Tenth day after Sun's Height, 30016 DC

Tynan leant back against the rail of the ferry, twitching irritably at his shirt to try and peel it away from his sweaty body. The air pressed down on him like a great hand, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He mopped his face with his sleeve and took a long drink from his waterskin, glancing up at the ominous golden sheen of the sky. 'Storm's coming.'

'Yes.' Of all the party, Shadow seemed the most unaffected by the heat. Both Tynan and Emlyn had swapped their armour for their lightest clothing, but the elf still wore his chain shirt and his long cloak without apparent discomfort.

Ensa watched him with envy. She had wedged herself firmly into a corner between the luggage and the other passengers, but the crossing from the Inner Isles to the mainland was neither choppy nor dangerous. Instead of feeling sick, Ensa was fighting a raging headache brought on by the heat and the glare. She tugged the hood of her robe over her face and shut her eyes.

Sprawled and panting on the deck beside her, Star was scratchy and irritable. Besides her own problems in the heat, the rat was picking up on Ensa's headache. Slowly, wincing as she moved, Ensa pulled out her waterskin and unstopped it, tilting it on its side so that Star could reach to lap the water, her side fluttering against Ensa's hand with the rhythm of her quick breathing.

It had been a very long day. They could have found passage on a ship from Northport to any of the major ports of the west coast, but in the still, windless air it might take days to reach even Starold, at the north of the great bay which sheltered the Islands. They'd decided instead to make the short trip over to the Inner Isles, then use the series of ferries that connected the close-knit group of Islands to each other and to Port Suthard on Wayrin's coast. But in the heat, the task of moving everyone and their baggage through a series of small towns, harbours reeking of fish rotting in the strong sun, and embarking on one dirty, cramped ferry after another had been like something from a nightmare. Tempers had flared – Ali was now sulking, away at the bows of the ferry, and even Tynan had been irritable. Only Shadow had managed to remain cool and aloof.

Almost, Ensa wished she hadn't come. She'd never made it to Shadryan Eladrissinel's house. She'd been going to – but when it came down to it, it was as Tynan had said. A bit more time before the riddle was solved wasn't going to hurt. She had the rest of her life to investigate it. So, with nothing being said – almost by chance – she'd come aboard. What it was she'd signed up to she had yet to discover precisely. Tynan had given Ali the impression that his life was a sort of amiable drifting from place to place, but Ensa wasn't sure. She couldn't quite match that picture with the impression of decisiveness and calm authority that Tynan gave her. And nothing about Shadow was either amiable or aimless. The half-orc knew that there must be more to their activities than she'd yet seen.

She heard with relief the voices calling from the shore, and the ferry master's voice answering. The broad, shallow-bottomed ferry bumped gently against the quay, and as the crew leapt up to secure ropes in the metal rings pegged into the old stonework, Ensa climbed slowly to her feet and picked up her bag, swinging it onto her back with resigned disgust. At least up in the town, away from the sea, the glare would be less.

'Pass your packs up.' Emlyn had stepped easily out of the gently rocking boat and turned to reach down for his friends' bags. Tynan passed his backpack out and then accepted Emlyn's hand to steady him as he pulled himself up onto the quay before turning to help his cousin collect their bags.

'I'm fine!' Ali gave Emlyn her light pack, but disdained his helping hand, not at all fazed by the ferry's rocking under her feet as she used the rail as a step to help herself onto the shore.

'I'm probably not,' Ensa said. 'Here, take this.' She put Star and her staff into Tynan's hands and then swung her backpack up to Emlyn, who dumped it behind him and reached back to help her up. 'I'm sorry to be a bother. I don't know why I seem to have so much more stuff than anyone else.'

'It's no trouble,' said Emlyn, hauling her up.

Behind him, Ali snorted. She was bored with waiting. 'Hurry up,' she begged. 'I want to go and find something to eat.'

'We'll get something as we go up through the city,' Tynan said, peaceably. 'I want to move a little way out of the docks and find a quieter neighbourhood to stay in.'

The inn that they finally settled on was a tall, thin, respectable-looking building in a leafy residential neighbourhood. The cobbled streets were deserted as people stayed inside to try and avoid the heat. Even the busiest streets they'd passed through had a empty, abandoned air, as brightly coloured canopies over shops and market stalls wilted in the heat and dogs lay panting in the shadows.

Not that it's much better in here, thought Ensa, irritably. She felt tired and ill, almost on the verge of tears. You'd think it would be cooler in the shade, but this humid, muggy air gets everywhere. Even now the sun's gone in it's disgustingly hot.

