Susannah lay in the tent alone, dreaming.

It was the same dream, the one she had had since she was so young she could not remember her age. She was in an immense place of light and hushed mystery, with unexpected gleams of silver and strange, sparkling tapestries laid against the walls. She floated through this space like a sea creature moving effortlessly through the suspended weeds and reefs of her domain, inhabiting an alien element but feeling perfectly at ease. She lifted a hand to touch one of the glittering patterns hung before her, but her fingers felt nothing but a glass coolness. In her dream, she put her fingers to her cheek, and it was just as cool, as porcelain, as unreal.

This time, the voice accompanied her as she walked through her magical realm. "Susannah," it said in its deep, unearthly tone, and then it spoke unintelligible words. She nodded and smiled and continued on her tour of the white-and-silver room. She could tell that the owner of the voice liked her, was welcoming her to this place. She just could not tell what it was he wanted her to understand. Sometimes he talked to her for hours as she wandered through her dream; sometimes he just spoke her name once, then let her move about in silence. Although he always addressed her by name, he never supplied his own, and never, while she slept, did she ask it. It was only after she woke that she would wonder why she never thought to extend the courtesies that, in her waking life, she would extend to any stranger who invited her into his home.

Sometimes he left off his incomprehensible speech and addressed her in sentences that made absolute sense, and then she would converse with him as she would with any friend. Today was such a day.

"Susannah," he said.

"I am here," she replied.

"It is almost time for you to leave the Edori," he said.

"No, my friend. I will travel always with my tribe."

"You will travel farther than you know."

"I do not mind the travel," she said. "But I like to always return to the place I know."

"And the people you know," he said.

"My people are my place," she said.

"Your people, and your place, are about to change."

She smiled at him. "No, my friend," she said. "For I am not a changeable woman."

"Susannah," he said again, but his voice had changed, had grown smaller and thinner and more insistent. "Susannah."

And then that white space tilted under her, and the world spun a quarter of a turn, and she opened her eyes to find herself being shaken by the shoulder.

"Susannah," the young, thin voice repeated. "Are you going to sleep forever? It's time to be waking up."

She blinked a few times, trying to readjust her mind to reality. She had been so deep inside her dream that she felt she was climbing from a dark, narrow cavern onto a hillside of much light and wind, so that she was having a hard time keeping her balance. She put a hand up to shield her eyes, though the light filtering in from the open hole at the top of the tent was scarcely strong enough to hurt her eyes.

"Amram?" she said in a questioning voice, though she knew perfectly well who was beside her. "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing is wrong, it is just that you have been sleeping so long and I wanted you to wake up."

Thus the purely selfish and unself-conscious reasoning of her lover's sister's son, who was ten years old and had not seemed to realize yet that people might have emotions and needs and experiences that did not relate to him.

"Well, I am awake now, but it will not do you much good, since I do not intend to get up," Susannah said cheerfully. She resettled herself into a slightly more comfortable position on her pallet and smiled up at the boy. Like his mother, Tirza, and his uncle, Dathan, he was dark-skinned and dark-haired and dark-eyed, a true Edori of absolutely unmixed blood. He was also frowning.

"But I want you to get up," he said. "You were going to go berry-picking with me today."

"I still may. Or I may do it tomorrow."

"But you promised me!"

Susannah yawned and tucked her hands under her cheek. "I do not recall any promising," she said. "And to be quite honest, I don't feel much like going berry-picking or doing anything with someone who won't let me sleep."

He sat back on his heels, a look of mutinous disbelief tightening all his fine features. "But then -- you mean -- you're not going to get up? And even if you got up, you wouldn't go with me?"

She yawned again, this time covering her mouth with her hand because the yawn was so big. "Not today," she said, closing her eyes and snuggling more deeply into her sleeping roll. "Maybe tomorrow, if you don't disturb my rest."

"But that's not fair!" he exclaimed.

