At least she also did not want the attentions of any of the other men the women of his house had sent to her. And she had given him this, the drawing-writing.

He bent over the paper again, a small smile on his lips.

#

Mother Anash, the head of the house of Ishel, sent for him to join her in a common room that night. It was strange how the small group of people from the stars, the Ayaissee, had changed his life -- had changed all their lives. Or perhaps it wasn't. Just knowing there was another world beyond the night writing in the sky, worlds upon worlds even, made everything on Kailazh different.

Just as having touched the woman from the stars made Kislan different.

Once, being called to share a bed with the Mother of the house would have been a great honor (it still was), but he found himself reluctant to obey. The others in the house of men who had received no summons for the night eyed him enviously as he followed the messenger out of the room.

Toni had tried to explain to him why she did not want to accept him as a gift from the house of Ishel, the leading house in Edaru, but as much as she described the world (worlds) in which men as well as women chose their own mates (but for months and years at a time), her rejection of him did not fit into his understanding of relations between the sexes.

Didn't women use men at will to satisfy their needs? Didn't they need variety to whet their appetites?

And Toni was alone. He knew -- she had told him.

She had also told him she would rather have him to herself, like the sister in the legend of how the moons got into the sky. At the memory of that day above the sea wall, his gut clenched painfully, and he almost stumbled.

But how much did he really understand of what the woman from the stars told him, ever?

He arrived at the chamber in the Ishel common house he had been directed to and knocked. Anash opened the door, smiling.

#

The docks of Edaru rarely slept. While it would not be a ship captain's choice to make port at night, tides and winds had minds of their own, not to be controlled by the captain of a sailing vessel.

This particular ship had come to port at night, and even at so late an hour it was best if the cargo was counted and secured immediately. Kislan was inspecting the shipment of bowls of carved and polished eyliu shells from Melpaan and sturdy coils of rope from Sithray by the light of torches held high by his assistants, three young men of his house.

He had begun to use the drawing-writing for keeping records, and he held a block of light wood with a piece of parchment (such as was usually used for drawing maps) affixed to it in one hand, and an implement Toni called a "pensil" in the other -- very different than the needle and fine yarn the Mejan women used for writing. With this type of writing, he could record many more details than were possible with the simple knots the men of the Thirteen Cities used. While he wrote down wares and amounts and qualities, another assistant made knots for the cargo in the traditional way.

The wind from the sea picked up and Kislan had to hold down the edge of the parchment with one hand. Hair laced with braids of multicolored threads whipped around his face. He tucked the pensil into a cord on the writing block and pulled his hair back from his forehead, holding it in place as he looked up.

Toni was hurrying along the docks toward him.

His reaction was immediate, and it didn't help that he cursed himself for it. To show desire for a woman who had given no indication that she wanted a man's attentions was an act of shame, and doubly so if the woman was not of a man's house.

The second didn't apply to the ambassador, however, since his house had designated him as her gift -- which she had ultimately rejected.

When the men around him noticed the direction of his gaze, they too turned. At the sight of the woman from the stars, they flowed away like a wave leaving shore.

Toni didn't seem aware of the interpersonal dynamics of the group on the docks, heading for him unerringly, in that determined, single-minded way she had. The thought made him smile.

And the closer she came, the wider his smile grew.

When she came up with him, she took his arm, making the young men behind him gasp. It was an exceedingly impolite gesture between adults, but Kislan could see her expression now -- urgent, fearful even.

"Sha bo sham, Kislan."

"Sha bo sham, Toni."

"Can we talk in your office?"

"If you could wait a moment, tajan? I must finish here first." He thought she felt impatience at the delay, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it.

He completed his inspection of the cargo, aware of the woman from the stars the whole time. Finally, his job done, he turned to her. "I am at your service now."

She nodded curtly, and he paused for a moment until he remembered that in her culture, the gesture meant the opposite -- nodding was for agreement.

The ambassador must be very distracted if she forgot to shake her head; as if she had forgotten she was among the Mejan.

"What is it, Toni?" he asked as they hurried through the dark streets to the low building holding the offices of the factors of the house of Ishel. The stars flickered between the black streaks of the rings in the sky above them.

"Not here."

Kislan was starting to become worried. The streets were dark, there was no one near, and still she did not want to tell him why she had sought him out at night.

When they entered the office, his house brother Zhoran was still there, working by the light of a lamp at his elbow on the single small table, practicing the drawing-writing Kislan had been teaching him. Zhoran was captain of an Ishel merchant ship and wore the same colors as Kislan in his braids, those of the houses of Ishel and Kirtanar -- and a friend such as few men had.

Zhoran rose at Toni's entrance and lifted the back of his hand to his forehead in a sign of respect, waiting for her to speak first as was proper.

Toni returned the gesture. "Sha bo sham, Zhoran."

"Sha bo sham, tajan."

"Would you leave me alone with Kislan for a moment?"

"As you will."

Zhoran gathered up the parchment and brushes he had been using. "I will come to you again tomorrow evening for more instruction?" he said to Kislan.

But Toni left him no time to answer. "I wouldn't recommend it," she said. She indicated the parchment Zhoran held. "This is what I came to speak with Kislan about."

"Then perhaps Zhoran should remain?" Kislan suggested.

Again Toni nodded, forgetting for the second time in the space of a short walk where among the stars she was. She began to pace the small office with long, determined strides, those strides that were among the many things Kislan recalled whenever she ghosted through his waking dreams.

"I overheard a conversation at a gathering of the representatives of the Thirteen Cities in the common house tonight," she said, her voice like a calm sea far from shore, with barely a wave to disrupt it -- but with danger lurking in its depths. "If I understand it right, several of the women were discussing the rumor that increasing numbers of men in Edaru are learning to use drawing as writing -- and what to do about it."

For a while, the only sound in the room was that of Toni's footfalls on the stone floor.

"Do about it?" Kislan finally repeated.

"Al." The woman from the stars stopped pacing and faced him. "I fear for you."

"Why?"

"While this culture has no taboos against men using drawing-writing --"

Zhoran snorted, and for the first time since she had sought Kislan out this night, Toni smiled. "Yes, I know. How could there be a taboo regarding something that doesn't exist in Kailazh culture?" Her expression grew serious again. "But the women I overheard were talking about the danger to society if the rumor was true, men developing a system of writing of their own. I thought I even heard someone say that it might be a misdeed similar to that of trying to learn the Language of the House."

Kislan stared at her, unable to answer. Alnar ag Eshmaled, the Language of the House, was spoken only by women, and it was forbidden for men to learn it. Those who repeatedly tried after being warned were returned to the sea -- just as were men who struck a woman or stole from another house or murdered a brother.

"What are you saying?" Zhoran said.

"I'm saying that they may be changing the laws to make drawing-writing a crime." She took Kislan's hands. "And making you a criminal. I'm sorry."

His world was giving way beneath him like sand pulled back by the surf. How could he be a criminal? He had never committed more than small rebellions, and most of those even only in his mind: fantasizing using violence when he was angry, wanting to talk back to a mother, reading unaccepted messages into old tales -- wishing to have Toni for himself, like the lovers in the legend of the three moons.

When in reality, she did not want him at all.

But a criminal? Kislan loved Edaru, loved its way of life, loved the women and children of the house of Ishel. He might fantasize about breaking the laws of the Mejan, but he would never do it.

Would he?

"You must tell them they cannot do this, Toni."

She still held his hands, but now she dropped them and turned away. "How can I? I am not of the Mejan, am only an honorary member of the council. There must be some other way. Perhaps you can speak to Lanrhel or some other representative among the men?"

How could he have thought she would defend him? She had shared embraces with him, twice, three times, had seemed to want his attentions as the mothers of the house of Ishel had intended, but then she had turned him away.

She faced him again, eyes the color of a dashik flower and hair of night, short and curling around her face, not long enough for braids. "Is there anywhere you can go?"

Kislan nodded denial. "Go? No, there is nowhere to go outside of the Thirteen Cities. And if Edaru changes its laws, so will the others. I will not go anywhere."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ah, Kislan. I never should have started to teach you. You must stop now."

Stubbornness and even a hint of anger chased his confusion away. He looked at Zhoran; his house brother's lips were pressed together, as if there were something he wanted to say but couldn't.

Kislan took Toni's shoulders, despite the intimacy of the gesture: as much as he doubted her, he knew she would accept that degree of touch from him. And he needed it, those little connections they shared. "No, I will not stop. It should not be a crime for us to learn a new tool which will help us in the work we do. I am glad you taught me."

There was a sheen of moisture in her eyes, and Kislan couldn't help but smile. She wouldn't defend him, wouldn't take him to her bed, but on some level, she cared for him.

Toni blinked and gently removed his hands from her shoulders. "But I can teach you no more, Kislan. I have broken the rules of the Ayaissee by teaching you in the first place. It was wrong of me."

"It was not wrong," Kislan insisted.

"By our laws it was. Unless a government or a people requests it, we are not to share knowledge of our worlds with the cultures we visit."

"I requested it."

She sighed. "I know."

After she left, Zhoran took out a bottle of shabezh from the cupboard and poured them each a glass. They did not often indulge in such luxury: very little of the strong drink from the fruit of the joshaba tree was produced each year and it was quite expensive, even without the taxes placed on its distillation by the Thirteen Cities. But some occasions required such luxury.

They took the liquor and sat down on the two simple chairs the office boasted.

"There is a place, you know," Zhoran said.

Kislan shot a look of surprise at him. "What do you mean?"

"Where you could go. I've fished men out of the sea myself and taken them at least part of the way there."

Kislan tossed back the shabezh. "You mean, with the pirates?"

Zhoran shrugged. "Many of them are pirates, yes. But many are fugitives, trying to make a life for themselves outside of the world that has exiled them. Most are men like you and me, nothing more."

"How do you know so much about the outcasts on the eastern coast?"

His house brother leaned over the table. "I trade with them, Kislan -- those who are honest. And sometimes I bring them those who have been returned to the sea."

Kislan stared at Zhoran. It was strange how much life had changed in the space of an evening: he himself might be a criminal, and pirates were honest.

But he still was not willing to go live with them. "It doesn't matter. I won't leave here until I am forced to."

Zhoran smiled. "I didn't think you would. And it still may not come to that."

Kislan could only hope he was right.

#

Toni Donato stared up at the arc of Kailazh's rings. Until first contact, Kailazh had been known to the Allied Interstellar Community as Christmas for its colors and the shape of the one major continent, like a red Christmas tree on a sea of green. Now AIC used the Mejan word for "world," but sometimes she still thought of this place as "Christmas," especially when the air smelled as it did tonight, of something resembling cinnamon and allspice.

In the night sky above, the rings cut a swath of black across the multitude of stars, interrupted only by two of the three shepherd moons. "I've made a horrible mistake, Sam."

"That's putting it mildly," her colleague agreed out of the near-darkness beside her.

