‘No!’ the boy said, too loud. ‘You can’t leave me!’

Paladrya held him out at arm’s length. She had been his tutor since his eighth year, and he had loved her a long time, in that silent, awkward way that boys often love their mentors. ‘They’ll kill you,’ he protested.

‘Not if I’m back swiftly enough that they cannot suspect me,’ she said, but he knew enough not to believe her.

‘They’ll torture you,’ he said.

‘And find out what? Santiren has made the arrangements. I know your fate from here on no more than they.’

‘But they will torture you. Do you think the Edmir will not?’

Her expression was infinitely sad. ‘I have hopes that Claeon.. that the Edmir will not do so. I am no stranger to him, no unknown flesh to be torn.’

‘He’s right, you should come,’ Santiren said, and the boy’s heart leapt with hope.

Paladrya just shook her head, though. ‘I will accomplish more back in the colony. Do not fear for me. There is yet work to be done.’

He did his best, then, to memorize her face in the cold moonlight: the elegant curve of her cheek, her large eyes that the moon bleached grey but that he knew were violet, the dripping ringlets of her hair.

‘Be safe,’ she told him. ‘Your time will come.’ She hugged him to her again, and he found that he was crying like a child. ‘Santiren,’ he heard her say, his face still pressed to her shoulder. ‘Your accomplice?’

‘Is here, watching,’ the tall woman told her. ‘Fear not, all is ready.’

‘Then the moon and the tides be your friends here,’ Paladrya said, her lips twisting wryly as she added, ‘Here where there are no tides, and where the moon is too large.’

‘And may the luck of the abyss protect you,’ Marcantor said from the shadows. ‘For you will surely need all of it.’