A shadow darkened the tent door; she could feel it even through her closed lids. "You. Out. Go trouble somebody else," she heard Dathan's voice say. She smiled but did not open her eyes as Amram whined again about the injustice of the world, and Dathan repeated his commands, and the two of them changed places. Once Amram was outside and Dathan was inside, the light against her eyelids grew subtly darker, as Dathan tied shut the tent door. She felt him moving through the scattered pallets to come stand beside hers, and then he lowered himself slowly next to her on the ground.

"You're not really asleep, are you?" he whispered. "This late in the morning?"

She did not open her eyes, but she could not repress her smile. "Well, I was, until Amram so rudely shook me from my dream. Why, how late is it?"

He pulled up the blankets covering her, brought his body in next to hers, and let the blankets fall over both of them. Instantly, the heat of his body flushed every inch of her skin; he was as warm as a fire, and just as beautiful. "Late," he told her. "Everyone has had their morning meal, and Claudia has gone off to the river for water for the second time. Bartholomew is trying to get a group together to go into Luminaux tomorrow, so everyone is counting their coppers and debating what they might have to barter. Very busy it is in the camp this morning."

Susannah shifted so that Dathan could slip his arm under her shoulder and draw her closer. She loved the feel of his hands, one in her hair, one pressing against her back. She loved the scent of his skin, newly washed this morning in the ice-cold river but smelling of Dathan still for all that. She loved the silken fall of his long black hair across her cheek. She still had not opened her eyes.

"I'm not hungry," she said. "No reason to get up for a meal. And I can go to the river later to bathe and wash out yesterday's clothes. And I have nothing to barter in Luminaux, so I've no need to get up and start looking through my bundles."

"So you're just going to stay in the tent all day, sleeping?" Dathan asked. His face was so close he merely had to lean in a little to kiss her on the corner of her mouth.

She smiled, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter. "I might stay in the tent all day," she murmured, "but I do not mind if I am not sleeping."

No one bothered them for the next couple of hours, as they lay entwined on the sleeping pallet and played at love. Every one of the six tents in their camp was communal, and seven slept in their tent most nights. Privacy was a thing they had to work into the day -- but they never had trouble finding time for each other. None of the Edori did. It was an understood thing that a man and a woman would need time alone together; and if a couple had sought out that time, well, others were ready to take up their responsibilities for a few hours. There were other elders to watch the children, other hands to tend the fires. There was no need to rush. Time was plentiful and the seasons were slow. This was one of the many joys Yovah had given them, the love of one for another, and it was a joy to be savored.

Even so, Susannah had not thought to fall back asleep in Dathan's arms and so still be lying in the tent when the noon hour spiked its golden head into the bright blue of the summer sky. Laughter woke her this time, laughter coming from the other side of the tent walls, and she recognized Tirza's sweet voice.

"Not a sound from them for hours," she said cheerfully. "I don't want to go in and check on them, but perhaps I could pull down the center pole and have the whole tent collapse. That might bring them out in a hurry."

"I shall have to tell Adam how long they have lain together," Claudia said with an amused voice. "Perhaps he will try to prove to me that he, too, can lie abed for an entire morning. Even if we are only sleeping, I think I would enjoy such a day!"

Now Susannah did open her eyes, blushing in the half-dark of the tent. Dathan was still deeply asleep, so she kissed him on his rough cheek and came to her feet, careful not to disturb him. She changed quickly into day clothes -- not particularly clean ones, as she intended to change again as soon as she had bathed in the river -- and stepped outside.

"Well! Look who has woken up!" Tirza exclaimed with exaggerated surprise. "I thought perhaps you had drifted off to the arms of Yovah and we might never see you walking among us again."

Susannah smiled. "And I'm sure that would be delightful, too, but I have spent my last hour or so far more pleasurably," she said audaciously. The other two women laughed, and Claudia came forward to lay her hand on Susannah's belly.

"Still much too nice and flat," she said. "What are you waiting for? It's too long since the tribe had a little one."

"She is waiting for Dathan to be a little less reckless, which means she'll never have a baby," Tirza said. "But I think maybe she'll tame him. He is so settled around this Tachita girl! I never thought to see my brother so calm."

Susannah made a face. "Settled! Calm! I don't think those are the words I would ever use for Dathan. No, and who would want a lover like that? You make him sound like an old man."