They were sitting on the veranda of the AIRA "house of women" -- which still consisted only of Toni. In order to conform to Mejan customs, Sam couldn't enter the building, but the veranda overlooking the spill of buildings leading down to the sea wasn't off-limits to men. And they had more privacy here than they would have had in the house shared by the men of the first contact team.

Toni took a sip of denzhar, a native dessert wine. "I truly didn't think teaching Kislan our form of writing would be regarded as such a bad thing. Men aren't strictly forbidden from learning even Mejan writing, after all."

"But it's socially discouraged. And that often amounts to the same thing. How many Mejan men do you know who master rodeli?" Rodeli was the Mejan word for writing -- which on this planet was done with a hooked needle and very fine yarn or thread. Toni's predecessor as xenolinguist on the first contact team had originally translated it as "crocheting" until they figured out that what they were dealing with were documents rather than decorative lace.

Toni sighed. "None."

"Exactly." Sam put his glass down on the table between them and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I know you've never been the most diplomatic person in the universe, Toni, but there's a reason why we're forbidden from doing anything to affect native society."

Samuel Wu was the team sociologist -- her logical brain had told her she wouldn't get any sympathy from him for messing with cultural norms. But he was her best friend on this world.

Toni put her glass down next to his and stood. "Well, the mere idea that we can leave native societies untouched is a myth, and you know it."

Sam looked up at her, shrugging. "Certainly it's a myth. But it's still one of the most important guidelines we have for our actions."

"I know, Sam. But the taboo against men writing is still unfair."

"True enough, but what do you want to do? Be a missionary? Free half a society?"

Toni leaned back against the railing enclosing the veranda. She gazed up at the two visible shepherd moons, the mother and the sister; the lover was lurking somewhere below the horizon tonight.

She wasn't a missionary -- and yet, Sam's accusations were justified. "I don't know what to do."

Sam got up and joined her at the railing. "I think you should tell Moshofski."

The day was short, the year was long, and Toni was tired. "But I might be sent off-planet."

"You should have thought of that before you started messing with the rules of this world."

Toni turned to face the darkened city below, resting her hands on the railing. Here and there the light from a lamp illuminated a window, while the stars on either side of the rings winked in broken reflections on the water of the bay. "Kislan was so interested when I told him about our way of writing -- and that men as well as women used it all the time," she murmured. "What would you have done?"

Sam was silent for a moment. "I don't know, Toni. I don't know."

#

It was getting more difficult by the day for Kislan to show the respect owed to the mothers of the city. Somehow, the simple knowledge that the Council of Edaru was considering creating laws to make him a criminal turned him into one.

The life he loved was gone, and resentment had taken its place.

As the trees began to unfurl their wide, red leaves and spring gave way to summer, Kislan had discovered a stubborn streak in himself that he never knew he had. He still took his tablet and parchment and pensil with him to the docks when a shipment of fine glassware from Muranu or decorative cut stone from Fesalis arrived that had to be tallied, and he still kept his records in the factor's office in the writing Toni had taught him.

It surprised him, his unwillingness to give up this new tool, even when he suspected the consequences. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say, his unwillingness to bend to something he considered wrong. He had spoken with Lanrhel, the chief male representative on the Council of Edaru, and while the councillor had been sympathetic, he had given Kislan little hope that the members of the council would be swayed by the argument of the drawing-writing's usefulness.

"You can make all the tallies you need with the knots we men have used for generations," Lanrhel had said. "Why start with a new system now, when so few can understand it?"

Kislan tapped his pensil against the parchment of his writing tablet. "I can be much more precise about the amounts and condition of the goods with this method. I always make a record in knots when I am back in my office, if I do not have an assistant with me for the purpose at the docks."

"You should consider returning to the old way exclusively," Lanrhel urged.

"I will consider it," Kislan said.

Of course he had not.

The news he was expecting arrived one rainy morning that made it feel as if summer were still very far away. After having finished tallying a shipment of leather goods from the tannery outside of town bound for Sithray, Kislan was helping get the cargo into the hold of the ship as quickly as possible. He wore a leather poncho and hood, but the rain still streamed down his face as he carried bundles on his shoulders between storehouse and gangplank and deck and hold.

He was coming down the gangplank, wiping rain out of his face, when Dibrel, one of his favorite boys in the house of Ishel, came barreling down the slick, wet streets, almost slipping as he turned the corner to the docks. "Kislan!" ten-year-old Dibrel called out, heading straight for him.

Kislan knelt down and caught the boy in his arms. "Dibrel! What are you doing away from the men's house? Don't you have lessons?"

"Sabair told me to come to you. You can't come this afternoon to teach the drawing-writing, or you will be sent back to the sea." The boy swallowed back a sob. "You won't be sent back to the sea, will you, Kislan?"

Despite the rain, despite the need to get the rest of the cargo protected in the hold of the ship, the men near enough to hear Dibrel had stopped what they were doing and stared at Kislan and the boy.

What was he supposed to say? Naturally he wouldn't go teach the boys today -- he didn't want to endanger them -- but he could hardly promise Dibrel that he wouldn't be sent back to the sea if he didn't even know yet if he would be able to abide by the new law.

"I don't know, Dibrel."

The little boy burst into tears.

Neyas, the captain of the ship, turned to the dock workers and others standing around, and clapped his hands. "Be about your work now!"

Kislan knelt there on the docks, Dibrel gathered to his chest under the poncho, and let the rain roll off them until the boy's sobs ebbed.

#

When Irving Moshofski brought Toni the news about the new law, she closed her eyes and put her forehead in her fists. She had been expecting it, of course, but on some irrationally optimistic level, she had hoped it wouldn't happen. The Mejan were ruled by women, after all -- and while she had never actually seen a society ruled by women before being assigned by the Allied Interstellar Research Association to Christmas-Kailazh, as a teenager and young adult, she had found comfort in the theories of a better, kinder matriarchy whenever she was confronted by social obstacles that felt as if they should have been dead centuries ago.

And now here was the better, kinder matriarchy being just as defensive about maintaining its hold on power as patriarchy ever had.

What was particularly disheartening was that the Council of Edaru was obviously aware that what they were doing was wrong: they had framed the prohibition on writing as an attempt to keep Mejan culture pure, keep the influence of the visitors from the stars from growing too strong until the Mejan inter-city council could decide on whether to join the Allied Interstellar Community and allow a larger presence of star-travelers on Kailazh. Only select scholars (all women, of course) were to be allowed to study the language and writing of the first contact team.

"You have discontinued all teaching of our writing to any Mejan men, as I requested?" Moshofski asked.

Toni nodded. "I stopped weeks ago."

"Good. It's hard to know what actions might disrupt an alien society, and we all make mistakes. But we will have to lay low for a while, I think."

She could only hope that Kislan would lay low too. Somehow she doubted it.

After Moshofski left contact house one, Toni packed her things in a leather satchel she had bought in the market of Edaru for a ring of iron.

It was time to visit the council of Edaru again.

The building which housed the government and administrative offices of the city was situated on a large square near the wharves, a long, low building of orangish-yellow stone decorated with wave-like patterns in shades of red and blue and purple. While the council itself was not meeting today, Toni was sure to find some of the members discussing improvements needed to the streets, or trading agreements with the other cities of the Mejan, or measures to be taken against the pirates -- or even the treaty being offered by AIC to join the alliance.

She pushed open the door into the wide central hallway, where lace hangings covered the walls -- what Toni had once misinterpreted as decorations. She now knew that they were records and histories, the equivalent of plaques in her native culture. The receptionist on duty in the Edaru common house raised the back of his hand to his forehead.

Toni returned the gesture. "Sha bo sham. Is Anash or Thuyene here today?"

"Sha bo sham, tajan." The young man shook his head. "They are both in the green receiving room."

"Do you think they would have time to see me?"

"I will check."

In short order, he returned and led Toni to a comfortable room at the back of the house with a view of the gardens behind the building.

Thuyene and Anash rose, tall, dark-haired women both, striking and self-possessed, but while Anash's hair was well-streaked with gray, Thuyene looked as young as Toni -- which probably meant she was much younger.

"Sha bo sham, Toni," Anash said. "To what do we owe the honor of this visit?"

"Kislan."

Neither woman responded for a moment.

Finally Thuyene spoke. "Ah, about the drawing-writing?" Toni thought she heard a hint of resentment in the other woman's voice, but it was still hard for her to read gestures and signals on this very foreign world.

Toni shook her head. "Yes. It is my mistake that he is using our way of writing, but there was no law against it when I arrived in Edaru."

"There is no blame," Anash said, and once again Toni thought she heard something very different in her tone of voice. "But with this knowledge you bring, things have changed, and we must change the laws accordingly."

"You must know that given the present developments, we are considering no longer teaching you Alanaru aka Shemaledam, ambassador," Thuyene added. This time Toni was sure her voice held a gloating note.

"But if you acknowledge my role in this, you cannot punish another," Toni said.

Anash nodded, disagreeing. "You are and remain a visiting dignitary. If the Thirteen Cities decide to send you from our world, to no longer deal with your Ayaissee, we still must deal with the changes your presence has brought about here."

Thuyene narrowed her eyes and the smile had disappeared from her face. "Fear not, you will take responsibility for your actions."

Anash continued. "If Kislan does not conform to the new law, we will see to it that you send him to the sea yourself."

#

The young male council member Sabair, one of the representatives of the house of Ishel, brought Kislan his first official warning.

Kislan was returning to the Ishel house of men from the factors' offices, when Sabair caught up with him on a steep, cobbled street leading away from the docks.

"Kislan, I need to speak with you."

Kislan looked at the younger man and shook his head in accord. "What is it, brother?"

To his credit, Sabair looked slightly embarrassed. Since the women of the House of Ishel had stopped sending for Kislan to warm their beds at night, Sabair had become the most popular man in the Ishel men's house. It didn't bother Kislan; he had long grown tired of being the most in demand. But it would be a while before Sabair reached that point, and right now he wouldn't believe Kislan anyway, thinking his denial injured pride.

"It has come to the attention of the council that you are still using the writing of the Ayaissee, although it has been forbidden," Sabair said. The late spring sun glinted on the unusual golden strands in his hair between his colorful braids, and his step was graceful and sure. Kislan had no problem understanding what the women of his house saw in the younger man. "I have been asked to officially inform you that you are under observation," his house brother continued. "If you do not comply with the new law, measures will have to be taken."

Kislan barely resisted the temptation to smile at the euphemism for returning him to the sea.

"Thank you for carrying the message."

The street leveled out, and they neared the large complex of buildings belonging to the house of Ishel. The elaborately carved stones of the lintel and entranceway to the common house were painted predominantly in the colors of the house, purple and green. Theirs was a rich family, and the two of them had been lucky to be asked to join it.

Right now, Kislan could no longer care. And he didn't understand what had happened to him.

He caught sight of Dibrel playing with the other boys in the courtyard between the houses of men and women just as the boy caught sight of them and ran to greet him.

Kislan, not Sabair.

He blinked away tears, realizing that it wasn't true that he could no longer care.

