The scream of their horses rising over the shrill wind sent Jithicca scrambling down into the ship’s hold.

Last winter, when Ryver had gained them passage from the Harshlands to VokenTrac, he had said, ‘‘The captain guarantees we will make it, if we can pass through something called the Line of Time.’’

They—the Children of Destiny, or so the prophecy the Willmaster said they had been called by named them—were half way through.

The previous day, the sea had churned up froth-frosted and wild, wind whipping and wailing—but no storm clouds had moved in. The sun had stayed bright, and the sailors tense. The Willmaster and Osin had become ill, and Thaye had confined his children to their cabin.

In the hold, the sounds of snorting, whuffing, and stamping competed with the wail of the wind, creaking of the ship, slap of the sea, and whip of tightly tied sails. Midway down the ladder, Jith swung out and dropped the rest of the way down, dumping her mass of red-gold curls into her face.

She shoved it out and crossed the hold in four strides.

With the first rising of the wind, she and Ryver had tied the horses securely and stayed soothing each of them in turns. She had fallen asleep leaning against Windsong, her mare; Ryver with the children’?s ponies.

The only horse not showing signs of unease was Aarian’s big red brute. The Willmaster stood, white-head bent, between Osin’s two horses, a set of matched bays the Marsher had purchased on the way to port with an eye to breeding—in case the destiny didn’t make him wealthy, he had said with a grin.

The Willmaster nodded to see her, his long white beard and pale-gray robes making him look like an apparition in the dim light and trembling shadows made by the swaying globed candle, which hung from the rafters.

Jith went to Windsong first.

‘‘The Domain Legends are worse.’’

Jith started to hear WinterLeaf’s voice. Dressed as any Guildfighter would be in form-fitting but stretchable grey-brown, the stark-faced woman had been invisible in the shadows of the far stall. Four of their horses were Domain Legends, a high-strung breed favored by the wealthy—and their two Guild caravanmasters.

The Willmaster disagreed, ‘‘The bays would be worse, if I’?d let them.’’

Jith gave her horse a last pat, and went to SkyShadow’s mare. The horse immediately tried to bury its head in her chest. She hugged its neck and bent her head, whispering soothingly. The trembling horse whuffled fretfully.

The ship heaved sharply, causing a new outbreak of equine complaints. Jith lifted her head. WinterLeaf finished untying Ariel’s Seafoam, and coaxed it over next to VerlinHawk’s gelding. With a pat for each horse, she went to speak to the Willmaster. He smiled and brushed the Domain woman’?s lean, tanned cheek lightly with his finger, stroked it through her short, straight, grey-brown hair, then returned his silver-grey clad arms to the shoulders of the two bays.

‘‘The Line of Time lies over the Realm of the Goddess of the Waves and the Seas,’?’ he explained, his fine, long, white mustache and beard puffing out with each breath. ‘?‘It’s that they sense. If we set up a mind-link, we should be able to belay the worst of it.’’

WinterLeaf touched his shoulder lightly, then returned to the two Domain Legends. Jith checked Shea’s pony, their fourth Domain Legend, as a second horse to comfort. It, however, crowded up against Ceyna’s pony, Grassy, seemed less shaken than Taslin’s Raggle. She coaxed Taslin’?s red mare over next to SkyShadow’s Winterlight and hooked her arms around the horses’ necks.

Long, red-gold curls spilling across Winterlight’s silver-white shoulders, gray eyes closed to concentrate, Jith reached for the Willmaster’s mind link. Laichlan’s war horse shrilled and stamped its hooves, sounding more irritated then afraid. Jith half-opened her eyes. Laichlan dropped from the hold’s ladder and went to his horse. Night Storm butted his Warrior hard in the chest, then nipped at several of his long, black, beaded braids. Laichlan slapped the horse away—and the Willmaster drew them all into the link.

Once she was used to it, Jith opened her eyes. Six horses were secured and one apparently indifferent—Aarian’s Groundeater—came to half of the total. She should have brought Ryver with her. Except he, like VerlinHawk, had been helping crew the ship since their second day out. Thaye would be steady enough to calm the horses, too—but he was probably with his children.