"Dathan will not be an old man even when he is an old man," Claudia said dryly. "But someday you may see the advantages of stability over charm." Claudia was at least fifty years old, more than twice the age of Susannah and Tirza, and often she made similar dreary predictions based on her own years of experience. Tirza and Susannah exchanged glances, then burst out laughing. Claudia smiled with them and raised a hand in a casual benediction.

"Yes, you will, and I won't be around to remind you of it," Claudia said. "You'll be settled around the fire, thanking the god for your good man who remembers to hunt when he says he will and who is always there to strike the tent, and you'll say to yourself, 'Claudia was right, as she was about so many things. This is the kind of man to have after all.' "

"Well, Eleazar always remembers to hunt and he is always there to help me when I need him," Tirza said. "And when Amram was born? You could not have found a better father. I thought I would have to steal the baby while he was sleeping and find another tent, that's how much Eleazar wanted to hold his son."

Claudia leapt in with her own story about a past lover and his virtues. Susannah did not pay much attention, though she kept a pleasant smile on her face. Claudia and the other older women of the Lohora tribe seemed very quick to point out Dathan's faults to Susannah, faults that she would have been a fool not to have noticed for herself and faults that she did not care about one bit. Yes, it was true, Dathan could be lazy -- and there were days when he simply could not be inspired to help with the packing or the cooking or the washing, whatever the chore was -- and he had forgotten, at last year's Gathering, that he had arrived with Susannah and owed her the courtesy of not flirting with women from other tribes, at least while she could see him.

But, sweet loving Yovah, Dathan was magnificent. The handsomest of all the Edori men, the most charming, the sweetest tempered, the most loving. Anytime he stepped into view, from an absence long or short, Susannah felt her heart speed up and an involuntary smile reshape the pattern of her lips. His laughter could brighten the most miserable day, a sullen word from him could throw her into despair. He had been her world for four years, since the first Gathering at which he had noticed her and come to sit with the Tachita tribe for two days while he wooed her in the most obvious fashion imaginable. He had written a song for them to sing together at the great bonfire, and he had drawn her aside, away from the clustered campfires, to practice its intricate harmonies and rhythms. He had not even tried to steal a kiss from her those first two days, and she had been in an agony of uncertainty, not sure if he was courting her or just being nice to the tall, serious young woman who was the sister of a new-made friend.

But when he had kissed her, that first time, then she knew.

She had not been prepared to follow him after that first Gathering -- she was only twenty at the time, though some women left their parents' tents earlier than that to follow their lovers to their own tribes, and it was not her youth that had held her back. Her mother was sick, and her younger brother was afraid, and she could not bring herself to abandon her family at a time when it seemed so fragile. But she had wanted to. She had wanted to shed all responsibilities and trail after this dangerous and seductive man, and go where the Lohora tribe went, and call herself one of them, and love this man for the rest of her life.

She had not gone, and she had later come to approve of that hard-won decision. Her mother had died that fall, needing every minute of care her daughter could provide. Her father, so dependent on the woman he had lived with for thirty years and by whom he had had three children, seemed as lost as a blind man or a man stricken by dumbness, incapable of caring for himself. Susannah had been mother and sister and caretaker for her father and brothers. She had been so busy that she only had time to wonder, once or twice a day, what other serious women Dathan of the Lohoras might be charming into laughter while the months spiraled past.

But then the Tachita clan fell in with the Morosta tribe and traveled with them for two months, and Susannah's older brother went courting himself. Soon enough, he brought home a shy but smiling Morosta girl who slipped into their tent as easily and happily as if she had lived with them her whole life. She took over some of the cooking chores, she teased Susannah's father out of his grief, she played with the younger boy and made moon-eyes at the older. Susannah knew that, if tardy spring ever arrived again, if she lived long enough to attend another Gathering, and if the sweet-voiced Lohora man came wooing her again, she could now leave her father's tent guiltlessly and begin her life as an adult woman.