But somehow, even the love of a child wasn't enough for him to change his course. The new law was wrong, and Kislan would continue to take his tablet and parchment and pensil with him to the docks. He knew that just as he knew that the smell of a child clinging to his hips was one of the great joys of this life.

#

Kislan's sentence was pronounced less than a ten-day later: he would be returned to the sea when all three moons were visible in the sky.

To his surprise, instead of being ostracized, Kislan found that the men of Edaru began to seek him out in a nearly constant stream. Surreptitiously, for the most part, a chance meeting on the sea wall or in the outskirts of Edaru, the places he spent the three days left to him walking now that he could no longer work as a factor for the house of Ishel. And the men who spoke to him all had rumors and advice and words of encouragement, claiming to know that the pirates of the eastern coast would take him in, claiming to have received messages from others who had been returned to the sea, long after they were gone.

Men who sympathized with his plight and feared for him, but on some level even seemed to envy him a little.

Kislan had never known the potential for rebellion in his society -- he had thought the men of the Thirteen Cities almost universally content with their lot.

Perhaps they were, but it appeared that many found the punishments meted out by the council too harsh by far.

Zhoran too sought him out, away from the building complex of the house of Ishel, away even from the house of men, and he had more than rumors and support to offer.

He had a plan.

"Meet me in the woods west of the Ayaissee landing base before dusk," Zhoran murmured when they "chanced" to run into each other at the sea wall on a day heavy with rain, the second day after Kislan's sentence.

Among the tharush and yenzi trees, their thick fronds of red and orange growing wider by the day, Zhoran told him that his ship was scheduled to leave for Larhas with a shipment of the finely tooled leather garments -- the same day Kislan would be returned to the sea.

"I cannot leave immediately, they will be watching the ships too closely," Zhoran said. "But if you swim south and east, there is an atoll within sight of the coast about half a day away. You must try to find it and I will pick you up there, hopefully before nightfall."

They both knew that Kislan would first have to survive that long.

"And then what?" Kislan asked.

"I have already sent word to a captain of the Tusalis. I hope it will reach him and that he will meet us and take you to the cities of the east."

Kislan resisted the temptation to object to going with pirates. What choice did he have?

"You are a true brother, Zhoran."

"And you, Kislan. But now I must return to overseeing the packing of the goods. There is little time if I want to leave the day after tomorrow."

"Will it not look suspicious that you moved up your departure?"

Zhoran shrugged, grinning. "I have already moved it back, claiming my ship needed repairs. I had to be ready."

Kislan's throat tightened, and he embraced the older man.

But Zhoran was not the only one who sought him out on the sea wall with a plan, as it turned out. The next day, the last day before he was to be returned to the sea, he ran into the ambassador from the stars herself.

Near the same spot where they had once embraced.

"I cannot be seen speaking with you long," Toni said hurriedly, her face turned away, pretending to ignore him. "I am to be one of the three women who will be returning you to the sea tomorrow. I will contrive to speak with you, and you must do as I say. I do not yet know if all will go as I hope."

Kislan shook his head assent. "You wish to help me?"

He saw her start, but she didn't turn to face him. "I will do what I can."

"It would have been better if you had done something earlier."

She looked down at the stones beneath their feet. "I tried, I'm sorry. But now I must go. If they suspect me of wanting to help you, the council may change its plans in having me take part."

With that, she hurried away towards the city, leaving him with more questions than answers.

#

Toni was fighting unwelcome emotions as she left Kislan behind on the sea wall. What was happening to her? When Toni had realized that Kislan was little more than a present to her from the leading house of Edaru, she had thought her initial attraction to him over - the exotic foreigner, desirable member of a reigning house, had suddenly become little better than a slave. She had not been proud of her reaction, of her change of mind, but there it was.

And now, with his rebellion, he was gaining in fascination again.

Her confused feelings aside, she had to save him if she could. Unfortunately, she didn't know if he would take the tracer even if she did contrive to give it to him; he no longer trusted her.

Since part of the ceremony was the ritual stripping and head-shaving of the person to be returned to the sea, Toni could not give him the device until just before he was to dive into the ocean from which all life came. And it would have to be something no one would notice. She had decided on one of the flesh-toned ear inserts first contact teams often used for covert recording and communication operations.

With a tracer, she could find him when she had a chance to get away from Edaru. She could help him.

His sentence was her fault.

But when she returned to Contact House One, Jackson Gates was removing the tracking sensor from the insert she had prepared and replacing it with a recorder.

He looked up when she entered. "Irving and I will be wearing these tomorrow to make a recording of the ceremony. I don't think you'll need one."

That was more than a hint. Which meant she would have to come up with another plan.

#

Toni followed Kislan and his guards to the end of the pier, the tracer embedded in a tiny piece of macramé she had created of thread and thin wires and resting in a pocket of the finely tooled leather cape she wore. Next to her were Anash and Thuyene of the house of Ishel, Anash carrying the length of lace recording the events of Kislan's life, his fashar.

Toni had to get her hands on it.

The morning air was cool, but at least the sun was shining. Toni only hoped that Kislan would survive the ceremony, that the extreme lung capacity of the natives of Kailazh would take him past banishment and past danger.

When she had first seen a vid of the ceremony of "returning to the sea" on the way from Admetos to her new assignment on Kailazh, it had reminded her of nothing so much as an execution. Now that she had been on this planet for half a Kailazh year -- in pure hours of time, what amounted to about nine standard months -- she knew that many if not most of those made to "walk the plank" survived the experience. The punishment was in essence banishment.

It still didn't make her feel any better following Kislan to the end of the pier. A man she had once imagined she loved.

And was beginning to imagine she loved once more.

Anash had the fashar draped over her extended arms as they marched slowly behind Kislan and Lanrhel and the two other men flanking them. Toni brushed her hand next to the lace to see if Anash would notice. She didn't. With one hand, Toni pinched the trailing length of fashar while she pulled the tracer out of her pocket with the other. Their pace was stately and slow, and Toni quickly wound the wire and thread of the tracer through the gaps in the lace she held.

Hopefully it would hold. And hopefully Kislan would retrieve it from the sea.

Now all she had to do was get the message to him to go after his fashar once it was tossed after him -- tell him here in the middle of this public ritual of humiliation and exile.

Perhaps if she provided a distraction? A distraction should be easy enough. She was nearly blinded by tears anyway, tears that many watching the ceremony had probably noticed.

Toni pretended to stumble on the hem of her long, formal leather cape, going to hands and knees on the pier with a grunt of pain.

Automatically, Kislan whirled around and knelt down to come to her aid. To Toni's relief, no one pulled him away from her, perhaps held back by some instinctive respect for emotionally charged moments -- despite the differences in their respective cultures.

"You must retrieve the lace flung after you into the ocean," Toni murmured urgently, her head still bowed. "There is a tracer hidden in it that will help me find you." But of course there was no word for "tracer" in his language, Alnar ag Ledar. Toni had made up a term for it, kay ag rosalek or "tool of following." She wasn't surprised when he looked at her blankly.

But now the hands she had expected were at her elbows, lifting her up, just as Kislan was being drawn up and away, and there was no more time to explain. She tried to meet his eyes, see if he had understood her message, but he was already being yanked around to face his fate at the end of the pier.

Toni's tears began flowing in earnest.

#

Kislan allowed himself to be turned back towards the sea, wondering what Toni had meant.

And what he should do. Her tears had been real, of that he was sure, and her stumble had been staged. Toni did not stumble, she strode. She had contrived to speak with him as she had promised yesterday.

But what did it mean? Should he really retrieve the record of his life from the sea? He was leaving that life, it was over. He hoped he would make it beyond the boundaries of Edaru, but even if he did, his fashar was of no interest to anyone anymore, least of all him. He no longer had a birth house or a chosen house that would care to hang the written memory of his achievements on their walls.

Only according to Toni, the lace hid a tool that would help her to find him.

Did he even want the Ayaissee ambassador to find him? Toni had abandoned him, after all.

His future was out there, beyond the waters of the world, not behind him, in his home, with the house of Ishel and the woman from the stars.

Kislan rubbed his bare scalp. It was strange how cold the skin felt with his head shaved, especially here in the harbor, where the sea winds did not have to hide behind the walls of buildings. He felt Toni's presence at his back, much more than that of Anash and Thuyene, women he had slept with, who had born children who were a part of the family of Ishel, children he played with on the house grounds or in the common rooms.

But Toni had held out hope of change. And then snatched it away.

When they arrived at the end of the pier, Lanrhel stepped forward, a man of Kislan's birth house. For the first time, Kislan wondered how Lanrhel felt about this particular duty.

"Mukhaired ag Kislan bonaashali derladesh," Lanrhel pronounced to the watching masses on the pier and on the shore. Kislan's shame will now certainly be purged. Lanrhel then ordered Kislan to remove his clothes, the finest leather garments he possessed -- he was not about to go through this ritual any more humbly than he had to.

When he was naked, he dove into the water, not waiting for the two guards to push him. Besides, that way he could get farther out, faster.

Only he had to wait to look for the lace.

The cold water of the bay enclosed him, and he wished he could come up sooner than he knew was feasible. He was only glad it was late spring and not winter; he suspected that fewer survived who were returned to the sea in the cold months than in the warm.

Kislan circled below the surface to see if Anash would fling the lace close to where he'd gone into the water. He couldn't afford to spend much time here -- he had to get out to sea.

But there it was, drifting down through the refracted light of the water. He swam to what was left of his life, tied it around his wrist, and began swimming out for deep water as quickly as he could.

#

After the fashar had been flung into the ocean, Toni gazed at the spot where Kislan had disappeared beneath the surface of the green-gray water, her tears drying on her cheeks. This was the second time she had participated in such a ceremony, and she hoped she never had to again, never had to witness it even.

He had to be safe, probably was safe. The lung capacity of the Mejan went far beyond that of any other humans discovered thus far in the galaxy, and the slight webbing between their fingers and toes was further proof that they were much more at home in the water than humans on other planets.

But if only she could have stopped it.

#

Kislan swam hard for the deep water beyond the bay. When he judged he was far enough out to sea, he surfaced, gulping deep breaths of air. Instinctively, he began to shake his head, but there was no longer any hair to shake out of the way.

He was without braids and without home.

He could still see the buildings of Edaru clustered around the bay in the distance, so he dove below the surface again and headed south and east, away from the Thirteen Cities and the life he had known. It would be some time before Zhoran could take the ship to find him without arousing suspicion.

Kislan continued that way, diving and surfacing, diving and surfacing, until his arms began to tire. If he wasn't far enough away from shore now, it was his misfortune, because he had to rest. He rolled over on his back and allowed himself to drift on the ocean swells for a while. At least he was no longer cold: the physical exertion had warmed him, and now the late morning sun on the bare skin of his chest and thighs made him feel almost comfortable.

When he was more rested, he continued to swim southeast, slower strokes on the surface this time, preserving his energy as much as possible, swimming with the tides and current whenever he could. If he could not find the atoll by nightfall, he would have to swim for shore as the rhythms of the sea allowed, even if he was not yet outside of the territory of Edaru. This far from the city, the chances were slight that someone would find him and bring him in -- or slay him outright for being a braidless outcast, as the case might be.

