“I am deadly with a fighting stick!” Talon’s daughter stroked the silver inlay. “You bear my bruises many a day, do you not, Mer?”

“I used to.” The taller girl pushed her hair back from her forehead, where sweat had melted tiny furrows into the paint. “Until I learned not to fight you. Never accept a challenge from Betaan,” she advised Storm gravely. “She is quite good, but she also cheats.”

“Liar!” Betaan pretended outrage and motioned the guard to pay for the stick.

“I’m safe. I don’t fight with the stick,” Storm said. The other girls’ banter was a distraction now, not a pleasure. She couldn’t forget the Water-witch’s warning. A Fire-witch could be stalking her right now! She shivered, wishing she had been able to talk to the young man, but he had scooped up his coins and disappeared before she could approach. “I’m better with a bow and arrows,” she explained, fearing her words had seemed abrupt.

“I’ve heard you’re not bad with wind and water!” Betaan tilted her head sideways and peered at Storm with an arch smile.

Something about the smile caused a tiny flicker of irritation. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Storm held out her bangled arm. “Nor would you have given me this.” The cuff glinted in a shaft of sunlight and Storm felt suddenly ashamed. She knew these girls were befriending her because of her power, not because they liked her, but sometimes the truth was best left unsaid. She glanced about, looking for a distraction. “Oh, look there!” And hurried over to a stall selling knives.

Storm had given her father’s old knife to Nim, the Drowned One boy, in a moment of pity she knew she would regret for the rest of her life. She bowed to the stallholder, a woman of middle years, perhaps thirty. The woman bowed back, but made no greeting. Her eyes were wary. Storm was getting used to it, but she was beginning to wonder about how the rest of the inhabitants of Bellum Island felt about the Pact.

She bent over the table and forgot the teeming crowd, her impossibly elegant companions, the leathery guards watching and waiting. A knife had caught her eyes. It was similar to her father’s old knife, but far finer. The bone handle was plain but for a band of silver wrapping the hilt where the bone had been split to take the iron. But the blade of the knife – she saw at once – was the work of a master craftswoman. This blade had been forged and forged again. It had met the fire many times, and its edge was deadly and pure. Then she saw it: an image near the hilt, stamped into the hot metal as it cooled the final time – the image of a Dolphin. Storm caught her breath.

“How much?” She raised her head to find the stallholder studying her.

“You are the Weather-witch.”