She had worried about it, though. One did not have to know Dathan well to realize that he was a habitual flirt, a lover of women, a carefree man with such charisma that he could not be held to ordinary standards. He might only have been playing with her, that last spring when he kissed her by moonlight; he might have loved her at the time but, during the intervening year, forgotten her pensive smile and severe cheekbones. He might have fallen in love elsewhere -- more than once -- with a hundred different women, all of whom were dreaming of him at night in tents crowded with family members. Susannah would not count on him remembering her when they arrived at the Gathering in the spring.

That winter had been hard, and the spring had come so late that even the patient elders of the tribe had wondered if, this year, Yovah had forgotten the turning of the seasons. Travel across the ice-hard mud of the lower plains had been slow, and the Tachita clan had been among the last to make it to the Gathering. As always, there were others ready to welcome them, to take their horses, to direct them to a campsite, to offer food or any assistance the weary travelers might require.

And there was Dathan, standing a little apart from the initial greeters, stationed there at the outskirts of the great camp, as if waiting for each new tribe to walk up so he could scan their faces and commit them to memory. When, in all the bustle of arrival, Susannah finally noticed him standing there, she saw that he had spotted her long ago. His gaze was fixed upon her face; he was not smiling. She felt her body go cold, then hot. She felt her blood run with burning ice. She felt, in that one long exchange of glances, every contour of her world change.

That had been three years ago. She had left with the Lohora tribe and had followed them ever since. A few times, the erratic and easygoing travel pattern of the Lohoras had brought them in contact with the Tachitas, and then she would spend a few happy days with her father, her brothers, and her two new nephews. But most often, her visits with her family were restricted to the times of the Gathering, when all the Edori clans came together for a brief period of celebration. There, they all shared news, and recited events of the past year, and lifted their voices in joyous worship of the great god Yovah. Those days were too short, those days with her family and the members of her clan, but Susannah was not prepared to mourn the life gone by. She was too happy in this one.

The river was breathtakingly cold. Susannah flung herself into it before she could think about it too long, and surfaced, gasping for air. How could a southern river be this chilly this late in the season? Still, once she was used to it, Susannah did not mind so much, for the summer afternoon was hot and the contrast of temperatures felt good against her skin. She dove under the water again, soaping her body, soaping her hair, and rinsing herself off in the cold, clear water.

Once she was both clean and dry, she turned to the task of washing out the soiled clothes from the past few days. A few of Dathan's were mixed in with hers, which made her frown a little, but she went ahead and washed them. He had, after all, been hunting three times this week with the other men of the clan. He may have been too busy to attend to his own washing. Often, Susannah found Tirza washing out some of Eleazar's shirts, and when Susannah taxed her with it, Tirza merely smiled.

"Oh, I do not mind a few other pieces of clothing in my pile," Dathan's sister said. "When I was a young girl, and my mother was sickly, I washed for the whole tent! Ten of us! But it's an easy enough chore, and I make up songs while I'm soaping the clothes, and when I get back to the camp, someone else has always made dinner. And you know I am just as happy if I do not have to cook! So the arrangement suits me fine."

And Dathan is Dathan, Susannah thought to herself now as she scrubbed the dirt off of a particularly fine blue shirt that belonged to her lover. As well scold the crows for scavenging as to scold Dathan for skimping on his duties.

It was late afternoon by the time she finally returned to the campsite, a bundle of wet clothes in her arms. She pegged these out to dry behind the tent, then went to investigate the status of dinner.

Anna and Keren, Eleazar's sisters and two of the others who slept in his tent, were stirring a pot over the fire. "That smells good!" Susannah exclaimed. "How lucky I am to live with women who are such excellent cooks!"

It was something she said often, but her words always made the other two smile. Anna was a good ten years older than Susannah, a shy and quiet woman who had lost a lover five years ago and never taken another. She had followed him to his clan, but returned to Eleazar's tent upon her lover's death. Keren was the only flighty member of Eleazar's family, a small-boned and pretty girl who never forgot how lovely she was and who had broken many hearts at the Gathering and on the road. Tirza could not wait for her to fall deeply in love and follow some other man's clan, but so far she had shown no signs of wanting to leave the comforts of her own family. Still, she did her share of the work and was generous with possessions, when she had any, so Susannah could not help loving her.

