Nira pulled the girl onto her lap and rocked her gently, as a normal mother would rock a normal child. 'I don't believe that. You have tremendous possibilities ahead of you - as do your brothers and sisters. But first we can be a family. Yes, a real family.'

She remembered her own upbringing on Theroc, crowded with parents and brothers and sisters in a fungus-reef dwelling. Nira had been so disconnected and dazed since her rescue that she hadn't learned until recently how her family had been killed in the first hydrogue attack. Now the loss felt acute, yet at the same time not real. Nira regretted how distant she had been from them, and it made her more determined to pull the pieces of her own family together, to cement their connections.

Nira smiled. 'We can make up whatever rules and traditions we like.' She pulled Osira'h to her feet. 'Let's go see your brothers and sisters.'

Nira found the other halfbreed children in Mijistra's primary star observatory. Under constant daylight, Ildiran astronomers did not use telescopes, until their race had ventured into space, no Ildiran had ever even seen a dark night sky. In the windowless room, rectangular sheets of crystal displayed images from satellites and space-based observatories. Each screen offered a stunning view, like a wide, tilted window leading out into the universe. Nira felt dizzy, as if she might fall headfirst into a star.

Filters diluted the images so an audience could look directly at the roiling plasma surface. Six projection screens showed blazing suns of various colours and spectral types, one of the famed seven suns, however, was dead.

With all five of her children, Nira gazed at the reminder of the star that the hydrogues and faeros had killed. The two boys, Rod'h and Gale'nh, seemed angry and defiant, while the two youngest girls were more interested in the fiery living suns, too young to understand the tragedy in the quenching of Durris-B.

Nira touched Rod'h's shoulder. At first it had been hard for her to put aside her anger and resentment toward Osira'h's siblings, since they were the products of repeated rapes on Dobro for the purpose of impregnating her. But in time, Nira had accepted that,' regardless of who their fathers were, these were her children, too. They weren't responsible for how they had been conceived. Her sons and daughters were exceptional, unique, and irreplaceable, and she loved each of them.

The image of the dead star Durris-B reminded Nira of a scar in space. Scars… They all had scars. Jora'h was attempting to heal his Empire and Nira's heart, and she would tend to her family. Soon, they would all be whole again.

Eleven

Sullivan Gold

In his quarters halfway up a crystalline tower, Sullivan looked at reflections of Mijistra's skyline and pondered what to write. The grey-haired cloud-harvester manager held a stylus in his hand, tapping the tip against a diamondfilm sheet. He had gone through seven drafts of this letter to his wife. No words seemed sufficient to explain everything that had happened.