Someone touched the bottom of her foot, and she blinked awake. She had not realized that she had fallen asleep. The dim radiance from the high circular windows in the roof of the hall had gone, leaving only the pale guttering flame of a torch by the door. Her cot flexed as someone sat down next to her.

Shirin's nostrils flared, and she knew that it was the Gothic girl, Claudia. Even in the spare confines of the dormitory, the willowy blonde managed to find some kind of sweet scent for her hair. It might be jasmine or juniper rosin. There was a touch on her arm.

"Shi? Are you awake?"

"Yes," hissed the Princess, suddenly feeling the throb of her upper arms and the insides of her wrists. A four-hour stint with the wooden man left the muscles of her arms like jelly. "What time is it?"

"After dinner," Claudia answered with a smile in her voice. "I brought you some. Cook was not pleased, but I told her you were studying extra hard in the bibliotheca, and she relented."

Shirin levered herself up and wedged her back against the smooth stone wall of the cavern. Claudia put a wooden bowl in her hands- it was still warm and smelled faintly of fish. Shirin wrinkled up her nose. The diet of everyone on the island was, not surprisingly, mostly fish. The dark blue seas around Thira yielded an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and tastes of fish- but it was all still fish. Shirin had never really liked fish. She took the cover off the bowl and put it aside. The warm, tart smell of fish stew assailed her nostrils and she sighed, picking up the spoon. At least there was a pickle.

After she was done, Claudia took the bowl and spoon away. The Gothic girl had sat quietly on the end of Shirin's bed the whole time, which Shirin thought was a little odd, but it seemed perfectly reasonable to the barbarian woman. Shirin flexed her fingers, feeling the tremor in her muscles. It was a bad day, she thought sourly, when even your fingertips were sore.

"Shi? Is it true what they say about you?"

Shirin folded her legs under her as she had seen the Lady Mikele do. It was more comfortable for sitting than squatting was. "What is true? And who are they? "Inwardly Shirin shook her head in dismay. The gossip in the Palace of Birds in Ctesiphon had flown faster than a shrike; why should the temple be any different?

"The older girls- the ones who are about to go out into the worldthey say that you are a princess, that you were married to an emperor. Is that true?" The Gothic girl's voice was tinged with a little awe and a little envy.

Unseen in the dark, Shirin rolled her dark brown eyes. Oh dear, she thought, some things never change: "I will answer your question," she said with asperity, "if you will answer some of mine."

"Oh, of course!" Claudia clapped her hands together in delight. Shirin gritted her teeth.

"Very well," the Khazar woman said, "I was a princess and I was married to an emperor and I did live in a great palace in a rich and lovely city far away. It was like a dream, but eventually I woke up."

"Oh, no: did something bad happen?"

Shirin nodded in the darkness, though she wasn't sure that the Gothic girl could see her. "Ah, now, it's my turn to ask a question. You've been here longer than I- when can we leave this place?"

Shirin took two paces, her back stiff with repressed rage, turned, and then took two more back. The cell was not large, only big enough for a woven reed mat on the floor, a bed no larger than Shirin's own cot, and a folding screen made of pale white paper painted with delicate images of birds and a mountain shrouded in clouds. An oil lamp made from a ceramic bowl and a wick provided a wan yellow light.

"This is insane. I will not stay here on this fish-stinking island for another four years before I am allowed to see my children." The Khazar woman's voice slid unerringly upward in scale, trembling toward a scream of rage.

"That is the rule and the law that binds the ephebe once they have sworn themselves to the service of the Goddess." Mikele's voice was quiet and calm, with only a hint of the lilting accent that normally colored her speech. "You have sworn yourself to her service- before the Matron, no less."

Shirin spun savagely on her heel. She wanted very much to smash her fist into the calm, round face of her teacher, but raw animal instinct held her back. Her training had progressed well, but there was no way that she could face the supple skill of the master with her mind clouded with rage. The result would be painful and quick. "I will not abandon my children," she bit out between clenched teeth. "I will not come back to them after four years denned on this island to find them fully grown and looking upon me with strangers' eyes."

Mikele nodded her head, letting the long wave of her unbound black hair fall over her shoulder. She had been combing her hair when Shirin had barged into her room. The Chin woman was sitting on the bed, her legs crossed under her, with a mother-of-pearl comb in one hand. Her hair was verylong, reaching well past her waist. During the day, on the training floor of the gymnasium, she kept it bound up and held in place by long silver pins.

"If you go out now," Mikele said in an infuriatingly calm voice, "you will place yourself and your children in greater danger. This is why Thyatis brought you to this place."

"She brought me here to keep me safe!" Shirin's fists clenched hard, the knuckles whitening. "I am mewed up here for my safety? For my children's safety? Everything is for safety's sake!"

Shirin bit her knuckle, her fine white teeth digging into the flesh.

"I traded one prison for another, one with harder beds and worse food:." Her voice was a harsh whisper.

Mikele stood, unfolding gracefully from sitting to standing like a crane dipping toward the water. "You are not here to be safe," she said. Her hands gathered her hair and pulled it behind her head. " There is no safety in this place, or any other. Remember that, Shirin. Thyatis brought you here to be trained, so that you could go about in the world with open eyes."

"That is not what she said," Shirin muttered in a petulant tone. "She said that I would be safe here."

Mikele nodded again, her quick hands braiding her hair and arranging it. "Thyatis loves you and wishes to keep you from harm. She is a sweet girl, but she is still naive in the ways of the world. Hiding you here will only delay the attentions of these Kings. This is a time for you- and it will prove little enough, even if you stay here the full term of years- to find some focus."

Shirin hung her head. She had not thought about the agents of the Eastern Emperor that were still, doubtless, watching and listening in the eastern ports and cities, waiting for news of her to come to their ears. Her body and blood were the prize for these Emperors, and if she were found, her children would be forfeit.

"While you and your children are apart," Mikele said, seeing Shirin's thought like a cloud in a clear sky, "each of you are anonymous. They could be any four youngsters, you any woman. But if you are found together, there will be greater danger. If you stay here, you will learn how to deal with that danger."

The Khazar woman looked up, meeting the older woman's eyes. Fury burned in them. "I am not a prize," she said in a flat voice. "I refuse to be a bauble passed from hand to hand. I will find my children and take them out of the Empire, beyond the reach of Theodore's agents."

"And Thyatis?" Mikele cocked her head to one side, her calm brown eyes fixed on Shirin. "What of her?"

Shirin shook her head and stood, her full lips compressed into a tight line. "Thyatis can take care of herself. If she wants to come with me, we will be together. Otherwise, I will find someone elsesomeone who treats me as an equal rather than as a pretty necklace to be put away in a lock-box until festival day."