"Yovah's hand guiding you," said Anna, who was so pious that even a mock-serious question would elicit a religious response. "But we were fortunate also to have him bring you to our tent."

Keren ignored all this. "Susannah! Are you coming to Luminaux tomorrow? It will be so much fun."

Susannah stole a piece from a loaf of bread cooling beside the fire. "I have nothing to sell or barter," she said. "And I promised Amram I would go berry-picking with him tomorrow."

"You can take Amram berry-picking any day," Keren scoffed. "Besides, he will want to go to Luminaux. Everyone is going. You do not need to have anything to sell! You just need to have eyes that want to look around and see how beautiful the city is."

"I do love Luminaux," Susannah agreed.

"And you could sell something," Anna said. "You have finished that embroidered shirt you were working on all winter. That would fetch a nice price in the marketplace."

"Yes, but I made that shirt for me!" Susannah exclaimed, laughing. "I wanted something beautiful to wear at the next Gathering."

"Make another one," Keren said. She, of course, had no idea of how many hours went into such a project, since she would never sit still long enough to attempt such a thing. "The next Gathering is more than six months away."

"Well, perhaps I'll bring it with me, and see if there is anything in Luminaux so precious that it makes me want to trade my shirt," Susannah decided. "Is everyone really going?"

"No, of course not," Anna said with a repressive look at her sister. "I think there are ten or eleven who said they wanted to go. Bartholomew and all of his tent. Dathan and Keren. Thaddeus and Shua. And a few of the children. I, for one, am not up to the long journey there and back in a single day, and I know Claudia is not, either. We will make a feast dinner so that you can eat heartily and tell us of all the wonders you have seen in the Blue City."

"I will wear my emerald dress," Keren said dreamily. "And my long gold earrings. I will look quite beautiful as I wander between all the blue buildings of Luminaux."

Anna looked over at her sister in sharp irritation, but Susannah burst out laughing. "That is the true beauty for you," Susannah said, her voice admiring. "One who judges how she will look as she stands in a green meadow or beside a gray mountain. What dress to put on and how to style her hair. . . ."

Anna was frowning still, but Keren smiled, completely unoffended. "One has to be aware of these things," she said.

"One has to be aware of when she's making a fool of herself," Anna said. "Be glad it is only Susannah here to hear you say such ridiculous things."

"Only Susannah," Susannah repeated, but she laughed again. "Do not mind her for my sake," she said to Anna. "I will be happy to go to Luminaux and see how beautiful she looks there."

Susannah stayed near the campfire, helping the sisters cook and filling the remaining hours of the afternoon with idle chatter. Claudia came over to borrow some spices and agreed with Anna that Susannah should sell her embroidered shirt. Bartholomew dropped by on some pretext, though Susannah suspected it was merely to speak to Anna. He was a big man, strongest of all the Lohora tribe, and not given to much laughter. But they all looked up to him, and took their problems to him, and if there was a quarrel in the clan, he was the one most likely to solve it. His lover had left him two years ago, following a man of another tribe, and he had grown even quieter since that defection. Though all the Lohoras privately agreed that he was better off without her, since she had been as mercurial and unreliable as Keren, without Keren's ready smile and willing hands. Susannah hoped that he had noticed that Anna was fashioned the way a woman should be for a serious man. Or rather, she was pretty sure Bartholomew had realized it, and that he was waiting for Anna to make the same discovery.

"What time do you leave for the Blue City in the morning?" Susannah asked him, after he had tasted the stew and pronounced it very good. "My tentmates have persuaded me I should join your party."

"Excellent! We will be glad to have you," Bartholomew said. "I had hoped to leave early, for it will take us two or three hours to get there, and I would like to have a little time to shop and buy."

"Early?" Keren said innocently. "But -- Susannah -- could you rise with the sun, do you think? This morning you lay abed till almost noon."

"Yes, and Dathan -- wasn't he sleeping late as well?" Anna asked, her eyes wide and guileless. "Maybe neither of you will be able to rise in time to join Bartholomew's party."