Kislan kept the shoreline within sight to his left and continued alternately swimming and resting. Not only did it help his orientation, as long as he could still see shore, the danger from a hungry sihla or ikas was not as great, those beasts of the deepest part of the ocean.

As he swam and rested and swam again, time became like the water buoying him, and it was increasingly more difficult to hold on to a sense of its passing. He could still judge the progress of the day from the position of the sun in the sky in relation to the shoreline, but somehow it made no sense to him.

The sun was already slanting low towards the horizon, and he still had not found the atoll Zhoran had spoken of. But if he made for shore, there would no longer be any chance that Zhoran could bring him to the land of the Tusalis.

Kislan began to tread water, turning slowly in a circle. It had been at least half a day since he had been returned to the sea. Perhaps he had missed it, swimming too close to shore?

And then, to his relief, he saw a ship emerging through the changing light. He continued to tread water, occasionally lifting an arm to signal as the ship drew near. It was a good thing his house brother was on the lookout for him and knew the direction he had gone, even if he had not found the atoll -- an ocean was a big place to search for a single man.

When they threw the ropes over and pulled him up the side of the vessel, Kislan couldn't believe how exhausted he was. His arms and legs ached with the exertion of swimming almost constantly for over half a day, and he was colder than he could ever remember being. The warmth provided by the movement of his muscles was gone, and when the evening air hit his bare, wet skin, he began to shiver so hard he couldn't stop.

"Blankets!" Zhoran called out. Kislan was bundled up so quickly, he assumed they'd brought them to the deck as soon as they sighted him. But then, Zhoran had said he'd pulled more than one man out of the sea, so he must know what was needed by this time.

Once Kislan was covered up and drying off, another sailor brought him hot tea, and Zhoran lead him into the captain's chambers. "What is it you have around your wrist, my friend?" his house brother asked, indicating the sodden piece of lace.

Kislan grimaced. "My fashar."

Zhoran laughed out loud. "I have never heard of one returned to the sea actually retrieving the record of the life he left behind. But then you would do things differently, wouldn't you, Kislan?"

Even though he was still shaking with cold and exhaustion, Kislan was still awake enough to wonder that Zhoran actually seemed to expect him to do the unexpected.

But as soon as he had bedded down on the bunk he was led to, he was aware of nothing at all for a very long time.

#

After Toni returned to Contact House Two from the ceremony, she couldn't stop berating herself. She had gone over everything in her head so many times, and she could come up with nothing she feasibly could have done differently -- except never to have taught Kislan their way of writing in the first place.

Somehow, she couldn't regard that as wrong.

But before she went back to work, as she knew she must, she called up her computer.

"System, show me the location of tracking sensor six," she said as she shucked her fine leather cape, wondering if she would have the heart to ever wear it again.

The holo well produced a map of the coastline of the Kailazh supercontinent, with a small blinking dot out to sea just south of Edaru. Moving. At least that. But he had not made for land yet.

She wouldn't think about the possibility that moving in water might mean the tracer was now showing her the location of a sihla.

During the day, she checked the location of the tracking sensor every time she had a chance to get back to the "women's house" of the first contact team -- and every time it was still out to sea. Following the coast, which made it unlikely he'd been swallowed by a sea monster, but still not on land.

Which meant she couldn't go out in a skycar to find him and bring him back to the landing base where he would be safe.

If she only knew what had happened to him.

#

"Kislan, get up finally! The ship of Yondago draws near!"

Kislan opened his eyes reluctantly and pushed himself up on his elbows. "How long have I slept?"

Zhoran grinned. "Near a day, friend. Come, we must clothe you, unless you want to go to a new home wearing nothing but your skin."

At the words "new home," Kislan's courage nearly abandoned him. He did not want a new home, he wanted the old, the place where he had grown up and lived his entire life, the people who had always surrounded him -- and the people who had entered the world of Edaru from so far away that his imagination was unable to encompass the distance.

Toni.

Zhoran gave him a simple leather tunic and sandals, and he slipped them on after washing the sleep from his eyes in a basin of water standing on a side table. His muscles still ached from the long swim of the day before, but otherwise he felt surprisingly refreshed.

"Ready, brother?" Zhoran asked.

Kislan nodded.

On deck, the sea breeze prickled the skin of his scalp, reminding him that he was now braidless as a baby. He glanced down at the bedraggled strip of lace looped around his wrist: braidless perhaps, but he still had the record of his life -- and whatever tool of following Toni had hidden in it before she had allowed him to be returned to the sea.

Another braidless man waited for them, in garb the color of dried blood, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Yondago," Zhoran said, "this is Kislan. Kislan, Yondago."

"Yöndahko," the other man corrected, extending his fist. "If you are to be one of us, you must learn to speak the language of the pirates."

Kislan stared at the fist for a moment, not knowing what to do with it, and then looked into the other man's gray-blue eyes above a nose that looked like it had once been broken but displayed no scar. The man wore his gray hair past his shoulders, but it was free of colored braids.

Kislan extended his own fist. "Zhoran told me you were no pirate."

The one with the name so hard to say knocked the fist Kislan held out. He turned to face the ship's captain, chuckling. "Zhoran, someday you must begin to teach those you fish out of the sea." He turned back to Kislan. "This word -- 'pirate' -- it is the old word for 'men' in the language used among the Tusalis and the Kishudiu. This was before those who called themselves 'the people' left with almost everything that remained of kaiseem culture."

Yöndahko -- a name full of sounds Kislan was vaguely familiar with, sounds from earliest childhood. This braidless man with the iron-gray hair of experience faced him down with words he did not know and sounds he had almost forgotten.

Kislan crossed his arms in front of his chest, mirroring the stance of the pirate. "Since I have no knowledge either of pirates or kaiseem culture, you will have to teach me."

Yöndahko threw back his head and laughed, then stepped forward and slapped Kislan on the shoulder. "You will do well, young man."

#

Kislan had been less than two ten-days among the pirates before he understood what Yöndahko had really meant during that exchange before they had crossed the gangplank to board the pirate ship and head for the east.

You will do well, young slave.

Not that his house brother Zhoran had given him into slavery with Yöndahko -- as the crew of the Jofaano explained to him amidst a welter of laughter and coarse sexual descriptions, the word for "man" in Alnar ag Ledar was related to the word for "slave" in the language of the Tusalis. When the women of the Mejan had fled the wars that nearly destroyed their world, the only male survivors among them had been slaves. Men had been replaced by slaves -- and the men of the Tusalis found it funny that Mejan men knew no other word for themselves.

Despite Kislan's pride in the culture of his birth, it was not enough to protect him from humiliation.

If he had thought his world turned upside-down by being returned to the sea, the journey south and then north again on the ship of Yöndahko turned it over yet again and shook it up for good measure. Kislan had recovered from the half-a-day's swim better than he could recover from the attitudes and assumptions of the men on the Jofaano.

Not the least of which was that the word "kaiseem" was not a kind of culture like "Mejan" -- it was a word denoting ownership in some way.

Many of the sailors spoke the language of Kislan's birth, the language of the sea, but most of the time they didn't bother. He was thrown like a small child into the surf, struggling for understanding like air. He had to pull his weight on the ship, hoisting sails and fastening cables and keeping watch, but often he did not understand what was wanted of him. Many words sounded familiar, but all of them together made no sense, and he was forced to piece together meanings, to slowly comprehend the language of the Tusalis.

The Tusalis were the stuff of legend for Kislan, the ancient people who had nearly warred themselves into extinction fighting the Kishudiu before the Mejan left this part of the world and founded Edaru and the other cities along the western coast. Kislan didn't know how much truth there was to it, but these sailors and traders regarded themselves as the descendants of that legendary nation -- and they were proud of it.

"The women of the Thirteen Cities have distorted everything, you know," Yöndahko explained to him one day after they had rounded the tip of the continent. The winds were right, and the captain had some time to lean against the railing and watch lands pass by nearly barren of the thick spring vegetation of Edaru, with its reds and ochres and oranges. "The Tusalis are not evil. But your women hate us so much, they deny that we even exist. To them, we are only the outcasts, a bastard culture unable to exist without preying on them."

The speech of the Tusalis was full of concepts Kislan struggled with, even when he had begun to make sense of the words. As he traveled with the Jofaano and the days had grown hotter and then colder again, he had learned the words of possession, but still kad janu - "your women" in the language of Yöndahko -- was almost beyond comprehension. And "bastard," djakan, Kislan understood well enough as a negative term when one of Yöndahko's crew shouted it at him when he was too slow hoisting a sail or passing a bottle of shabezh. But when the ship's mate Gorazh had tried to explain it to him, Kislan's mind could not get around the concept; according to what he said, every child of the Mejan would be this vile thing. The Tusalis assumptions as to honorable birth were so different from his own that the mere idea made no sense.

They had been sailing north for a complete exchange of the moons when the wind filling their sails began to grow cooler. And less than a ten-day more, the port of Belraash came into view.

Ancient stone ruins bordered the harbor town, wide pillars no longer carrying roofs straining towards the sky. Kislan stood at the railing, watching buildings older than the memories of his people slip by. While walls of a number of tall, impressive structures still stood, much of the dead city had obviously been used as a quarry.

The living city of Belraash was much smaller than the dead, but to Kislan's eyes it looked barely better. It stood just past the ruins on the entrance to a huge bay so wide, to the northeast the land on the opposite side was no longer visible.

Kislan twisted the length of fashar around his wrist. He felt as if he were sailing into legend -- he was about to enter one of the cities destroyed by the great, unending wars of Mejan myth.

And that mythical place would be his home now.

#

Toni paced the veranda of Contact House One. "How am I going to get to him, Sam? He's on the other side of the bleeding supercontinent!"

Sam shrugged. "Or else a sihla is."

"Not funny, Sam."

"Maybe not, but you have to consider the possibility, Toni."

No, she couldn't think that way, couldn't contemplate that the tracking sensor might be giving her the coordinates of something other than Kislan.

But of course she already had.

"What I have to consider is how to get over there and find him."

"Well, then, how?"

Toni crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We could combine it with work."

"We?"

It hadn't occurred to Toni until this moment, but suddenly she realized that if she could enlist Sam for an expedition, she had a chance of getting to Kislan, reassuring herself that he was safe. She could hardly hijack a skycar and disappear by herself for days, but if she went through the proper channels, applied for its use for a research trip, there was a good chance she would get it.

"Come on, Sam. We've been talking about visiting the cultures on the eastern coast of the continent for months now. And it looks like that's where Kislan is headed, for the ruins of the old civilization, in one of the cities of the so-called pirates."

"We've also been talking about how we don't have the funding or the personnel for that kind of expedition." But she could see the way his eyes lit up at the prospect of another unknown culture to explore, new mores to investigate.

She had almost won. "Not a true expedition, just -- an exploratory field trip. We don't need much funding for just the two of us to make a short visit to the other side of the continent."

