Tanri dreams of a rooftop beneath a starlit night. She feels hand-made ceramic tiles, cool beneath her back, and the wind is in her hair gently, like never before. She gazes upwards at the four constellations, trapped beneath the black nebula. Tanri greets the constellations in her mind: Fire, Water, Ground, and Wind; she tries to greet the seven stars in each, but fails to recall their personal names. It's been so long since the Void shone above, so long . . .

Beyond the consuming horsehead nebula, the stars of the other galaxies are so numerous and in such raw disorder that they reveal no visible constellations, just a mist of glittering diamonds on the veil of black. It was different living out there, Beyond the Veil. Countless stars and dozens of constellations. Somewhere, behind the Horse's Head, lies one star, shining on the world that was home before the Slavers came.

A curtain of green and blue abruptly appears in the north, over the ocean, shooting downwards: azure and teal waves in the sky, foaming with golden highlghts. Tanri hears a woman's voice, then a second, exclaim in pleasure.

Tanri sits up. Looking across the roof, she views the Mistress of Firecastle and her lackey, the shearjashub of Maja Barusse, sitting cross legged on the peak of the roof, not twenty feet away. The women lean shoulder-to-shoulder, backs to Tanri, faces to the sky. That-which-was-once Maja Barusse holds Sharra Decameron's left hand in her right, and with her other hand the shearjashub points at the sky.

"Ah! That was a nice one." sighs Maja, speaking Khannish.

"Could do better." shrugs Sharra.

"No longer. Not me." Maja curses in Kinatharu. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! As of sunset, I have no radius at all."

"Gone?" Shara replies in the same tongue.

"No trace. The Place of Power, it's-÷not even an intuition."

The women watch the skies in silence for a while. A shooting star flares momentarily, and both women say "mmmmm," the sound lasting longer than the comet's life.

"But I can regain it. But I've reread my father's treatise. It suggests I inherit mastery again when my mother ..."

"She defended," says Sharra into the pause, exactly the moment when Maja finishes with the word, "dies."

Maja looks from the sky to Sharra and back up again. "Oh?" Doubt, fear, and hope expressed in one syllable. Sharra nods her head. Maja looks down, at the roof. She picks at a tile with her fingernail. "How can you be certain?" Minutes pass. A dog barks in the distance, and a wolf answers, producing silence. "Damn, I wonder what's happening," Maja whispers to the city.

"My Roke training." says Sharra, to the stars.

"Um, yeah. You felt her without touch, heard her without ears." Louder: "Damn, damn, damn!" Maja pounds the roof with her fist three times. "She didn't bother to show, leave me any signs this time." Maja lifts a piece of tile she's broken, frowns at it, and flings it into the night.

Sharra shrugs, lifts her hand from Maja's to lay the backs of her fingers against Maja's cheek. Sharra smiles. "Don't punish," she gently commands. "We love you in our own ways."

Maja turns to Sharra, but looks up suddenly, and softly exhales, "Ah!" as another flame burns like dancing spears across half the sky. Minutes pass in which contentment hangs. Minutes, and then a pop, a small explosion, miles away, brings the bliss to a close. Maja peers off to her left, towards the noise. Sharra touches her hand, grasps Maja's hand in hers once more.

"I wonder what that was." Maja sighs. "I never used to care, not really, but now every time something happens, each time I realize my city thrives without my, without me . . ." Maja bows her head for a minute, and then lifts her face to the sky. "It's like I lost half my mind," she cries, voice breaking. "I'm deaf and dumb, I'm numb, I'm numb..."

"Vengeance!" spits Sharra. Maja whirls on her.

"Never! You will NEVER tell her what she cost us. Never! It would surely kill her--"

"Oh, please?" asks Sharra playfully, but with an edge. "Especially--oh!"

Another aurora streaks down the sky, this one like a mad artist's brush, swishing sunset flecks of red, orange, and yellow, over and up, over and up, over . . . Like little girls, they squeal without words and kick their feet against the roof tiles in appreciation. This time the skyfire burns a long, long time, but of course, eventually the stars regain the sky. Maja Barusse changes to the Lios Elfar tongue.

"Never. For Laurien. Tanri _must_ sing for Laurien's people. I don't want her heart sickened."

"After?" asks Sharra, all play gone, her voice an unsheathed blade.

"After we finish Laurien's . . . gift?" Shara uses a Lios Elfar word that puns with 'recompensation for an honorable debt.' Maja pulls her hand from Sharra and hugs her knees tightly.

"She's never coming back, is she?" Maja asks, rocking back and forth, while Sharra remains motionless. Minutes pass, then Maja snifs and says, too loud, "Neither Salt Peter nor Durvail taught me much about forgiveness."

Another red-orange streak lances across the sky, but neither woman speaks.

Tanri retreats, quietly climbing from the roof on tiny feet and hands, like those of an ape, or a very small child.