Bartholomew was grinning, but Susannah blushed furiously. "Yes! I am sure! I am quite rested from all of my sleeping and will be ready to join you as soon as dawn breaks!" she said. "And as for Dathan -- well, I will kick him a few times when I rise, and if that does not wake him, he can stay behind."

They were all laughing at this. "Bartholomew, I am sure there are delicious stews brewing over your own fire, but we would be happy to have you here at ours," Keren said. "You know my sister is a very good cook."

That was generous of her, Susannah thought. But then, Keren had sharp eyes for love, and she had no doubt seen what Susannah and Claudia and many of the other Lohoras had seen. Bartholomew shook his head regretfully. "No, my sisters have already finished the evening meal, and I know they are expecting me," he said. "But perhaps in the morning -- a nice hearty meal to fortify me against the day's journey--"

"We would be happy to feed you in the morning," Anna said. "I don't want to go on this trip into the city, but I'll make sure you set off well fed."

Bartholomew turned to look at her. "You won't come with us? Is there anything I can pick up for you in the Blue City while I am there?"

Anna frowned and stirred the pot. She was blushing a little. "I am sure you have plenty of commissions to carry out for your sisters. No need to worry about me," she said.

"Nonsense. One can never have too many friends for whom to be doing favors," Bartholomew said.

"Purple dye. Didn't you say you wanted some of that?" Keren asked. "The other day, when you were sorting your threads."

"Yes, some purple dye would be welcome," Anna admitted, a little embarrassed by the attention. "But not if it is any trouble to track down! Only if you come across it in the market."

"I will find it if I can," Bartholomew promised. "And I will be happy to sit at your fire tomorrow morning and eat."

When he left, Keren and Susannah exchanged meaningful glances, but Anna busied herself with the meal. There was no time to talk of women's idle concerns anyway, because Dathan and Amram and Eleazar were back from their day's excursions. Tirza was close behind them, fresh buckets of water in her hands. The night was suddenly filled with much talk and merriment, as a night should be. Susannah sat next to Dathan in the circle of light created by the fire, and ate her excellent stew, and smiled in the dark for happiness.

Early the next morning, a party of twelve left the Lohora campsite, heading south to Luminaux. There were few enough taking the short journey into town that there were sufficient horses to go around, and so they all rode. Amram's yearling behaved so badly that Bartholomew offered to exchange mounts with him, but Amram was too vain to be seen on a ten-year-old who was too placid to start at the sound of a boy's high-pitched yell. So they made it rather haphazardly into the city, two or three of the men throwing a watchful circle around the youngest member of their tribe as he rode in on the restive animal.

They left all the horses at one of the stables on the edge of town and walked into Luminaux. It was the bright lapis gem of Samaria, this small city on the southernmost edge of Bethel. It had not been part of the original settlements that had been founded, a little more than two centuries ago, when Yovah first brought the angels and the Edori and the other mortals to this world of Samaria. No, most of the colonists had clustered together on the plains of Bethel and in the gentle slopes of the Velo Mountains. The Edori, of course, had been wanderers right from the start, and they had investigated every hill and valley, every riverbed and coastline of the small continent that had become their new home. Soon enough, the Jansai and the Manadavvi and the more adventurous of the farmers had also spread out into the other regions of the country, into the provinces they named Jordana and Gaza.

But Luminaux had been founded by none of these. It had been settled early on by the artisans of the new community, who had found a rich trove of treasures in the earth nearby: stunning and variegated blue marble, mineral veins under the ground bristling with gems and metals, everything an artist might need to create items of great style and beauty. First the quarries were set up, then the town, in a welcoming little triangle on the western bank of the Galilee River. Long after the mines were exhausted, the city continued to thrive, itself a work of art and a treasure of fragile beauty.

It was named Luminaux but called the Blue City because of that gorgeous stone cut from the ground and set into the shapes of buildings and monuments and fountains. All the earliest structures had been made of that turquoise or cobalt or azure stone; and even now, most new buildings had a lintel or a walkway or a front porch carved from a piece of some elegant marble. Anything in the city that didn't come naturally blue achieved that status artificially, as residents painted and dyed and stained their surfaces to achieve a lustrous skyline glow. Fountains seemed to run with blue water; blue flames appeared to burn in the street torches at night. It was a conceit, but a joyous one, and no one ever came to Luminaux without falling in love with the city.