The ship lurched, breaking her from her thoughts. The chop of the sea escalated. Wind and horses screamed. The ship heaved and tilted crazily.

A swooping gust of air shrilling through the hold announced someone had lifted the trap door.

Ryver dropped down and made his way over to them, pillar by pillar, patting horses as he came. He slapped his, a thick-bodied, dark brown beast that looked as fierce as its master—and acted just as mild. Jith felt the Willmaster reach to bring Ryver into the mind-link; the big man refused with a shake of his head and went to the children’s ponies. Both were huffing agitatedly, their eyes white and wild.

The wind picked up, shrilling high enough to make Jith’s ears ache. The horses shrieked and fretted at their bindings. Night Storm tossed its head and tried to rear; Laichlan linked his arms around it’s neck and held it down—by sheer will Jith supposed, considering how much larger the night-dark horse was than the man.

Jith studied the man covertly. Fighter hard, dressed, as usual, in his warrior’s vest and short breeches, he looked as deadly as his Tyre warrior name: Deathdancer. Around features that planed lean, hard, and striking, hung long black hair, braided and beaded in the fashion of all Tyre Warriors. His eyes, she knew, were a deep, striking malachite green. He fascinated her and repelled her.

A change in air pressure made the horses shuddered anew. Jith hugged her two harder, then gritted her teeth as the wind shrilled even higher.

Silence.

The horses froze. The ship stopped rocking crazily. The silence blossomed as intense and penetrating as the shrill of the wind had been. One of the children’s ponies made an odd, strangled sound and dropped to its knees. The rest of the horses stayed still, white-eyed and shuddering. Ryver knelt to inspect Shea’s fallen pony.

A shout of relief went up on deck. The Willmaster released the mind link and turned to WinterLeaf, a smile on his face—and vanished. A drifting shower of dust, gilded by the sudden golden sunshine that streamed through the hatchway, marked where he had stood.

WinterLeaf’s face blanched and blanked.

Jith stumbled a half step forward—WinterLeaf bolted up the ladder. Laichlan let his breath out in a woof. Ryver just continued to stare at the spot the Willmaster had been in, his face beneath his brushy wealth of scruffy dark brown hair, beard, and mustache pale as the three Domain Legends. The horses were quiet as if nothing had ever disturbed them.

Jith leaned against SkyShadow’s mare, her mind frozen in place until Laichlan’s curse broke the silence, then she fled topside, to an unoccupied corner of the ship and threw up over the side until there was nothing left inside but tears.

The scar-faced woman, who seemed to be an under captain, found her there and handed her a flask.

Jith sniffed it; it smelled like strong brae. She took several sips and handed it back. The woman patted her arm and asked, ‘‘Chi?’’

Jith blinked tears back and held up one finger. One horse lost. She made motions for a man with a long beard. One man lost. The woman patted her shoulder and steered her toward the cabin. Jith stayed in the cabin only long enough to unearth the Sphere from her pack—thankfully not even the children were in there. She escaped to a hidden nook midst a battalion of barrels and set the Sphere in her lap.

She had to ask the thing she feared most to hear the answer to.

Last summer they had been an ill-assorted group of thirty-one called to a wind-run plateau in northeastern Mach, her homeland, and a destiny begun two hundred years ago. Twenty-four of them now sailed toward that destiny and a land that the Willmaster called Lyria and Ryver named VokenTrac— known as a country of shapechangers and evil sorcerers. It still astounded her that they had not only set sail but, with the passing of the Line of Time, were half way there. They must be mad.

Three of their group had remained at home by choice, Yeth through mindlostness, and three by death. Five had died before even reaching the plateau . . . five that she knew about anyway.

She had to know that none of The Four were going to die, none of the Thirteen, and no more of the Twenty-One or Thirty-One.

Usually she used a herbal mixture to scry, as her father’s mother had taught her, but this was Prophecy stuff and the Sphere belonged to that.

Jith unwrapped the silver and jewel-cupped crystal Sphere, which the Willmaster had named the Sphere of Life and called one of the Chattels of the Powerlight. A stray sunbeam caught itself in it and wrapped her in a haze of shimmering silver and gold light.