They'd stopped for a meal, but Ensa hadn't been able to eat anything. Emlyn and Ali, for once in agreement, had looked at her as if she was crazy, then split Ensa's untouched food between them – at which point Shadow had silently pushed his plate over to the two youngest members of the party. It was the first sign Ensa had seen in him of succumbing to the intense heat and breathlessness. Then again, perhaps in Shadow's case it was merely a comment on the quality of the food.

Tynan had also insisted on stopping at a public fountain and had made everyone drink an entire waterskin before they moved off again. That had least had been sensible; after drinking two litres of water Ensa had felt vaguely better for the first time all day.

She lay back on the inn's hard bed, ignoring the scratchy feel of the rough wool blanket, and shut her eyes, hoping she might doze off.

Ali would be sharing an inn room with Ensa, but the half-orc wasn't being very interesting company so Ali had left the wizard to lie down in the quiet and joined the three men in their room, where she was hanging out of one of the windows watching the towering thunderclouds moving in from over the sea.

'Those clouds are really quite impressively purple.'

'Let's see.' Tynan came to join her at the window and poked his head out, scanning the sky. 'Yeah, it's going to be a big one. It should lighten the atmosphere a bit, at least.'

The ranger ducked back into the room and glanced around. Dark shadows were gathering in the corners, and Emlyn was straining his eyes as he rummaged through his pack. 'I'll get a light,' Tynan said, and sat down on his own bed, pulling his pack towards him as he hunted for his everburning torch. 'Don't fall out of the window, Ali.'

'As if I would!' the young acrobat said, scornfully. She leant out even further to prove her point, glancing down at the cobbles two stories below with interest. 'Hey, there's a guard patrolling down here. He's gonna catch it when the heavens open.'

'Poor idiot,' said Emlyn. He stood up, stretching out his back and shoulders, finally relieved from the weight of his pack and armour. 'I'm glad we've finished for the day.'

'It's not actually that late,' Tynan pointed out. He finally dragged the torch clear of his bag and everybody blinked in the sudden brightness. 'It only feels like it's late because it's so dark. And because we've had a hot and tiring and stressful day.'

'Wind's getting up,' remarked Ali from the window. When Emlyn looked round at her he saw that her short hair was being tossed around her face by little conflicting gusts of wind.

Tynan glanced up at her. 'Ali, how was Ensa when you last saw her?'

Ali twisted her upper body to face him and opened her mouth to answer, but nobody ever heard what she would have said. Her words were drowned in a colossal crash of thunder.

Everybody jumped. Ali grabbed the window frame with both hands to prevent herself falling out backwards, then twisted back round to look out again, her eyes sparkling. She was just in time to catch sight of a lightning bolt spearing its bright, jagged way across the clouds, and she shouted with elation, leaning out of the window to see better. A second thunderclap, a long, deep rumble, eclipsed the end of Ali's shout, and by the time the others could hear again Ali was calling excitedly over the rising wind, 'It's right overhead, and here comes the rain!'

'Close the shutters, then!' Tynan ordered her, leaping for the other window himself as all sound was suddenly drowned by raindrops hammering on the roof like the spears of a celestial army. The ranger wrestled the wooden shutters across his window and dropped the bar over them, then turned to watch Ali – who had completely ignored the instruction to shut the window – being dragged back into the room by Shadow, who calmly slammed that set of shutters across, stopping the rain lashing in. The sound of the storm diminished a little, as if they had become locked in a little box of brightness and calm.

'Spoilsport,' said Ali, mutinously, shaking her wet hair like a dog. 'I love storms.'

'Hey, don't do that, I'm getting wet!' Emlyn hastily relocated himself to Tynan's side of the room, which had remained relatively dry and tidy, dragging his pack with him.

There was a tap on the door, which then opened. Everyone looked round to see Ensa's green-grey, snoutlike face peering around the door. 'Can I come in?' she asked.

Tynan laughed and sat down on his bed, leaning back against the wall and stretching his legs out. 'Do. You may as well get comfortable,' he advised. 'We're not going anywhere for at least a couple of hours. How are you feeling, Ensa?'

'Much better.' Emlyn shifted up to let Ensa sit on the end of his bed, and she sat down and smoothed the skirts of her robe out around her. 'I dozed off for a while, I think, and at least that awful heat's gone.'

'Yeah, but what are we going to do now?' Ali asked.

'Talk,' said Tynan, promptly. 'No choice. Tell stories, if you like. Know any good ones?'

Ali pulled a face. 'I am awful at telling stories. I always forget important bits.'

Thunder crashed again, and Tynan waited for it to die away before he said, 'Well, tell us about yourself then. How old are you?'

'Sixteen.'

Emlyn frowned. 'And your family let you go travelling all over the world?' he asked, incredulously.

'Well, my family is only me and ma and my sister Karenna,' said Ali, 'and to be honest, they weren't that happy about it, but they couldn't really argue because my ma ran away from her home to be a dancer when she was fifteen.'