Sam grinned. "Has anyone ever told you you're stubborn, Donato?"

Toni grinned back. "Plenty of times. So, are you in?"

"Of course I'm in. Would I pass up an opportunity to examine an unknown culture?"

She heaved a sigh of relief. She was almost sure that Kislan was safe, with the tracking sensor nearing the most logical place for a man given back to the sea to go. But she couldn't forget that she had promised to find him as long as he kept the lace with him, his fashar.

Which he obviously had.

And if he had retrieved a scrap of lace from the ocean in order for her to be able to come after him, she couldn't let him down again.

Even if she wouldn't be able to fulfill her promise until AIRA and AIC bureaucracy had run its course.

#

Kislan didn't understand how it had happened, since he had not been traveling with Yöndahko long enough for such a radical change in seasons, but while it had been late spring in Edaru when he left, snow had already begun to cover the mountains to the west when he arrived in Belraash. Now, after five exchanges of the moons, the days were growing noticeably longer again and the nights not quite as cold.

While he still felt a stranger here, as a factor experienced with the trading fleets of the Thirteen Cities, he had quickly made a place for himself. Kislan knew many of the captains and the traders of the Mejan well, and knew their trading routes and the goods they often carried. His awkwardness with the language of the Tusalis was not enough to outweigh the advantage of his knowledge of the Mejan language and Mejan ways. Now that he had been in Belraash most of the winter, he was learning the language too.

He was waiting on the docks with two assistants as Yöndahko's ship came in, fingering the lace encircling his left wrist. Behind and beside them were also a number of the wives of Yöndahko's men, and even more of the women who haunted the wharf area of the small town, selling their bodies to sailors and pirates. Among the Tusalis, sex spilled out onto the streets, sometimes even taking place on the streets, and a woman sold herself for a ring of gold -- or iron if she were particularly talented or pretty.

One of the many things Kislan found so very difficult to get used to.

He felt the fashar beneath his palm, and began to rotate the length of lace like a bracelet in a gesture he had developed since arriving in Belraash. His odd choice of adornment had even given him a name here among the Tusalis -- Kislan Lace-Wearer.

The gangplank went down, and the crew began unloading goods to be tallied from Kislan's former home -- probably leather garments from Edaru among them. As much as he tried to wipe it from his heart, those little reminders still made him homesick.

Yöndahko strode over, handing Kislan a length of fashar with a list of the goods they had brought with them on this voyage, according to the records kept aboard ship.

"A successful trip?" Kislan asked.

The crooked-nosed captain slapped him on the back and chuckled. "Very successful. Sometimes it is more than worth the risk to make a winter voyage, when so many other traders stay in port."

Kislan smiled. He didn't know what he would have done without Yöndahko. The older man had not only given him work, he had even given him a place in his home for the first few ten-days until Kislan had been able to pay for rooms of his own.

Although living alone was yet another thing Kislan found difficult to get used to. While he had been with Yöndahko, sons and daughters and grandchildren had come and gone in a nearly constant stream, and it was almost like living in a house of the Mejan. The rooms he rented for himself were much too quiet.

He wondered how little Dibrel was doing these days.

"And what are you bringing us?" Kislan asked, glancing at the fashar Yöndahko had given him.

"Brocade from Tanay, goblets from Muranu -"

The captain broke off as a loud argument erupted nearby. Yöndahko's crew member Gorazh and his wife, of course. Kislan looked away when Gorazh slapped her, but he could still hear the ring of flesh against flesh, followed by the sound of subdued crying. Every instinct rebelled at allowing a woman to be treated in such a way: his muscles strained to spring up and wrestle Gorazh into submission, to take him before the council for judgment.

And every instinct cried out that he was making himself guilty for not doing so. The ways of Belraash were wrong, wrong, wrong.

But here he could learn writing -- not the odd drawing-writing that Toni had been teaching him, true writing with needle and yarn. And no one would throw him into the sea for it, or any other imagined sin.

Yöndahko took his elbow and drew him away. "Gently, my friend," he murmured under his breath.

"Did I do anything?"

"No, but you were quivering like a renjai before a race."

Together they strolled along the docks, silent, while Kislan collected himself, willing his nerves to calm. The harbor area here in Belraash was much more modest than in Edaru, but many of the buildings themselves were tall and imposing, built with precisely-cut stones scavenged from the Tusalis ruins.

Yöndahko still had a hand on Kislan's elbow. "Most men here don't strike their women, you know."

"I know." But he wanted to make them all understand that it wasn't right. How did other men of the Mejan who had found their way to the Tusalis deal with their strange ways? Perhaps he should find others, talk to them. The way he felt now, Belraash would never be home.

Yöndahko had done so much for him, Kislan was almost guilty about adapting so poorly to life among the Tusalis. But that wasn't strictly true -- his knowledge was needed here. One of the many surprises of his new life had been learning how many of the captains he had known from his work in Edaru traded with the "pirates." He was now convinced that most of the shipments of domrhene, the fine purple stone beloved of the women of the Thirteen Cities, had actually come from the mines in the frozen mountains west of Belraash Bay.

Superficially, he had adapted; he had work, he had friends of sorts, he had a place in the life of the city.

And the ways of the Tusalis still made no sense to him.

Among the Mejan, the sea was the realm of men, and the house the realm of the women.

Here, both the land and the sea were the realms of men. There was no place where women ruled.

Yöndahko shrugged. "I know you think our ways are not right, even if you no longer say it. But what is right? Your 'right' sent you into the sea and to us."

Kislan winced. His friend did not have to remind him -- there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't think about how he was a criminal according to the way of life he believed in.

A young woman lurking in a doorway gave him a slow smile, and Kislan looked away, still embarrassed by this form of open sexuality in Belraash. In Edaru, sexuality remained mostly in the house, in the family, sometimes shared with guests -- as the House of Ishel had intended to share him with Toni.

Kislan wondered if the women of his house ever thought of the embraces they had once exchanged during sweaty nights. In his former life, Thuyene had requested him more often than any of the other men of the house of Ishel. Did she ever regret that he had been returned to the sea?

Ever miss him?

She had played her role admirably that spring day.

While Toni had broken down. The woman from the stars with whom he had shared no more than a few brief kisses, what seemed so very long ago now. She had promised to come after him, and yet she had not.

But still he wore the fashar around his wrist.

#

Irving Moshofski and Jackson Gates saw them off at the xenoteam landing base ten kilometers outside of Edaru. A small prefab building, one of the half-a-dozen modest structures at the base, it held a surprising amount of technological wonders that the first contact team was forbidden from bringing into populated areas, like the small two-person solar skycar now waiting for Toni and Sam on the landing site. It combined minimal fuel requirements for take-off and ground transportation, largely solar-powered flight, versatility, and stealth technology, making it an ideal vehicle for AIRA researchers on a restricted-contact world.

And it was just another example of the basic hypocrisy of AIRA missions, Toni thought -- using stealth technology so that cultural contamination could be kept to a minimum. But it was probably still better than the alternatives: dumping the awareness of all the technical marvels of the universe on an unsuspecting culture all at once, or being limited in their research exclusively to what they could achieve with native technology.

They shook hands with Moshofski and Gates. "Our turn for a field trip," Sam said, grinning. As the team planetologist and exobiologist, the other two spent much more of their time away from Edaru and the contact house, examining different life forms and geological formations in various regions on the planet. Toni had used that fact to expedite getting permission for their own trip.

Even expedited, it had taken much too long. The battery on the tracer she had given Kislan was running down, and at times she couldn't even pick up the signal anymore. But for the past four standard months, the signal had been coming from the city of ruins on the opposite side of the continent, and she assumed that was where she would find him even if the sensor gave out entirely.

"Enjoy your field trip," Gates said.

"But be careful," Moshofski admonished, his gray eyes serious. "We don't know how much truth there is to the tales of the Mejan that the settlements on the other side of the continent are inhabited by lawless pirates."

Toni nodded, repressing a smile. "We will." Their probes in the region of the ancient cities of the Kishudiu and the Tusalis had indicated small commercial centers and persistent settlements without obvious signs of civil unrest. Of course, piracy did exist on the wide seas of Kailazh, that was real enough, but not where they were going.

As they lifted off, heading for the cold, unfriendly interior of the continent, Toni felt a rush of happiness. As opposed to jumps between solar systems, she had always enjoyed flying over land, close enough to see roads and structures and geological formations. Before long, they had a view of high snow-capped mountains and nearly inaccessible deep red valleys.

And soon she would see Kislan again. Hopefully.

#

By evening, they were circling over the city where the signal from Kislan's tracer had been coming from. There looked to be more ruins than intact buildings.

"In order to land, we're going to have to find a valley on the other side of the foothills," Sam said. "The level spots here are too close to the town."

"Ok."

They discovered a wide meadow past the hills ringing the city in an area that didn't seem to be inhabited. The eastern coast of the continent was sparsely populated compared to the territory of the Mejan, and only the fields closest to the urban structures were cultivated. The hike to the city through the range of hills would take them several hours at least, and it was too late to set out now. After finding a rocky outcropping to hide their vehicle once the wings were retracted, they set up their smart tent and studied the information on the area available in the databases of their AIs while making a dinner of travel rations.

The next morning, they stowed their gear in the skycar and packed leather travel packs, designed by copying styles observed on vids their probes had taken on these shores.

"So, will I do?" Sam asked, modeling his "camouflage."

Toni examined him critically. Neither of them had the webbing between the lower joints of their fingers, but that was not what would give them away -- with his Earth-Asian features, Sam would never be taken for a native of Kailazh. They had provided him with an eye-patch and a story about an accident which deformed his face. The colder weather here in the northern hemisphere might help them as well -- Sam intended to keep the hood of his cape over his head while they searched for Kislan in the ruined city.

Toni nodded. "We're not planning to spend too much time here, after all."

Sam grimaced. "Unfortunately. All we get to do is take a peek at the men's world and disappear again."

"Hey, a peek is better than nothing, right?"

"Ask me again when we're back in Edaru."

Toni laughed and they set off through the hills in the direction of the immense bay and the imposing ruins on the shore.

#

Even as rubble, what was left of the ancient city was impressive. Tall, reddish-pink columns stood high above thick stone walls, and beyond it all, the gray-green of the late winter ocean winked in the sun. Behind her, Sam murmured into his AI as they walked, making notes about his impressions of the architecture and what it might have meant on a sociological level, but Toni just allowed herself to enjoy another new place for the moment.

It was going to be even harder finding Kislan than she had originally anticipated -- as the battery of the tracer had begun to weaken, so had the accuracy. She could pinpoint him to no closer than this city.

But Kislan had worked at the docks in Edaru, and it was a good bet that he would fulfill a similar function here. Once she and Sam were in the area of the harbor, she could use the biotrace assay to pick up the "scent" of his pheromones.

But what would she do with him when she found him?

That was a question Toni hadn't been able to answer yet. Mostly she wanted to see with her own eyes that he was all right, that he wasn't being mistreated in any way. She hoped he wasn't a slave among these slave-holding people -- if so, she would have to find some way to get him out.

