"Come on," Maia answered, grinning. "Let's get a look at this place."

More than five hundred matriarchal clans dwelled in the city, filling broad piazzas and clamoring market avenues with contingents of finely dressed, elaborately coiffed, magnificently uniformed clones, their burdens carried on well-oiled carts or the backs of patient lugars in liveried tunics. There were sumptuous scents of strange fruits and spices, and creatures the twins had only read about, such as red howler monkeys and flapping mere-dragons, which rode upon their owners' shoulders, hissing at passersby and snatching grapes from unwary vendors.

The sisters roamed plazas and narrow shopping streets, eating sweets from a patissiere's stall, laughing at the antics of a small clan of agile jugglers, dodging the harangues of political candidates, and pondering the strangeness of such a wide, marvelous world. Never before had Maia seen so many faces she didn't recognize. Though Port Sanger held a population of several thousand, there had never been more than a hundred distinct visages to know while growing up.

For the first time, they tasted what life might be like if their secret scheme succeeded. Although they were humbly dressed, some vars they encountered stepped aside for them in automatic deference, as if they were winter-born. "I knew it!" Leie whispered. "Twins are rare enough that people simply jump to the wrong conclusion. Our plan can work!"

Maia appreciated Leie's enthusiasm. Yet, she knew success would count on filling in countless details. They shouldn't spend their free moments playing games, she insisted, but combing the port for useful information.

Unfortunately, the town was a babble of strange tongues. Whenever clone-sisters met on the street, they often spoke an incomprehensible rasp of family code, handed down by hive mothers and embellished by their daughters for generations. This frustrated Leie at first. Back in easy-going Port Sanger, common speech had been the norm.

Then Leie grew enthusiastic. "We'll need a secret jarg too, when we start our own clan."

Maia neglected to remind her sister that as little girls they had experimented with codes, cryptograms, and private jargon, until Leie grew bored and quit. Privately, Maia had never stopped making anagrams or finding patterns in letter blocks scattered on the creche floor. It might even have been what first triggered her interest in constellations, for to her the sparkling stellar patterns always seemed to hint at the Creator's private code, one that was open to all who learned to see.

Strolling the grand plaza in front of Lanargh's city temple, the twins watched a group of kneeling sailors receive blessing from an orthodox priestess wrapped in burgundy-striped robes. Raising her arms, the clergywoman called for intercession from the planet spirit, its rocks and air, its winds and waters, so that the men might reach safe haven at their journey's end. The singsong benison finished with a favorite passage about the sanctity of comradeship amid shared danger. Yet, the holy woman's quavering delivery showed that clerics, too, had a "language" all their own, especially when quoting the mysterious Fourth Book of Scriptures.

"So to their ships on time of need haul upon that which is hidden …"

No wonder Book Four was popularly known as the Riddle of Lysos. It even had its own eighteen-letter alphabet, which used to bring Maia pleasurable diversion during long weekly services in the Lamatia chapel, silently puzzling over cryptic passages incised on the stone walls.

Leie glanced at the clock set in the Temple's face and sighed. "Oops, sorry. Gotta get back to work now."

Maia blinked. "What? On first day?"

"Ain't it var's luck? Mop an' pail duty. Our chief wants ol' Zeus to get more customers than Wotan, even though it all goes to the same owners and guild." She grimaced. "Are your bosuns as awful as ours?"

Maia wouldn't have used that word. "Hard," maybe, and quick to catch when you were inattentive. But she was learning a lot from Naroin and the others, and growing stronger by the day. Anyway, Leie was clearly fibbing.

Maia bet her sister was on punishment detail, probably for mouthing off when she should have kept quiet.

Despite that, Maia grunted sympathetically. "Unloading coal for a living. Huh. I guess the mothers'd be proud of us lor starting at the bottom."

"Not for long, though!" Leie answered. "Someday we'll sail back into Port Sanger with enough coin sticks to buy the place!" She laughed, and her cheerfulness forced Maia to smile.

It felt different walking through town alone, and not simply because no one stepped aside for her anymore. Maia had enjoyed pointing things out to Leie, sharing the sights. It had been comforting knowing another person in this sea of strangers was an ally.

On the other hand, the town seemed more vivid this way. Sound and smell and vision felt sharper as she grew more aware of the downside of city life. Sweating var laborers, dragging loads on creaking carts. Beggars, some crippled, shaking tithe cups bearing wax temple seals. Sly-looking women who leaned against the corners of buildings, eyeing her speculatively, perhaps wondering how well her purse was tied on. . . .

It was right for us to take separate ships, Maia thought, feeling both wary and alive. We needed this. I needed it.

There were placards she had never seen before, denoting clans she didn't know, offering goods she had never heard of. Some shop floors were shared by a dozen midget enterprises, each with a pretentious, hand-painted heraldic device, run by single women pooling together for the rent, each hoping to begin the slow rise to success. At the other extreme, the city hospital seemed both modern and colorless, the white-jacketed professionals within having no need to advertise their family affiliations.

A blatting sound, a horn and crashing cymbals, caused the street crowd to divide for a new disturbance. Onlookers laughed as a short parade wound its way downhill. The male membership of a secret society, dressed in flamboyant outfits and carrying mystery totems, wove across the cobblestones to applause and good-natured catcalls from the throng. Some of the men seemed sheepish, lugging ornate model ships and wooden zep'lins on their shoulders to the beat of thumping drums, while others held their chins out, as if daring anyone to make fun of their earnest ritual. Only a few spectators seemed unfriendly, such as when one cluster of frowning women pointedly refused to step aside, forcing the procession to wind around them.

Perkinites, Maia thought, moving on. Why don't they leave the poor men alone and pick on someone their own size?

Lanargh offered a wider range of services than she had ever imagined, from palmists and professed witches all the way to esteemed phrenologists, equipped with calipers, cranial tapes, and ornate charts. Maia considered having a reading done, till she saw the prices and decided nothing could be done about the shape of her head, anyway.

Glancing through one expensive glass window, Maia watched three high-browed redheads consult with customers over leather-bound folders. Perusing gilt posters, Maia gleaned that this was a local branch of a farflung family enterprise, one offering commercial message services. On a separate chart, the redheads advertised a local sideline — designing private languages for up-and-coming houses.

"Now there's a niche," Maia murmured admiringly. Success on Stratos often lay in finding some product or service no one else had mastered. This was one she might have enjoyed exploring herself. She sighed. "Too bad it already seems pretty well filled."

"They're all filled, sister. Don't you know? It's one of the foretold signs."

Maia spun around to face a young woman about her own age and height, wearing a cowled robe with the embroidered stripes of some religious order. The priestess, or dedicant, clutched a sheaf of yellow pamphlets, peering at Maia through thick spectacles.