"How long shall we stay?" Bartholomew asked, as they quickly covered the half mile that led them from the outskirts of town to the heart of the city. Everyone had acquired an itchy restlessness; it was clear this group would not cohere for long. "Where shall we meet when all our shopping is done?"

"At the stables," Eleazar suggested. "In four hours."

There was much protest at this. "Five hours?" Bartholomew said.

"Make it six," said Keren. It was now a couple of hours before noon.

"A very long day for very young ones," Bartholomew warned.

"It will be light until quite late," Dathan said carelessly. "One of us can carry Amram before us if he falls asleep in the saddle."

"I won't fall asleep! I never sleep!" Amram declared.

"I can attest to that," Susannah said.

"Six hours, then," Bartholomew said, and they all agreed. And in a few moments, everyone had scattered into the plentiful attractions of the city.

Susannah at first had thought she and Dathan might walk together through the delights of Luminaux. But, "Eleazar and I have to go to the ironmonger's and look for new braces," Dathan had said in a very important voice. That particular tone always meant he was lying, though he did not seem to be aware others knew. Susannah guessed that they might spend half an hour at the ironmonger's, and then the rest of the afternoon at some of the taverns, sampling the excellent wine of the Luminaux vintners.

"Yovah guard you," she said with a faint smile, and let them go on their way. She did sigh a little as she watched them go.

As for herself, she had no real chores to accomplish, and no burning desire to sell her single item of some value, so she just wandered at random across the blue cobblestoned streets. She spent a great deal of time moving through the open-air market at the heart of the city, fingering the fine silk cloth and wondering how anyone could ever create garments so beautiful. She knew without a doubt that Bartholomew would purchase some purple coloring for Anna, but when she happened upon the dyemaker's shop, she could not resist going in and seeing if there were any pink or cinnamon or cerulean color samples she could buy with the few coins she had in her pocket. She could not resist a very bright yellow dye that was being sold at a discount because of some flaking in the cake, and the shopkeeper gave her some hints on how to mix it with other colors to make garments of many hues.

At lunchtime, she stopped at a bakery run by an Edori woman and her daughters. Frida refused to let Susannah pay for her meal--"Except in gossip," the baker added. So they spent a wonderful hour talking about all the friends they had in common. Frida's shop was busy, though, and Susannah did not want to take up too much of her time, so she did not linger long. Wandering back out into the streets, she continued her slow, happy tour of the city. When she grew tired, she rested in one of the many small parks lining the lovely boulevards, and when she grew thirsty, she drank some of the colored water spuming up from the fountains. It tasted like springwater, only bluer. She hoped it would not tint her mouth, and she bent down to take another swallow.

The day passed slowly but in magical contentment, and Susannah could not believe it when the hour came around to meet the others at the stables. She hurried to arrive on time, but she was not the last one to put in an appearance. Eleazar and Dathan showed up a few minutes after she did, while Bartholomew grew impatient and the other women in the group showed one another their day's purchases. The two latecomers were laughing and happy, and when Dathan kissed Susannah, she could taste the wine on his breath. But he was so cheerful and affectionate that she could not be angry at him, and so she smiled and kissed him back.

"Good. We're all together. Let's waste no more time here," Bartholomew said, and in a very few minutes they were back on the road.

Susannah brought her playful mare alongside Dathan's, and they rode next to each other for the first few miles. "And did you have a successful day?" she asked him. "Were the ironmongers helpful?"

Dathan laughed. "Yes, indeed! You cannot imagine how much time it took us to barter for the best metal at the best price, and naturally we had to examine each link and joint for any sign of weakness, but I am sure that we came away with good material that will serve us well."

"And then, of course, you had to spend some time celebrating your new acquisitions," she said.

"A man must celebrate life's simple joys," he said.

She tried asking him a few questions that were more serious, but the replies he gave were nonsensical or incomplete, and she gave up. He rarely drank while the Lohoras were on the road, though when they camped for a few days he would take wine with his evening meal. And at the Gatherings -- well, there was many an Edori, male and female, who imbibed too much at that great festival. This was not such a gross transgression. She really did not mind.

