An icy wind grabbed his arm. Frigid air made him cough. The fleet must have hit an ice storm. Djola was too thin. He wasn’t eating enough. The cold got to him under anybody’s thick, hairy hide, and wrecked even drugged sleep. Actually, he’d taken enough medicine to stop his heart. Had the cold followed him to the death lands? He opened crusty eyes. White light blinded him. He blinked and squinted. The scent of almonds and raintree blossoms pierced woozy visions, organizing the view a little.

“Come with me.” The scar moon spoke, a red slash on a gray horizon above hills and valleys of water, not land. He was still at sea. “Come to Smokeland. We have so little time.”

Not the moon talking, but Samina—her words tugged him away from the everyday. He was thrilled and frightened. “No worry. Vandana and Orca stand guard.” How could Samina know their names? “Hurry!” She used the voice not to be argued with, so Djola left his breath body on Pezarrat’s ship and flew over a sea of behemoth eyes. Their icy geysers lifted him high.

“This way,” Samina shouted.

Djola groped the cold, trying to touch her, pull her close. In one achy heartbeat, he passed through the border-void to Smokeland, going too fast for despair.

“I would spend these last moments with you,” she said.

His last moments or hers? She drew him along a bridge of blurry starlight past icy comets to a winter region. “My realm now.”

A stream, frozen midair as it rushed over a precipice, shimmered. Light from a hundred hundred surfaces bounced everywhere. The shadows of snow-dusted trees danced against the side of a white mountain. One hazy form blended into another. Leaves rustled and tinkled, and Samina whispered and whistled. Djola wished he hadn’t swallowed a bottle of seed and silk potion. Suicide suddenly seemed foolhardy, cowardly.

“Where are you?” he whispered.

“Walking beside you.” Her face was a snow squall, her heart lightning bolts. “And also in a transgressor hut, where my breath body burns.”

He tasted ashes, but was calm. Knowing her fate would be relief. “Are you dead?”

“I’m not sister Kyrie. Still, I cheat death.” She whirled about him. “I set fire to the transgressor hut before drinking a lethal potion and traveling to Smokeland. I smell that Lahesh potion on your breath and see the haze in your eyes.” Her voice was gentle, sweet. “What are you doing, my love?”

He choked. “Kyrie sent me letters, but only from Grain, not from you.”

“I wrote you many angry words, and love too, but I burned the scrolls. I’m not Kyrie. She found you with Grain’s map-sense.”

“You find me now.”

“We find each other. Smoke-walking.”

“Grain said you were in mortal danger—” Djola slipped on ice. “I’ve mourned you.”