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28

Nonnus had a fire of dried seaweed going. The pot over it bubbled merrily, though Sharina supposed the crabs being cooked weren't very cheerful about it.

Before Tegma it wouldn't have occurred to her to think about how a crab felt. She wondered if the Archai ate men.

The flames were clear and colored a dozen pastel shades by salts in the dried strands. Occasionally a nodule cracked with a puff of steam. Nonnus had to constantly feed the fire. For a moment Sharina doubted there'd be enough seaweed to finish cooking the meal, but she realized that meant doubting the hermit's judgment.

Nonnus was human; he could make mistakes. But she hadn't seen him make any mistake that mattered since they boarded the trireme together.

Except, perhaps, that he had boarded the trireme when he could have remained in prayerful contemplation near the hamlet.

"Shall I—" Sharina said. Nonnus jumped as though she'd stabbed.

"Oh, I'm—" she blurted, then fell silent in embarrassment.

"Child," the hermit said in equal embarrassment, "I've spent so much of my life alone that sometimes I forget that other folk are around now."

He smiled slowly. "Feeding the fire, smelling the salt smoke and crabs boiling . . . It's like I was your age again, before other things happened."

The smile vanished like hoarfrost in the sun. "Before I did the other things," he added.

"I was thinking that I could call Asera and Meder down," Sharina said. She spoke in the direction of the island's crest so that she didn't have to meet Nonnus' eyes for the moment. "I don't think they even carried food up the hill with them."

The island was a featureless hump, visible against the sky only as an absence of stars. A twinkle could have meant Meder or the procurator had walked across the skyline, but the heavens weren't light enough to show anything as small as a human a quarter mile away.

"This isn't a hot fire," the hermit said. "Give them another half hour or so."

Sharina had circled the whole island without finding driftwood or any terrain different from the spot where they'd beached their vessel. She'd been doubtful when she returned to find the dugout's mast and spar festooned with seaweed drying for fuel, but it had worked just the way Nonnus said it would.

Occasionally as she'd walked Sharina could see Asera and Meder on the hilltop. The nobles hadn't managed to raise a shelter during daylight; if they wanted to come down to the shore again, there was room for them behind the windbreak. Nonnus had erected a tarpaulin on spikes like the ones that held the dugout.

"Besides," Nonnus said, "I find the night more peaceful the way it is."

He smiled and added, "Charity is one of the things I pray for, but there's a long list."

"There's plenty of food on this island," Sharina said. "Barnacles and crabs. And we can have a fire."

She hadn't realized how glad she'd been to be on dry land until midway on her walk around the island. Of course she wanted to get to one of the major isles. She wanted even more to get home and to curl up in her own bed, letting the notion that she was Count Niard's daughter vanish into fantasy like everything else that had happened since the trireme landed in Barca's Hamlet. But just for now, Sharina would like a few days when she had more space than a dugout's hull and her universe didn't rise and fall with the waves.

"Best we leave, child," Nonnus said as he fed his fire. "This land doesn't hate us the way Tegma did, but it isn't a place we belong either. There'll be roads to walk on Sandrakkan; and houses to live in as well."

Sharina looked up the hill, wondering how close she'd have to get to the nobles' camp for them to hear her offer of dinner. Climbing the channeled rock at night wouldn't be easy. If Asera and Meder wanted a meal they could see the fire burning, couldn't they?

There was light behind the hilltop.

For an instant Sharina thought her eyes were throwing flashes of their own the way they sometimes did when closed in the middle of the night. She opened her mouth to speak but held the words.

The night flickered again, rosy pink.

Sharina got up and ran to the dugout. "Child?" the hermit called behind her.

She knew where the wizard's chest of paraphernalia had been stored near the stern. She clambered over the cargo, pawing at the nets. The boat's belly was in darkness, but nothing else had the shape and feel of that metal-strapped case.

It wasn't where it had been. Meder hadn't brought it out; Sharina had watched to make sure. Asera must have carried the chest for him, concealed in the folds of her robe.

"Child?" Nonnus repeated.

Sharina pointed. "He's doing magic," she said. As she spoke, a flare of red light bathed the darkened hillcrest.

"So he is," the hermit said in a voice like a glacier. He lifted his javelin in his right hand and started up the hill. Sharina jumped to the ground to go with him.

A vast tremor shook the island.

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