She ranged ahead of him to check on Amram, who sat quite determinedly in the saddle and swore he felt no fatigue at all. She interrogated him rather more closely, for she knew his father had not watched him all day, and she wanted to make sure he had gotten in no trouble and had fed himself a noon meal besides. But he answered satisfactorily, and even showed her some pipes and whistles he'd bought at a music academy, and so she concluded that he'd spent his day at least as profitably as the rest of them.

She kicked her mare forward so she could ride with Keren for a while when Bartholomew, who was in the lead, pulled his horse to a sudden stop. Perforce the rest of them halted behind him. They were about an hour outside of the city by this time, and a thin twilight had washed the sky with gold, but visibility was not perfect. Bartholomew squinted a little and pointed with his left hand.

"Campfire? Over there? Did we pass another campsite on our way into the city?" he asked.

Susannah looked and, sure enough, she could see gray smoke rising up from a central point about half a mile away. It did not look like smoke from a campfire, she thought, though she was not sure why. Perhaps because it did not curl up in one smooth tendril, but seemed to rise from an area so broad that no one would build a campfire that big, not even at the Gathering.

"Perhaps another clan arrived while we were in the city," Eleazar said. "The Corvallas come this way sometimes in the summer."

"And the Chicatas," Thaddeus added.

"Good news, then!" Dathan said recklessly. "Let's go invite them to our camp for the night. We have traveled alone for months now. It would be good to have some company at the fire."

It annoyed Susannah, just a little, that he would say such a thing; Dathan was never so happy as when he could meet a stranger. It was as if the familiar and the beloved were never quite enough for him. But she strangled her resentment and quickly added her voice to the general murmur of approval that ran through the group.

"It might not be Edori," Bartholomew warned. "It might be Jansai." That silenced them a bit. The gypsy Jansai clans were almost as mobile as the Edori, though most of them returned from time to time to their single permanent settlement, a city called Breven, which was set up in the desert region on the far eastern edge of Jordana. The Jansai were merchant traders, and not always strictly honest, and they treated their women like rare possessions that must be hidden from all outside eyes. In general, the Edori could not fathom the Jansai and the Jansai lifestyle -- and at times, for no real reason, the Edori feared the Jansai, just a little. The Edori were always wary when they came across the gypsies.

"Even so, let us see who is camped here," Thaddeus said. "If it is Jansai, we do not need to linger."

"But it is probably Edori," Dathan said.

"I would like to see the Chicatas again," Keren said.

They all began to move forward, a little north of their true route, to go say hello to whatever clan might be found camping here on the southern plains.

But they never did learn what tribe the Edori were from, or even if the travelers were Edori and not Jansai. For when they got close enough, they could tell that there was indeed something amiss about the fire -- and, closer still, they could tell that it was not a campfire at all.

But it had, at some point, been a camp. And a fire.

Silent, shocked, hardly able to credit what they were seeing, they came closer to the burning ground. A circle of tents or wagons had been formed here on the plains, travelers settled in the middle, horses no doubt tethered just outside. But all of that was gone. Now there was a great scorched circle of grass and canvas and bone, as if a sudden conflagration had erupted in the middle of a peaceful campfire and incinerated everything in seconds. There was almost nothing recognizable in the blackened remains, even now still flickering with remnants of fire. Here what might be a charred body -- there the outline of a cart, crumbled into coals on the smoldering grass.

They looked at one another in horror, several of them mouthing prayers to Yovah because they could not trust themselves to say the words out loud. Jansai or Edori, no one deserved to die like this. They still could not guess what could have caused a tragedy both so comprehensive and so contained. Nothing they knew of burned so rapidly that no one standing nearby could escape it -- and then burned itself out, leaving a tidy circle of destruction behind.

They could not keep themselves from glancing from side to side, looking for the wounded child, the smoke-sick survivor. But nothing living remained here at this prairie campsite. Even the carrion birds, quick to scent disaster, had passed this place by.

Copyright © 2003 by Sharon Shinn