Issier was the main island of the Midsea archipelago, which lay a thousand kilometres from any other land near the centre of Phirar, Golter’s third largest ocean.

The little arrowhead hydrofoil swung out from the island’s glass western shore and headed north, for Jorve, the next island in the group. It docked half an hour later in a marina just outside Place Issier II, the archipelago’s largest town and administrative capital.

Sharrow woke an apologetic guard in the marina office and left a note for the harbour master telling him to put the hydrofoil up for sale. She collected her bike, then took the east coast road north. She left her helmet off, driving in plain goggles with the wind fierce in her hair; the cloud overhead was fraying, letting moonlight and junklight spread a grey-blue wash over the fields and orchards outside the town.

She switched the bike’s lights off, driving fast and leaning hard round the open, sweeping curves of the gradually climbing road, its surface a faint snaking ribbon of steel blue unwinding in front of her. Ravines beyond the crash-barriers gave brief glimpses of the rock-ragged coast beneath, where the ocean swell terminated in glowing white lines of surf. She only put her lights on when other traffic approached, and thrilled each time to the heart-stopping sensation of total darkness in the instant after she killed the old bike’s lights again.

An hour after she had stood on the glass shore of Issier, she arrived at the solitary, turreted house on the cliff where she lived.