Lightning muttered, “They think the Empire is another little island.”

Mist said, “Vendace, immortality’s the most important offer your people could possibly have. The very opportunity will make you idle Zascai feel alive! Tris is so stagnant I feel smothered. We can tell that it hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. You won’t reject the Empire once you’ve seen its treasures-the sky-worshiping spires of Awia, mills of Hacilith! Everybody wants to be Eszai! Why turn the proposal down? Don’t you wish to excel? Don’t you want to know what the world will be like five centuries from now?”

Vendace was silent for a time, then he murmured something that had the rhythm of a quotation and sounded thoroughly resigned. He shot me an envious glance. “It may be that we will not gain immortality, and we’ll never be able to fly, but we all want to stay equal. We’ll keep peace and our own pace. You have already threatened to upset the balance by coming here.”

“Give us a few more days,” Mist tried. “We can buy another crate of gold. Serein will find the Insect.”

“The Senate’s decision can neither be rescinded nor altered without a seven-day discussion. You must leave today.”

“I need to lay on enough water for the journey,” Mist countered. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will.” Vendace pulled his short cloak to his body, stood and left the cabin. Lightning stepped aside to let him go.

Mist gave a little scream and clenched her fists. “Ah! Damn! Jant, I’ve one more chance,” she said in Plainslands. “Follow him.”

“What did you say?” Lightning demanded. “Don’t exclude Wrenn!”

“It’s private,” she spat.

On the main deck, Vendace’s friends surrounded him. He looked reassured as they patted him on the back, and they began to file down the gangplank, Vendace shepherding them in front.

Mist caught the edge of his green-bordered cloak. The ex-fisherman tweaked it away and glared at her. She said, “Jant, tell him this: I can give him eternal life. It doesn’t matter whether we feel affection or not.”

She unnerved me. We must certainly be in trouble if Mist was prepared to play her last card. “Do you mean…?” I said doubtfully.

Her voice cleared of any vagueness, “Aye! I mean marriage! A link through me to the Circle. Time is their currency, so immortality is my most priceless offer to one man.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Tell him, damn you-we don’t have three days to mull it over!”

I repeated her words for Senator Vendace.

He was quiet, studying her for a long moment. His mouth twisted in disgust. “No. How dare you bribe me to breach the Senate’s resolution? To betray them! Just go! And never, ever return!” He strode down the gangplank without a backward glance.

Over the next hour, the Capharnai melted away from the quay leaving an air of animosity. I watched the streets for the Insect through Mist’s telescope, while the ships bustled with preparation to sail home.

“Well,” I said, embarrassed. “You blew that, Ata Dei.”

She muttered, “Next morning we’ll set our backs and rudders to this bloody insular town.”

Nobody was present to watch us leave. As our sails filled and our figureheads pointed toward the open sea, I felt my trepidation mounting. I did not want to go out there again so soon. I contemplated that the Trisians might never raise their sights or be forced into contest by a Challenger or by ambition as unquenchable as Mist’s. Who here cared about the Castle’s self-imposed trials? Half a minute’s difference in racing time in a Challenge could literally be my downfall. A millimeter’s distance on an archery target means life or death to Lightning. The Trisians will never know our accuracy or stamina but then they would never wear themselves out for a cause. By god, I liked them.

I sat at the stern, played a Rhydanne game of cat’s cradle, and watched Tris shrink into the distance. The wind battered the clouds down to a thick bank on the skyline around it. Our caravels trailed a path back to Capharnaum harbor, but the waves distorted then covered our wakes as if the sea was determined to hide the trail we had blazed. I hoped that the spectacular failure of Mist’s diplomacy would pass. I wished that Tris would eventually become a region like Darkling, which is part of the Empire but nobody expects it to get involved. The Rhydanne know vaguely that the Empire exists but really don’t care; unfortunately the island of Tris has more to offer than Darkling.

That night I could see the lights of Capharnaum but not the land, so I became convinced the town was floating on the ocean. The next morning Tris had diminished so much on the horizon that I could put my thumb over it. By supper it was a speck; by the following day it had gone.

When we lost sight of the island on the evening of May 10, I had nothing to do but cross the sea as an idle passenger. Melowne and Stormy Petrel sailed across the longitudes. We were two ships standing out proud on the ocean.

I settled into my sleeping bag on my cabin floor, with a jug of coffee and cat, and some licorice root to chew. I filled my silver fountain pen, carefully propped the book on my sharp knees and began to read. I transcribed the first chapter of the small volume I had stolen from the library, A History of Tris, by Sillago of Capharnaum.

In the year 416-a date that every schoolchild knows-galleys from the mainland arrived at our then uninhabited island, and anchored in the mouth of Olio River. During the following day, the settlement of Capharnaum was founded on the northern bank and the mighty galleys were brought upriver and set aflame, a remarkable symbolic act that marked the dawn of our present society.

Why did this flotilla of galleys leave the mainland and put their hope in the creation of a new country? In this book I will argue that it was due to the ingress into the mainland of a swarm of Insects. According to the only manuscript surviving from the Pentadrica, Capelin’s account of the second decade of the fifth century, I maintain that Insects truly existed and were not the symbolic creatures that recently fashionable theories would have us believe. Moreover, they must have been rather larger than the ants of our island. My esteemed colleague Vadigo of Salmagundi has on numerous occasions criticized my belief in Insects. However, my research draws heavily on the precious Capelin manuscript housed in the Amarot library with which, perhaps as it is such a distance from Salmagundi, my colleague does not trouble himself.

The Queen of Pentadrica, Alyss, traveled with her court-a rudimentary senate-from her liberal and enlightened country known as the jewel of the Fivelands, to satisfy her curiosity about reports of the problematic Insects. Capelin, a scrivener at the Pentadrican court, relates that five Insects had appeared suddenly in the vale of northeast Awia and were the subject of much curiosity. Apparently of their own volition the Insects confined themselves in a small area behind a wall. The nearby Awians were observing and throwing logs into the enclosure when hundreds more manifested so suddenly they had to flee for their lives. When Alyss drew close to the boundary the creatures burst out, devouring the Queen and her entire entourage. Insects laid the fields waste, eating the crops and building as vigorously as our own ants. Capelin recorded that more Insects emerged than could ever have fitted inside, but this may be an understandable exaggeration or poetic flourish.

An envoy brought the news of Alyss’s death to her palace and to the King of Morenzia in Litanee. Various of the Morenzian nobility immediately laid claim to the leadership of Pentadrica-that is, the throne.