It was only after they had parted to seek the male and female sections of the bath that she recalled Zemetrios had called her Cliro. As if long familiar with her, and close.

Despite the taverner’s boast, the inn seemed not that full—or certainly not the bathhouse. Clirando had the three narrow rooms to herself. She washed in the first under the tepid fountain, and then soaked in the second in a pool of delicious heat that blanketed her up to the chin. An attendant in the first room washed her hair. Now it spread about her in the hot pool, scented like the perfumed shrubs outside. Finally she sprang into the last cold pool, with a hiss of anguish that quickly disappeared as the water toned her muscles, closed her pores and awarded her a feeling of vigor. She might have slept a whole night through. It seemed to her there must be special salts in the spring that fed the bathhouse, which was often the case. She felt literally renewed, her eyes clear and well focused, her blood moving like waves of light.

Unnerving her less now, the feeling of pleasure, almost of happiness and anticipation, continued and grew stronger.

She thought of Tuyamel tilting her head doubtfully, and Vlis chuckling, and young Draisis enthusiastically vindicating happiness at all costs.

I’ll find them, Clirando thought, kicking her feet in the cold water as a child might. I shall find them here. This village, tonight—or tomorrow. I’ll ask, and I’ll look for them.

But she knew her exhilaration had to do also with Zemetrios.

She felt lenient with herself. Why should she not be glad at the company of an apparently decent and highly attractive man?

Every reason.

But as that warning voice stirred at the back of her mind, Clirando kicked it up in the air with the sprays of cold water. Then she climbed out and dried herself, shaking her hair like a dog.

He had already commandeered a table for them and two benches, tucked into a wall nook. He had ordered beer, which generally Clirando preferred to wine. She thought he himself did not care that greatly for wine—understandable, if he had seen its ill effect on Yazon.

They talked to each other now freely, again as if well-known to each other and quite at ease. But the subjects of the conversation were only the excellence of the hot water, the types of food the inn offered. All around, a crowd massed at the tables, and serving girls and men went to and fro. Clirando saw no one else she knew.

“I have hopes my band of girls reached this village,” she said at last. “I was separated from them after we brought in the boat.”

He looked at her, consideringly. It was like a question, and reluctantly, after a few seconds, she heard herself say, “They vanished from the beach. They’d been sleeping—and I too—I fell asleep, which now I never can, unaided. There was some drug in the wine.”

Before she knew it would happen he put his hand briefly, and warm, over hers. “I’m sorry, Clirando. I’ve heard so many tales like that about Moon Isle. It will come right. You’ll make it so.”

His touch chimed upward through her flesh. She stared resentful at her own hand, as if waiting to see a burn or scald appear where his fingers had rested. Gruffly she said, “I mean to walk about the village, to see if I can learn anything.”

“Don’t ask any of them here,” he said, surprising her. “I’d guess you’ll learn nothing that way.”

“I thought you believed this inn—this village—trustworthy.”

“Did I say that? No. I said it was all irresistible.”

She saw he too was looking intently at her hand. Suddenly he said, “I like your hand, Clirando of Amnos. Forgive me, but the firmness, and the callus there from a warrior’s knife. My first love, I have to tell you, was a warrior woman. Even before that, my mother had belonged to a band. But then she wed my father and gave it up.”

Clirando frowned. “Did he force her to?”

“No. He was an honorable man. It was her choice. She never lost her edge though. She would wrestle the other girls for practice, and she could ride as well as any man, better than many. She was the one who taught me horses.”

The food came, and they ate, dipping the warm bread among the sauces, tearing off chunks of the succulent roast.

Around and about, the inn went on as inns did everywhere in the known world. Clatter of dishes, clink of metal cups, mirth and singing, the occasional quarrel roused and calmed. Abruptly a long, high call went through the room. “The moon! She’s risen!”

Not one person kept their seat. Even the servers went out. They all stood on a high open terrace above the yard. There on the wall balanced the moon, round and blazing white.

“Yes,” said Zemetrios, “something new after all. She looks whiter here, don’t you think. Clean and cold.”

A man spoke behind them. “It is the snows that cover her.”

Clirando turned.

A merchant, well dressed and well groomed, wiping his ringed, dinner-greasy hands on a napkin.

“Snow?” Zemetrios queried. He smiled.

“Indeed. So our sages tell us. At midsummer in this, our world, up there midwinter comes. The snows fall thickly. And so the moon shines so white.”

“The moon is also a world, then?” Clirando asked innocently. It was what the priestess had said. But she thought of Zemetrios’s stricture: to ask anything here would be profitless. Perhaps something so esoteric would not matter.

“Do you see that mountain?” The merchant pointed back over the roof of the inn, the other roofs of the village, and up into the sky where all three peaks showed, as if faintly drawn on by a brush. “The central height is known as Moon’s Stair. There is, they say, an entrance up there that leads between the worlds and out onto the surface of the moon. Sleepers often travel to the moon, as do sorcerers, or priests in a trance. But physically there’s only one way, and that is by climbing the mountain called Moon’s Stair.”

Zemetrios said, “I’ve heard of an entrance to the lands beyond death. That’s in the East.”

“Like that, then,” said the merchant. “Or maybe it’s all lies.” His grin was crafty, knowing. It seemed he understood quite well what Zemetrios had said to Clirando earlier.

Down in the yard, servants were lighting the tails of firecrackers. Now they dived upward on flights of glittering topaz.

Clirando thought, Surely they would have done this last night, too—we should have heard something of it, seen it even, far above the forest….

She was unable to feel alarm at this, not even suspicion.

When she glanced back, the merchant had gone in, returning apparently to his meal.

Others were jostling down the terrace steps and across the courtyard.

“Come watch the magicians!” came the cry now.

“Shall we go and see the fun?” he said.

“Perhaps.”

“If your girls are here, no doubt they’d go to see. Isn’t that the best chance?”

Clirando thought of Draisis and fifteen-year-old Erma. She nodded.

As they followed the rest of the people out of the alley and along one of the wider village streets, Zemetrios said in her ear, “One further thing, Clirando. The inn’s so full the taverner could offer us only a single apartment—I mean it has only one bed. He seemed to reckon us partners, but I assured him you would use the room and I would take a place in the common area.”

Clirando was jolted. She did not know why, then thought she did. “No, Zemetrios. You take the room. You know I never sleep. A place on a bench is less trouble for me.”

“No, Cliro. You must have the bed. It’s more comfortable, particularly if sleep eludes you.”

“What?” She scowled at him. “You think me some soft little lady? Even when I could sleep, I managed as well on a rock as a couch.”

Zemetrios burst out laughing.

For an instant her annoyance increased—then melted. Clirando began to laugh, too. “Excuse me,” she said. “Of course you’d think of nothing of the sort.”