would you fly? Birds go south, but I think you'll find Aero less than hospitable."
"Oh, there's the problem," Lyra said, slapping the roof-tiles with the palm of her hand. "I knew there must be some reason I was staying here in this lidless coffin. I should work on that."
"Let me know when you've found a better place," Apheratos said.
She flicked something from the roof onto his head that he didn't care to speculate about. "Oh, you'll know," she replied lightly. "Now, come, I don't want to keep you. Go inside and snarl like an unfed hunting hound at your wife and son."
"I, at least, have some excuse," he shot back. "Don't use yours too much, Lyra; sooner or later it will wear out."
"Where walls stand, the donkey will kick."
Apheratos shook his head. Instead of plodding any further down that same track, he cleared his throat to address another matter. "I wanted to thank you, Lyra," he said soberly, as if the preceding debate had never occurred, "for helping Lydia with the ritual. I can never find fitting words to say in a ceremony."
Lyra snorted. "Oh, you do fine at those. The Presidian's still hackles-up from that speech you gave at the theater. It's just when it's something that matters to you that you go silent."
"That mattered too," he reminded her gruffly. "Come down to dinner after you've