'Wait,' Shadow leant forwards, making his first contribution to the conversation. 'Your mother was a dancer? Not Marla Ballari?'

'Yes!' Ali turned to the elf, her face lighting up. 'You've heard of her?'

The elf nodded, settling back into his dark corner. 'I saw her once – seventeen or eighteen years ago, in Eldavir. She was good.'

Ali nodded. 'She was at the top back then. That was before she had me and Ren.'

'I've heard of her too,' said Tynan, 'but I was just a boy when she stopped dancing. I used to hear… my mother used to love dancing herself, and I think she'd gone with my father to see a lot of the greats. One of the things I remember most from when I was small is my mother telling me about the Swan, and Ninarika Rossiane and Anwar Des, and Marla Ballari.' He trailed off, face distant as he tried to recapture memories, and Emlyn heard very clearly the rain beating against the shutters.

He said hesitantly, 'I never met my aunt Brisa. What was she really like, Tynan?'

Tynan smiled quietly. 'Different. She… wasn't like your father. He was a fine man, and a good fighter, straight as a die and no nonsense about him, and all the rest of her family was like that. Mother was light and finely built and pretty, and she loved to laugh. Her family loved her fiercely, but I don't think they ever really understood her. I think in a way it was a relief when she married my father and moved to the other side of Wayrin. That way they could keep on loving her, without having her strange wild ways and her fey temperament to deal with.'

'You talk about your mother in a very strange way,' Ali announced. 'I mean, I know my mother was a great dancer, and famous, and all, but to me she's just the woman who used to bandage me up when I fell down and nag me about tidying up. But you talk like you were watching her from the outside, like she was this fairy creature even to you.'

'She was,' said Tynan, thoughtfully. 'I mean… a lot of this is retrospective. My mother died a long time ago, when I was quite young, so my father mostly brought me up. But even when she was there… when she died I was upset, but not that surprised. I just thought she'd danced away over the next hill the way it always seemed like she was going to. It wasn't until later that I started to wonder why she never came back.'

'She would never have been a professional dancer,' said Ali, firmly. 'My mother is the most down to earth person imaginable. To stay at the top you have to practice all the time. You have to be disciplined and determined. Dancing looks effortless and dreamy and floaty, but even a fighter doesn't have muscles like a first class dancer.'

'You sound like you speak from experience,' Ensa commented.

Ali nodded. 'You bet! I'm a professional, remember. When I left home my ma's last piece of advice was 'Stretch thoroughly every day and practice for at least an hour.''

Tynan laughed. 'I got 'Be kind and courteous and don't forget to come home sometimes.' I think my father hoped I'd give up this whole adventuring thing and settle down back home.'

'Where's 'back home'?' Ensa asked him.

'The Wolf Country. Right up north, in between the Great Forest and the mountains,' Tynan told her. 'How about you?'

The half-orc shrugged. 'Not that far from you. In the northern mountain range. But I wouldn't call it home.'

Star growled slightly, pressed against Ensa's neck, and Ensa glanced round at her, half smiling, and switched the subject. 'Where are you from, Shadow? Eldavir?'

'Yes!' Emlyn sounded antagonistic even to himself, and tried to moderate his tone a bit. 'Why don't you tell us something about yourself?'

There was a silence and a collective indrawn breath as everyone looked at the elf to see how he would react, but Shadow ignored the turning heads. In the orange torchlight his eyes, fixed on the young fighter's face, looked like opaque black pools in his white face. Emlyn felt his angry resolve withering under the elf's cool superiority.

'I'm not going to tell you where I'm from,' Shadow said, flatly. Not a muscle in his face twitched. 'I don't belong there any more, and I'm not interested in raking up the past. Any of it.'

Silence fell again. Emlyn, blushing furiously and ducking away into a corner wasn't in any state to notice, but Tynan suddenly realised that it was true silence. He climbed to his feet and cautiously unbarred one pair of shutters. When no gust of wind and rain slammed them open, he pushed them apart and looked out. 'Storm's over,' he said, neutrally.

The ranger crossed the room and opened the other pair of shutters, flooding the room with watery daylight that dimmed the light of the torch. 'It's clearing up. I think it's maybe even trying to be sunny again. Does anyone want to come for a stroll around the city before dinner?'

'I'll come,' said Ensa, relieved at the break in the tension. She climbed to her feet, coaxing Star out onto her shoulder as she did so.

'Yeah, I'll come too,' Emlyn said.

Tynan caught Shadow's eye and the elf shrugged and nodded. Ali saw him, and got to her feet. 'I'll come as well, then. We'll all come, Tynan.'

Tynan nodded. 'Right. Let's get ready then.'