And she wanted him to know that she had kept her promise to find him.

As the ruins got smaller, intact buildings began to appear, taller than those the Mejan favored, but with the same swirling painted designs gracing the walls. People looked at her and Sam curiously, but no one stopped them or confronted them, and Toni's confidence grew as the buildings became denser and the streets more narrow. It would do no good to show fear, so when the men lounging in front of the taverns in their winter leggings stared at her, she gazed back unflinchingly, curious. As far as she could tell, she and Sam had gotten the outfits right at least.

"Which way?" Sam murmured.

Toni glanced at her AI, checking a rudimentary map. "Here," she said, turning a corner that would take them in the direction of the harbor.

In the street in front of them, a group of men with swords and daggers and spears stepped in their path and blocked their way.

She and Sam whirled around to run, when another dozen men appeared from the side streets to cut off their escape route.

"Shit," Toni muttered, so low that only Sam could hear.

"I don't think blasting our way out is an option," he said, surprisingly level-headed given all the sharp objects pointed in their direction. "Here's hoping they ask questions first."

She saw him press the emergency button on his AI and she nodded, following suit. "I wonder what we did wrong?"

#

It wasn't what they had done wrong, it was what Toni had done wrong -- walk with confidence and look men in the eye. Not a cultural detail which could be easily gleaned from the vids provided by probes.

The man Toni presumed was some kind of soldier or police officer slapped her again, and the pain brought stinging tears to her eyes. "Why have the Mejan sent spies to Belraash? And tell me no more children's stories of being one of the visitors from the stars!"

Toni stretched out her bound hands, spreading her fingers wide. "See?" she said in the language of the Tusalis. Since Kislan's tracer had stopped its movement here, in their territory, she had been teaching herself the language as best she could by studying the vids from the probes. "No webbing."

The man kicked her legs and she winced. "Every generation there are a dozen or more with this deformity. It is no proof."

Despite her pain and fear, Toni's researcher brain made a mental note to tell Jackson Gates that particular detail the next time she saw him. At her own odd reaction, totally irrational laughter bubbled up out of her throat.

Earning her a slap so hard, it sent her flying out of her chair and onto the floor.

Two more men lurking in the background came forward and took her shoulders roughly, setting her back on the chair.

Toni swallowed back the hysteria that threatened to overcome her. "And the appearance of my companion, Samuel Wu? Is that no proof?"

"He told us it was an accident."

She closed her eyes. Oh, Sam, what did I get us into?

The young soldier who seemed to be in charge turned to the other two men. "Take the rest who are here and patrol the borders of Belraash. Where there are two spies, there may be more. I can finish the questioning by myself."

The soldiers lifted their fists to their foreheads and exited, leaving her alone with her torturer -- who had suddenly become much more threatening.

He smiled, and she knew she would never forget the gray-blue eyes above a nose that looked like it had been broken but displayed no scar.

#

The door of his office opened, and Kislan looked up from the threads of his accounts. When he saw his mentor Yöndahko in the doorframe, he smiled. "It is still too early for the taverns, my friend."

The gray-haired captain shook his head in assent. "Perhaps too early for the taverns, but not too early for news."

Kislan raised his eyebrows and laid aside his accounts and his knotting implement.

Yöndahko's expression turned serious. "Spies have been captured in the southeastern part of the city. Presumably from Edaru. My son is holding them for questioning."

"Spies?" That couldn't be. The Mejan denied the existence of the Tusalis and the Kishudiu both, and sending spies would imply admitting the cultures they had escaped from in dim historical memory still existed. Of course, as he knew now, the men who traveled the seas were well aware that was a lie, but the women who ran the houses did not.

The sea captain chuckled. "They claim to be the travelers from the stars, but they look much like you and I. Rwuseni says the male has a strange appearance and seems to have been disfigured in some accident, but the female is a woman such as we all know well enough, not some creature from other worlds."

Kislan's gut wrenched. Toni. No, different as she was, she did not appear some creature from another world. She was all too human, too desirable -- and here? In Belraash?

It couldn't be.

He swallowed. "I have met the people from the stars. I could corroborate their tale if it truly is them."

Yöndahko shot him a suspicious glance. "You never mentioned meeting them before."

"I did not want to set myself apart."

Yöndahko nodded disagreement. "Some might think you were trying to protect the people of Edaru if you stand up for these strangers now. Some might even think you yourself were sent as a spy. I do not suggest it."

Kislan shook his head, but his mind was racing. "Yes, I see. You are right, of course."

What did holding for questioning mean, precisely? Especially if one of those being held was a woman -- here, among the pirates Kislan had been reared as a child to fear?

They were not so fearsome as the tales told about them in the Thirteen Cities, true, but Kislan had to repress a shudder when he thought what they might do with a woman they considered an enemy, given the way they treated the women of their own culture, the women who lived with them and bore their children.

"While I am here, do you have the orders from Mitral yet?" Yöndahko asked.

Kislan shook his head and fingered through an assortment of lengths of fashar hanging in a frame on the table next to him. When he found the one Yöndahko needed, he lifted it from its hook and handed it to the captain. "Here it is."

"Thank you. I will be back again at our usual time."

Kislan watched the door close behind his friend. Could it truly be Toni? She had said she would come after him, had told him to retrieve his fashar so she could find him. He fingered the lace around his wrist. Yes, she had promised, but it had been over five exchanges of the moons since he had been returned to the sea.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed at the accounts of the exploits of the great nation of the Tusalis gracing his walls, the fine lacework of the words, a manly pursuit here, something he could learn and practice without regret or fear of punishment.

Even if the prisoner was not the woman from the stars, did he want a woman of the Thirteen Cities treated the way he knew in his heart the Tusalis would treat her?

No.

Whether the woman being held by Rwuseni was Toni or not, he had to help her and whoever had come with her. It was one thing to look the other way when a woman of Belraash was mistreated, since anything else would be seen as meddling in the business of those who had given him a new life. For some reason, it was another thing entirely to know that the woman had not grown up among the Tusalis.

He twisted the length of lace around his wrist. He was well aware that it made no sense to think the way he did, but there it was. Courtesy towards those who had taken him in warred with his own instincts at some of the things he saw on the streets and in the houses of Belraash, but if he added a woman of the Mejan to the equation, the result was completely different.

Or a woman from the stars.

Kislan pushed back his chair and rose. He had to get to the offices of the city guard before it was too late.

#

It was a tall building that stood on the edge of a busy square, the entrance visible to all who passed by, which meant there would be no sneaking in.

Then Kislan would just have to enter openly.

He gathered his winter cape at his throat in one fist and strode up the steps.

The place was strangely deserted for offices meant for the city guards. It was nearly evening and the darkness of night was gathering in the sky while the men and women of Belraash gathered in the bars near the harbor, but these offices did not shut down, as far as Kislan knew.

The walls were hung with the usual records, citations of various sorts, a certificate from the council of Belraash, but other than that the main room was relatively bare. Two halls lead back into the recesses of the place.

Where was Kislan to start? Where would they hold strangers they thought to be spies?

Then his ears picked up a faint rattling and pounding down the hall to the left, and for want of anything better, he headed that way.

Then came a voice, in strangely accented Alnar ag Ledar, the language of the men in the Thirteen Cities. "Let me out!"

Sam.

Kislan hurried forward to the door. "Sam! It is I, Kislan!"

"I know," Sam said through the door. "I saw you on my Ayai."

Which made no sense to Kislan at all, but that wasn't what mattered now. "Is Toni with you?"

"No. We have to find her. Can you break down this door?"

Kislan looked around and grinned. Hooks on the walls contained a series of keys, and the third one he tried fit.

Just as the lock clicked, another door opened, and a tall young man wearing the reddish-bronze tunic and leggings of the city guard appeared out of the shadows at the end of the hall.

"What is going on here?"

"Distract him," Sam urged through the door, just loud enough that Kislan could hear. "Get him away, and I'll slip out and try to find our weapons."

Kislan stepped forward. "Is that you, Rwuseni?"

The guard shook his head. "Kislan? What are you doing here?"

"Yöndahko told me you were holding some spies from the Thirteen Cities. I thought perhaps I could help, find out what they are here for."

"I need no help," Rwuseni said, his voice impatient. "They speak the language of the Tusalis, at least the woman does."

He had Toni.

He cocked his head to one side in what he hoped was a gesture of scepticism. "She does? That's unusual. The women of the Thirteen Cities do not even acknowledge that the Tusalis still exist. The sea is the domain of the men among the Mejan."

"Well, this one has ventured across the sea, and whether she acknowledges our existence or not, she speaks our language."

"Perhaps she is from my family," Kislan said, pushing past the other man before he could draw his sword.

"I said, I have no need of your help!" Rwuseni said, grabbing Kislan's elbow.

Rwuseni was big, but Kislan was bigger, and he shook the guard off as casually as he could, stepping through the door just ahead of Yöndahko's son.

To find Toni sprawled on the floor, her hands tied, her clothing torn, and a bruise disfiguring one side of her face.

Despite the swollen eye, Toni's face lit up. "Kislan!"

Instead of answering, Kislan bellowed his pain at seeing her like this. How could anyone do this to a woman -- let alone the woman who haunted his dreams?

A wrenching anger tore through him that took his mind away. Almost without his volition, he whipped out the sword at his waist and whirled around to face the son of the man who had done everything in his power to make a place for him here among the Tusalis.

He would have cut Rwuseni down without a thought, without loyalty or practicality or humanity, but then Sam appeared in the door, something small and metallic in his hand that looked like a dagger -- much too small to do any harm.

The strange-looking man from the stars yelled words Kislan couldn't understand. Rwuseni turned instinctively at the intrusion. The dagger-that-wasn't made a strange noise, and the guard fell.

Yöndahko's son lay on the floor, not moving.

For a moment, Kislan was so surprised, he lost his anger. "What did you do to him?"

Sam ignored his question, hurrying to Toni's side. Kislan followed, and they untied her and started to help her to her feet. Toni and Sam spoke rapidly in the language of the stars. She was shaking and tracks of tears stained her cheeks.

A yelp escaped her when she tried to stand. "I think my ankle is broken," she said in Alnar ag Ledar so that Kislan could understand.

"That's going to complicate things," Sam replied in the same language, following her lead.

Toni rubbed the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. "We shouldn't have come here."

But she had. She had promised and she had come. And Kislan realized that although it ended the new life he had just begun to make for himself, although she seemed to think the price had been too high, the fact that she had come meant more to him than he cared to think about right now.

Kislan wished he could take her in his arms and comfort her, but he didn't know if he had that right. As she had once pointed out, over a life he had lost ago, the two of them were from worlds so different, it was a wonder they understood each other at all.

As it had turned out, there was much they had not understood, repeatedly.

It was easier to remain neutral than to try to base his actions on what Toni being here might mean. He turned to Sam. "How will we get her away?" he asked.

