If her own life hadn't hung in the balance, Xantcha would have laughed at the absurdity. She grabbed Sosinna below the shoulders and hauled the taller woman to her feet.

"You want to live, Sosinna. You got us both away from the falling rocks and dirt-" She shook the other woman, hoping for reaction. "You want to live. You want to see Kenidiern again."

A blink. A frown. Nothing.

"This is not perfection!" Xantcha shouted and then let Sosinna go.

The taller woman balanced on her own feet a moment, then calmly sat down again. Xantcha walked away in disgust. She'd gone about ten paces before the light of understanding brightened in her mind.

"You knew!" Xantcha shouted as she ran back. "You've known from the beginning! You've been expecting these archwhatever- angels since I woke up ... since before I woke up. Your precious, perfect

Lady sent me here to be killed and sent you as what? A witness? 'Come back to the floating palace when everything's taken care of.'? All this time, waiting for the archangels-"

"I never wanted them to come!" Sosinna shouted back.

It was the first time Xantcha had heard the other woman raise her voice-perhaps the first time Sosinna had raised it. She seemed aghast by her outburst.

"Why not? Didn't you want to get back to the palace and Keni-diern?"

Sosinna gasped and fumbled for words. "Don't you understand? I can't go back."

"Because I saved your life with my black mana." Xantcha thought she understood, perfectly. "If only the archangels had been a little quicker. Is that what you've been doing while you sat all the time. Praying to the archangels: get here soon?"

"I didn't want you to wake up because while you were asleep there was no chance you'd use your black powers, and nothing would draw the archangels to us. Once you were awake ... You are ... You are so difficult. I was afraid to tell you anything."

"I'd be much less difficult," Xantcha said with exaggerated politeness, "if I knew the truth." She sat down opposite Sosinna. "The perfect truth."

"Kenidiern-"

Xantcha rolled her eyes. "Why am I not surprised that he is at the heart of the truth?"

"You are very difficult. It is the black mana in you. It rules you. The Lady said so."

Xantcha wondered what the Lady had said about Urza, but that would have been a truly difficult question. "I know nothing about black mana, but I won't argue with your Lady's judgment. Go on ... please ... before we run out of time."

"How can you run out of time?"

Xantcha shrugged. "Just talk."

"The Lady smiled on Kenidiern and I. She has never encouraged the divisions between the sisterhood and the angels. We had her blessing to come to the palace, but before we could be together he was sent away, and I was

chosen to accompany you. I would not have objected," Sosinna continued quickly and emphatically. "I serve Lady Serra proudly, willingly. We all know how she sacrifices herself to maintain the realm. It would be the worst sort of pride and arrogance to question her decisions.... But I could not, cannot believe this was her decision."

"To send me away to die or to send you away to die with me?"

Sosinna had the decency to look uncomfortable. "You are difficult, and you are devious. You imagine dark corners and then you make them real."

That was a criticism Xantcha had never heard from Urza's lips.

"You would never do among the sisters or the angels, but if I were to speak to the Lady, I would tell her that except for your black mana you would make a most excellent archangel, and I think she would agree. I was-am-young among the sisters, but I have-had-the Lady's confidence. I know she would not have sent me away without seeing me or telling me why."

"Then why hasn't she come looking for you? Wouldn't she notice you were missing, you and Kenidiern, both?"

Sosinna shivered. "You ask such questions, Xantcha! I would never think to ask such questions myself." She paused and Xantcha raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Until I met you. Now, I ask myself such questions, and I do not like my own answers! I ask myself if the Lady has been deceived by those who were displeased that Kenidiern had given me his token, and no matter how hard I try to purge my thoughts, I cannot convince myself that she hasn't."

"Or maybe your Lady's not perfect?"

Sosinna's thin-lipped mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "I don't know if she never looked for me or if she could not find me but in either case, yes, there would be imperfection. So you see I cannot go back to the palace, not with these thoughts in my heart. Kenidiern is lost. You mock me, Xantcha, do not bother to lie about it, but Kenidiern is a paragon. He would have looked for me and since he hasn't-"

"Hasn't found you, but maybe he is looking. How many of these floating islands are there? A thousand? Ten thousand? You shouldn't give up. He might be just one rock away. Think of the look on his face when he finds you here dead because you stopped trying to stay alive."

"Difficult."

"But right."

"Half right." A faint smile cracked the dirt on Sosinna's face, then vanished. "We couldn't go back to the palace."

"Seems to me that's exactly the place we should be going."

"We wouldn't be welcomed."

"Waste not, want not, Sosinna, your precious Lady is being lied to, and you'd roll over and die without your lover because your enemies won't welcome you."

"Not enemies."

"Enemies. Anyone who wants you dead, Sosinna, is an enemy, yours and your Lady's. If you're determined to die, let's at least try to find this floating palace where your Lady is surrounded by silent enemies. Urza will support

you."

That was a promise Xantcha didn't know if she'd be able to keep, but it had to be made. Anything that would get Sosinna thinking had to be done, because even if the archangels didn't show up, the islands were likely to collide again. The upper island had taken the worst damage in the first collision and might again in the second, but anything on the surface of the lower island was going to get squashed like a bug.

"Difficult," Sosinna repeated.

Xantcha stood up and offered her hand. "But right."

"I don't know where the palace is. Only the angels know."

"Didn't Kenidiern ever tell you how he flew in and out?"

"We never talked about such things."

Xantcha almost asked what did they talk about, but Sosinna might have answered, and she didn't truly want to know. "Come on, let's at least start walking. We've got to walk ourselves clear of what's overhead. Maybe when we get to an edge we'll get lucky and see this wondrous palace." "We can't." "Can't what?"

"We can't walk to the edge of an island. I don't think we can walk out from under the one overhead. I tried, Xantcha, before you woke up. I tried to abandon you. I knew when you walked away that you'd have to come back."

"No apologies. Pd've done the same," Xantcha said and offered her hand again. "Come on. I've lived with worlds over my head, but not this close. Makes me nervous."

Sosinna reached, and winced as the gash on her arm began bleeding again. It was ugly now and would only get worse if they didn't find water soon. Xantcha hadn't seen free-running water since she'd first opened her eyes in Serra's realm, but now that Sosinna was moving again, she didn't seem worried about her wounds, so Xantcha said nothing either.

Xantcha kept an eye on the island overhead to measure their progress. The lethargy that had slowed her on her previous walk was worse. They weren't covering ground the way she would have liked. Even so, they were getting nowhere relative to the convoluted underside above them. Sosinna looked at her every time she looked up, a look that expected concessions and defeat, but Xantcha kept walking.