He had gone in harm’s way more often than he could remember. He had tried his courage with perverse regularity. Not even pure Talsit—something he hadn’t enjoyed in four years—could relax the hard little knot of desire for challenges. Yet he did not so much relish danger as experience. There had been very little extraordinary experience in the last few decades. He, too, had finally wearied of Earth, with its quagmire of needs and excess of misery.

But never in all of his lives had he felt the kind of fear he did now. Whatever lay within the memory storage—almost certainly a Jart personality, if Mar Kellen’s suppositions were correct—had been strong enough to kill Mar Kellen’s mate and damage Mar Kellen.

“Don’t thank me,” Mar Kellen said, smile gone. “Now that I’ve brought you here, I’m…” He picted a fury of red and yellow symbols, personal symbols, meaningless to Olmy but structured in an old Naderite prayer-form. “I don’t want anything, really. I don’t even care about advantages. There isn’t much I do care about, now. I killed her, bringing her down here….”

Olmy broke from his reverie. “You’ve found something very important,” he said. “I’m not quite sure what it is, yet….”

“I’m not curious any more. If it’s important, I leave it to you. I’ve really lived too long,” Mar Kellen said softly, his face glowing by the light of the Jart patterns. He blinked slowly, then licked his lips and glanced at Olmy. “Haven’t you?”

7

Gaia, Near Alexandreia, Year of Alexandros 2345

Rhita stood on the aft deck of the steam ferry Ioannes, plying the waters between Rhodos and Alexandreia. To keep away the winter sea chill, she wore an Akademeia brown cape and a butter-colored Rhodian wool gown. Her eyes soft-focused on the ocean and the ferry’s broad, churning wake. She was accompanied by a lone gull perched a few arms away on the dark oak railing, beak open, curiously turning its head back and forth. The somber gray sky brooded over a calm ocean the sullen color of iron. Behind her, large motor wagons from Rhodos, Kōs and Knidos hunkered in the shadow of the covered main deck.

At twenty-one years, she felt even more mature than she had at eighteeen, and that made her very mature indeed. At least her keen sense of fun had not yet deserted her; she had a healthy awareness of her own capacity for foolishness, and regretted finding little time to indulge it now.

Her hair had kept its luminous reddish-brown shade of childhood, but now she cut it shorter. Little changed were her large, quizzical green eyes, pale skin, and her stature. She had not grown beyond middle height, though her shoulders had broadened somewhat. She had inherited her father’s quiet physical strength, as well as long-fingered hands and long legs.