Sam shook his head, denial in the star worlds. "Good question. Any suggestions?"

Briefly, he was surprised that Toni's colleague was asking him for advice, but then the urgency of the situation took over -- they had to get out of Belraash.

Kislan gestured toward the fallen guard. "I will take his uniform, lead you away."

Sam nodded shortly -- a "yes."

He knelt down next to Rwuseni, reluctant to get on with the business at hand. "Is he dead?"

"I did not set to kill," Sam said. At least that was what Kislan thought he said. He did not know how it would be possible to set anything to kill. Weapons that were designed to kill kept their original meaning even if they were only used for sport -- how could they be anything else? But then, the people from the stars had made him rethink much, over and over and over again. And his life among the Tusalis had been yet another lesson in rethinking.

Kislan felt the guard's wrist. Yes, the other man still had a pulse. Despite what Rwuseni had done to Toni, now that Kislan was no longer acting in the heat of the moment, he was grateful the young guard lived. Kislan owed Yöndahko much, and he would not want to be responsible for the death of his son.

But that didn't mean he couldn't steal his clothes.

He had Rwuseni's tunic off and was unlacing his leggings when they heard an outside door open. The three of them froze, staring at each other.

Sam tossed a dagger-that-wasn't to Kislan. "Get up. You may need this."

Kislan rose, inspecting the strange object. "But I don't know how to use it."

"I set it already. All you have to do is press the button in the middle."

Sam still supported Toni with one arm while training the strange weapon on the door with the other. Toni too held a weapon now, and her expression was grim.

From the hall came a raised voice. "Rwuseni! Kislan!"

It was Yöndahko.

His mentor appeared in the doorframe, taking in the situation in a moment.

"He's not dead!" Kislan called out, but Yöndahko already had his sword drawn and was charging them. Before Sam or Toni could use the dagger-things, Kislan had his own sword out and had stepped in front of their weapons, blocking Yöndahko's attack with a weapon he understood. "Yöndahko, they are the people from the stars! They have weapons so strong they do not need to fight. Let them go!"

Yöndahko met his parry with another thrust. "Then how were they taken when they first arrived in Belraash?" he bellowed over the clash of blades.

Kislan blocked the furious attack, holding the other man at sword's length. "I don't know. But I saw the male fell Rwuseni without touching him."

His mentor let out a roar of rage, drew back, and renewed his attack, slashing at Kislan like a madman. Then suddenly, he too was on the ground, the sword clattering out of his hand.

Kislan turned, feeling morally exhausted.

"Get the guard's clothes on quickly," Sam said. "We have to leave before anyone else comes."

Kislan shook his head in agreement and pulled the leggings off the unconscious man. He felt more like a criminal than when the council of Edaru had decreed that he was to be sent back to the sea. Rwuseni had deserved whatever injury he had received, but Yöndahko ... Yöndahko had helped him, made a place for him far from his home, welcomed him in a strange land. And then he had come upon a scene which looked as if it had involved the murder of his son by the man he had taken in.

Kislan's betrayal of Yöndahko was more of a crime than he had committed in Edaru, and he'd had less of a choice.

"We have to get out of here," Toni said. Her voice was low and angry and shaking almost as much as her hands had been earlier.

Kislan stripped Rwuseni, only briefly worrying about her sensitivities. Everything was changing once again, and he was giving up his second life.

"The darkness will help us," he said as he pulled on the guard's uniform.

"It won't help us find playned," Sam said.

Kislan didn't have any idea what the playn was, but he didn't bother asking. They had to get out of the town before anyone found Rwuseni and Yöndahko.

And then what? Was there any place left on his world where he wasn't a criminal?

#

The red of Kislan's uniform and the growing darkness protected them through the streets of the city and into the ancient ruins and the thick vegetation beyond.

Kislan supported Toni now, while Sam led the way. One leg was useless, but her tears had dried, and she didn't complain.

Once in the hills outside of the town, they paused for a moment to give themselves a rest. Stretched below them lay the ruins of a world that had destroyed itself, and beyond, its shimmering reflection in the night-dark sea. While they stood there, silent, Toni leaned her head on his shoulder.

Somehow, the simple gesture felt so much more intimate than his arm around her slender waist -- which was no more that the assistance she needed for them to get away from those who would soon be seeking them.

As he thought this, drums began to pound in the city on the other side of the ruins.

"They have noticed your flight," Kislan said.

"We have to move faster," Sam said. "Toni --?"

Before the lishik-eyed one could complete his sentence, Kislan swept Toni up in his arms. She was no lightweight, but perhaps this way they could move fast enough to get out of danger before the Tusalis organized a search party.

The woman from the stars slung her arms around his neck and they made for the bare trees beyond the ruins.

#

Toni leaned her right cheek against Kislan's shoulder, almost ready to cry with relief at being off her injured leg. Perhaps if she wasn't trying to walk on it, the nanomeds would work faster.

And it certainly hurt less.

Kislan had that cinnamony smell everything on Christmas seemed to have to a greater or lesser degree, and Toni inhaled, using his scent to force herself to relax and breathe evenly. Her leg throbbed, pulsing through her whole body, hurting like hell. And around her left eye and the cheekbone below, the skin was hot and aching and sensitive to the touch.

Toni didn't want to think what would have happened to her if Kislan hadn't arrived.

Sam pulled out a flashlight when it grew dark, the wonder of which Kislan neglected to comment on. He was in for a quite a few more wonders before the night was over -- perhaps he had guessed as much himself.

"I'm sorry I could come no sooner," Toni murmured. "And what a mess I made of it when I did."

"It is no matter." As Kislan spoke, she could feel his voice rumble in his chest.

"Ah, but it does. You had no need of saving, did you? No one owned you."

"No, no one owned me."

"What was life like among the pirates?"

Kislan was silent for a moment. "With zhamtendagar, you refer to those who raid and steal?"

Of course, Toni was well aware now of the relationships between the words in Almar ag Ledar and Tusaliso, the false friends in these related languages that had their basis in history. "I didn't mean --"

He ignored the beginnings of her denial, and it hit her just how much the time he had spent among the Tusalis had changed him.

"Zathendagro," Kislan cut in, using the word for the men in the Tusalis tongue, the word related to "pirate" in his native language, "they helped me start a new life. I was a factor at the docks, much like I had been in Edaru. I had never known how many of the goods that came through our ports were from a people we were made to believe no longer existed."

As Kislan spoke of his life among the Tusalis, Toni began to realize how unnecessary was all the damage she had done -- and all because she couldn't resist assuaging her conscience.

He talked of a strange life and new friends, of ways unknown to him, anger and wonder in his voice at the same time. And over and over again, he threw in words from his new life, words for which there was no direct correspondence in his native tongue, his accent perfect as far as Toni could judge from the vids she had studied -- after only four standard months among these people, and without memory enhancements.

The man was a natural linguist.

"You learned some of the Tusalis way of writing?" she asked.

Kislan shook his head in assent, and she felt his hair brush against the top of her head. It had grown out again and curled around his ears and at the back of his neck. The last time she had seen him, his long tresses had been taken away, the colors denoting family that had once been braided into his hair gone, his head shorn in a symbol of his shame.

There was a smattering of gray in the bangs at his forehead now too. His banishment?

"Perhaps you can teach me the writing and the language of the Tusalis when we are back in Edaru," Toni murmured.

Before Kislan could answer, barking burst through the silence of the night sky in the distance -- rhaysh, descendants of Terran dogs.

"Bija!" Kislan muttered. Shit.

Some things were very nearly universal.

#

Now it was Kislan's turn to lead them or they would never have a chance of shaking their pursuers. Sam wasn't strong enough to carry Toni, and so she leaned on her colleague as they limped behind. They waded through a stream uphill and then another and another for what seemed hours, until Kislan grew impatient and took her up in his arms again. Her injury and the zig-zag path they were taking made the journey back to the skycar much longer. The single leg she was able to walk on was cold and aching, while her injured leg was a mass of pulsing pain. Toni was almost sure that her ankle was broken; if it had only been twisted, the nanomeds would have repaired it by now. On the other hand, she didn't know what effect trying to use an injured body part had on the efficiency of the nanomeds.

Nodding away on Kislan's shoulder, aching and tired and guilty, breathing in the physical scent of Christmas, Toni felt suffused with much-needed warmth -- and oddly happy. She smiled and nestled in closer to the crook between his shoulder and his neck.

They forged on, and gradually the baying of the Kailazh hounds grew more distant.

When she began to snore gently, Sam and Kislan exchanged brief smiles and continued to follow the flashlight and Sam's navigation system.

#

Once Kislan had helped them lose their pursuers, Sam led them down the range of hills west of Belraash. By the time the dark of night began to lighten and the lace in the sky became visible again, Kislan was barely conscious, but he plodded on, Toni gripped tightly in his heavy, aching arms.

"Stop," he said finally. "I need to rest."

Sam nodded. "I'll support Toni again. I think we're almost there."

Kislan slowly lowered the arm that was under her legs, allowing Toni to slip down his body. At the change, she mumbled and rubbed her eyes, awakening gradually. But when her feet rested on the ground, she groaned and her eyes shot open.

Kislan tightened his arm around her shoulders. "It's all right. I have you."

"I can't believe I slept." She peered at Kislan in the near dark. "How far did you carry me?"

"I don't know."

Sam spoke a few words in their native language.

"Not possible!" Toni said in Alnar ag Ledar. Kislan felt a smile tugging at his mouth despite his exhaustion.

"How is your foot?" Sam asked in the same tongue, once again including Kislan in the conversation only at Toni's instigation. As if it mattered. He could no longer be included anywhere. Where was he to go now? Perhaps the Kishudiu would take him -- enemies of enemies.

Toni put weight on the injured foot gingerly. "Better. I still can't walk on it, but zhamnanomedar have been working fast."

Suddenly Kislan had enough of ignoring the unknown and unexplained that was going on around him. "Nanomed? What is this, please?"

Sam and Toni looked at him, silent for a moment.

Toni turned to her colleague. "We owe it to him, Sam. He's going to see a lot more before the day is over."

The other man nodded -- using the gestures that came most naturally to him, not the gestures of his host world. "You're right."

And then Toni explained medicine stranger than legend to Kislan -- but no stranger than people who flew in the air to travel between the stars.

In the distance, the rhaysh began to bark again.

#

With Kislan and Sam alternately assisting Toni in her limping progress, they made it to a tumble of rocks and outcropping of stone at the edge of the valley, nearly hidden by layan and joshaba trees that had begun to unfold their red leaves for spring. A wide, flat valley like this outside of Edaru would have been a thriving farming community, providing food for the city, but Belraash was a village in comparison with Kislan's home, and the fertile fields directly in and around the port city of the Tusalis were sufficient for its needs.

Besides, Belraash had precious domrhene and could probably trade for anything it didn't produce itself.

The belling of the rhaysh was growing nearer, but now that they had reached this part of the valley, the people from the stars seemed to shed any worries they had felt. He waited with Toni just down the hill from the rock formations, as Sam scurried behind the outcropping and the morning bled back into the sky. Then something resembling a large, gray, pointy crate with rounded edges emerged, purring softly, moving without being pulled or pushed.

