She sighed, felt her dry skin shiver, and went to lessons of Intent to remove her concentration from the discomfort and center it on the reality.

The reality she found was motion and what it meant. The breeze was motion—

Within the light breeze that chilled her bare breasts were odors of the evening: dinner smells from the dining hall for the Maidens-in-Training, the hint of expensive herbs burned by wealthy supplicants down on Mother’s Row, the occasional acrid touch of metal and smoke from the foundry on the edge of the bay downriver.

It all meant that the wind was from the west, and the night would be colder than last, and that in the morning they would take her to the Mother s Chamber to say a confession she would not make.

“You will recant,” had said the Mother; “You will admit that you never heard Moonhawk calling, that you’ve always stolen your power from others, and that you were wrong to do so. You will be assigned to more appropriate duties, and given a Name-in-Keeping.”

In the meantime they had left her here to meditate, for three days and nights, having left her only the earrings given her by a dead grandmother, witches knowing better than to trifle with a gift of handwrought silver.

What they had taken! They’d taken amulets of power, bracelets of strength, stones that concentrated will. Then they’d subjected her to spells of unmaking, to other thefts…

To think that they’d feared her so much! If only she had the bracelets, even now—

She shivered. Even now she needed food. She needed drink. She needed Moonhawk as never before and Moonhawk had been forced away from her by the Council.

A tear came, and quickly she regretted it. No water here, no food. They wanted a weak and beaten, near-nameless Maiden, not Moonhawk-in-training. Every tear was in their favor.

Now the breeze brought something else: the distant hum of voices, and now more, and then the City’s temples were all heard, each chanting Tenth Chant.