What was it Toni had said? Kislan would be seeing much more before the day was over.

Such as a crate big enough for several people which moved without sails or renjai.

Toni squeezed his waist with the arm wrapped behind his back. "Playned. Now it is time for you to move in the air."

Kislan took a deep breath. He should have known -- how were they to flee this place else, now that they had come so far from the sea? Nothing on Kailazh moved in the air -- the term had not even been coined until the people from the stars arrived and changed their world in the course of a few days.

A door in the playn opened, and Sam stepped out. "It will be a tight fit, but we didn't bring many supplies with us. Toni thought we might have to bring you back."

She had intended to bring him back? After the moons had traded places in the sky so many times? It didn't make any sense.

But she had come. He kept returning to that fact, that comfort. He didn't know what it would mean, for him or his future, but she was here, now.

"We have to move fast," Toni said. "The dogs, they're almost here."

Sam nodded shortly. "Kislan, you will have to get in first and take Toni on your lap. There are only two seats."

Kislan did as he was instructed, and the woman from the stars settled down on his thighs. While Sam took his place in front, Toni pulled a wide belt out of the back of the seat behind them and tightened it around their bodies, connecting it somewhere on the right side with a click. The she nestled into his chest, which seemed to expand unnaturally, like for a long underwater dive.

"Sorry about this," she said, turning her head to look at him, her eyes large and concerned. "I know it can't be comfortable."

No, comfortable was not the way he would describe his state now, but he saw no reason for apologies.

And then the rounded crate was moving down the hill between the trees, the purr growing louder. Kislan put his arms around Toni, keeping her safe.

They came out of the trees, and on all sides of them, surfaces on the gray crate began to unfold, the front and the sides lengthening so that the thing transporting them no longer looked like a crate at all. Kislan had seen a flying vehicle before, of course, when one of the Ayaissee first contact team had been returned to the sky, but it had looked nothing like this -- and Kislan had not been in it.

Just as they began to move away from the ground, the search party burst out onto the valley in front of them.

Toni gripped Kislan's forearm. "Careful, Sam!"

There was a dizzying jolt, and the world was receding before his eyes, along with the open-mouthed Tusalis and the barking rhaysh. Not that Kislan could hear their barks through the windows and the rumble of the flying crate, but he could see their jaws opening and closing and their heads bouncing.

And then he closed his eyes so he would no longer have to see the way the land disappeared, with no water to carry him, only air and faith.

#

Sam tried to explain the technology of the playn to Kislan, how it got its energy from the sun as well as from the wind, as a ship did, besides some magical source he called fyulsel. The lecture was obviously meant to set Kislan at his ease, but he still felt as if he were sailing on faith. He found more comfort from the feel and weight of Toni curled in his lap, although as the cold, white interior of the world passed below them, she grew heavy, and his legs grew numb.

No lightweight, the woman from the stars.

But when he had laid his arms around her waist, she had not pushed them away, snuggling in closer to his chest instead. How could it matter that they were far from the ground, moving on insubstantial air?

#

They moved with the sun across the frozen land, and by the time it was peeking between the lace of the sky in front of them, the white of the snow and ice had begun to give way to the red of earth and trees.

Kislan shifted, trying to distribute Toni's weight more comfortably. "Sorry," she murmured, half-asleep against his shoulder.

"I think zhamnanomedar are causing her to sleep so much," Sam said over his shoulder. "It helps the healing."

And then Kislan could see the green of the ocean on the horizon. Soon they would be home again, in Edaru, completing a journey in a day that it had taken him more than a complete exchange of the moons by ship, south and then north again, rounding the tip of the continent.

Home. It was no home to him now, dead as he was to those who had once loved him. Zhoran and others -- men -- would acknowledge him if they had a choice, but it would mean their own banishment.

He tightened his arms around Toni as the playn began to dip and the ground came closer. She squirmed a little and began to stretch, one arm creeping up around his neck as she made little waking sounds -- sounds Kislan had heard many times before, from many different women, but that had never sounded sweeter to him.

Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused and full of sleep. The hand around his neck had laced itself through his hair. She blinked and smiled, and Kislan smiled back.

Suddenly she realized where she was and what she was doing.

"Oh." She straightened and took her hand back.

Kislan couldn't help it -- his own hand went up without volition, and he smoothed the short dark hair back from her brow. "Good evening, Star-woman. Or perhaps I should say good morning?"

The smile returned slowly to her exotic, pale face.

It was strange how much more intimate it felt to have her wake up in his arms than the kisses they had exchanged in another life. But did it mean the same thing to her?

He traced the line of her cheek and jaw with one finger, and Toni's eyes went wide.

"Almost back to the base," Sam said in front of them. "I already contacted Moshofski and Gates, and they should be there when we arrive."

Toni leaned as far forward as the belts restraining them would allow. "Thanks, Sam. Did you tell them what happened?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm leaving that to you."

#

As the land came closer and closer, Kislan had to close his eyes again -- it was too unsettling, like falling slowly, from a higher distance than he ever would have thought possible.

He heaved a sigh of relief when he felt the jolt of the earth beneath the playn.

They drew up in front of the largest building of the Ayaissee sky port, where the other two members of the first contact team waited. Despite the physical relief when Toni got off of his lap, Kislan felt the wrench of something essential missing. Like leaving home.

When the three of them all had their feet back on the ground, Toni turned to him, an odd expression he couldn't interpret on her face.

"There is a room here in baysed where you can rest," she said. "I must speak with the rest of the Ayra team."

Kislan shook his head assent while his hand found her cheek. She leaned into the gesture, and he held there, not wanting to change the touch, the connection.

Finally, she took his hand in her own. "Come." She led him to Moshofski and Gates, and after brief greetings, continued with him to a building bare of decorations. In a room more starkly white then the landscape they had just passed over in the playn, she stopped.

Toni indicated a narrow couch in one corner. "You can rest here while I speak with Moshofski and Gates. After our flight from Belraash, you must need it."

And then it occurred to him that she was walking on her own again, when a day ago, merely touching her injured foot to the ground had brought tears to her eyes.

Almost, it didn't surprise him any more. But only almost.

Life was obviously too strange to comprehend. On the other hand, now that he had the leisure to think about it, he realized he'd had next to no sleep for over a day, and what was he doing trying to think anyway?

He stretched out on the couch Toni had indicated and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

#

Toni stopped in the door of the break room. Kislan lay stretched out on the long couch pushed up against one wall, his eyelids twitching over those smokey green eyes, eyes the color of the Kailazh sea.

Why did she have to ask him to leave again, just when this tenderness closed her throat at the sight of his sleeping form? But she couldn't ask him to stay -- she had taken not one life but two away from him now. She had to offer him something in their place.

And if there were ever to be any future for the two of them, they had to achieve some kind of status resembling equal social standing.

Which meant AIRA.

She walked softly across the room, but even quiet as she was, he turned and opened his eyes. "Toni."

She smiled at the Mejan faux pas -- he had spoken to her without waiting to be addressed first. He truly was ruined for life in the Thirteen Cities now.

"Sha bo foda, Kislan," she said, in the intimate form of address he had once forbidden her to use.

He blinked and sat up, rubbing his eyes with webbed hands. "You are walking again," he said, using the intimate form as well. At the simple change of words, a little thrill went through her.

"Yes."

"The star-magic works like a thing of legend."

"But I may never have had the opportunity to let it work if you had not helped us get away."

"I had no choice."

"Certainly you had a choice." She sat down next to him. "Tell me, Kislan, would you have wanted to stay in Belraash if Sam and I had not made it impossible?"

"Wanted?" He gazed at her a moment, as if not knowing how to answer, and her heart sank.

Outside, the sky was beginning to change. Kislan rose and stretched out his hand to her. "Let us go watch the lace of the sky tow in the night," he said with a smile.

Toni put her hand in his and stood. Tied around his wrist was still the length of lace Anash had thrown after him when he had been returned to the sea, the record of his life that hid the tracer allowing her to find him.

The barren plain AIRA had chosen for their base was not the most romantic place to view the way the day's end lit up the rings of Kailazh, but sunset on this planet hardly needed a backdrop -- or a foreground for that matter. Toni wondered if she could ever grow tired of it, and suspected the answer was "no."

They strolled to the end of the landing strip, away from the scattering of prefab buildings which qualified as a base on this restricted planet.

"I did not want to stay in Belraash, no," Kislan said, and Toni felt a flood of relief. "But I did want to make a life for myself there. I cannot return to Edaru."

"I know."

"This happiness to see you again, to know that you did come for me after all, it makes no sense. There is nothing for me here."

Suddenly the lacy arc of the rings was blurring against the reddish-orange sky behind it, and Toni's cheeks were damp.

After everything she hadn't done for him, he was still happy to be with her again, no matter what the cost.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and Kislan laid his arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

She had to do it. It was the only future she could offer him, the only future they might have together.

"There may not be a place for you here, in Edaru, but there may be a place for you yet on Kailazh. AIRA will need more personnel once a treaty is in place, and we will need natives, from the planet, especially if they know multiple languages. But you would have to go away for a time, for training."

Kislan dropped his arm again and turned to stare at her.

"Away? To the stars?"

Toni remembered the way he had closed his eyes when they had simply been taking off in the small two-seater skycar in the valley west of Belraash. "Not right away," she hurried to reassure him. "We would have to teach you a smattering of the official languages of the AIC, as well as basic knowledge of politics and sciences and technologies of the star worlds. And it would be best if you could work as a consultant first, perhaps visit the Kishudiu for us, to gain experience as a researcher. AIRA doesn't take everyone, but they give preference to those from new worlds ..."

She realized she was rambling and stopped.

Kislan was still staring at her. "To the stars?" he repeated, taking her hand in his own. "To the world you come from?"

Toni thought of Mars and its cold, dusty, red plains with a burst of homesickness. "No, not to Mars," she murmured. "But you would go to places I have been and see sights I have seen."

And travel in jumps that will change the relative ages between us. But it would be a while yet before she could explain that particular detail to him.

"While you stay here," Kislan said, his webbed hand tightening around her webless one.

"Yes."

"But --" He paused for a moment, and for the life of her, Toni couldn't help him in this.

Kislan drew a deep breath. "But would you be with me, before, and perhaps after, you and I, as the sister and the lover desire in the legend of the three moons?"

Toni returned the pressure of his hand as the decadent colors of the sky faded. "I can promise nothing for later, but I will be with you now, until you are ready to go."

The sky grew dark, and the shepherd moons appeared against the dark band of what the lace of the planet's rings had become.

"To the stars," Kislan murmured, a smile in his voice. "And before the stars, Toni." He leaned over and gave her the first kiss that they had exchanged in nearly a standard year in their strange, convoluted relationship. But as opposed to the other occasions, this time Toni was sure there would be more to come.

Past Kislan's shoulder, the first star of night winked in the sky above them.