Since late last summer, her scryings had skirled with a sense of danger—portrayed by no more than a roiling, amorphous darkness. Gilda had named that darkness death.

Eight had died in the year before boarding the ship for VokenTrac, and nearly all of them had met with Guild assassins, whose blank-eyed gaze seemed worse than the attack itself. Gamaliel had died horribly under their metal claws. Osin had taken a head wound which he had never really recovered from. Thaye had been seriously wounded twice. Zeph had vanished. She hoped the girl had just run away from Beryl’s cruel tongue to safety. Laichlan insisted she would see his death before they completed the destiny.

Unconsciously she clutched her strand of thirteen azure-blue, irregularly-shaped stones tighter. She couldn’t stand any more of their group to die. Not even Gilda, self proclaimed, undestined addition to their group. All of them were too close after their summer and fall of energy-sharing circles.

A shout drew her out of the thoughts, heart-racing, but it was only a sailor in the rigging.

She touched the Sphere with a lone finger. Images whirled in it wildly, winking in and out, tumbling over one another, reflecting her agitation. With a deep drawn breath, she closed her eyes to summon the inner peace needed to obtain a clear reading, Her fingers returned to the string of blue beads, a legacy of her great grandmother and tie to this destiny. All of them had at least one azure-blue bead. Laichlan’s decorated his battle collar, SkyShadow wore his as buttons on his favorite vest, most, as she, wore them strung on a cord.

As always they imparted a sense of peace. She opened her eyes and focused on the Sphere.

Warning! Danger! Blood!

Jith recoiled from the strength of the Sphere’s sending, her first inclination to heave the Sphere as far away as she could. Instead, her fingers tightened around the begemmed silver cup. It would be worse not to know—and stupid not to scry a way to avoid it.

But she couldn’t start there. She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. Start with The Four.

Cautiously she peered out at the Sphere through her eyelashes. Eyes smouldering with mischief met hers. The scruffy, ash-haired, irreverent male scryer wore a lop-sided grin. Over his shoulder leaned the scryer that Jith preferred: a beautiful, dark-haired woman whose sea-blue eyes shone deep with life’?s joy and hope.

Unknown scryers had plagued her, starting with her very first scrying image . . . which had appeared in her tea. The woman scryer lifted her arm, clad in a blue somewhere between midnight and sapphire, a color Jith had learned to associate with Laichlan—despite the destiny named him the Silver Warrior. He protected himself. Despite his continued references to his death, right now he appeared invincible. A spot appeared in the blue, rising like a moon, and lightening from pale blue to white. The background turned violet, gold rimmed the white and the image floated down as one of Omen’s feathers, and became her gold, cat-faced medallion. Omen and—the medallion?—protected her. She would rather had done it herself. She wished she could protect everyone.

Seven Pits, why had the Willmaster died like that!

The Sphere answered by showing him age in an instant, and turn to dust. Jith straightened. Was that what had happened? Why? Because of the Line of Time? Was that what the sailors had expected to happen to the horses?

Their horses had been a constant topic of conversation with the sailors, especially as they approached the Line of Time. Every sailor, at the onset of their journey, had made a point to go down in the hold to see the horses. It had been the first time she had noted Myr. The striking, dark-haired sailor had seemed fascinated by the three Domain Legends. After that she had noted him merely because he had a habit of staring at one or another of them as if he thought he should know them. As they had approached the Line of Time, the sailor’s curiosity over their horses had rekindled.

The Line of Time had been the turning point in their guarantee to arrive in VokenTrac, as well. Was aging and turning to dust something the captain had expected to happen to all of them? Grim. She’?d ask Ryver to check for her—assuming he could coax an answer. The sailors, even Taslin’?s and Aarian’s dicing buddies, Myr and Everin, were oddly close-mouthed about unexpected things . . . like music. Joreiff had said he could get none of them to speak of music at all—not that he would understand much of what they said. In addition, all the sailors but Myr reacted to his playing as if they expected it to conjure a storm or pestilence, or steal their souls. Why? She wondered if Joreiff had thought to get Ryver to ask for him. She doubted it; she hadn’t seen him playing on deck since the first week out to sea. Being the Minstrel of the prophecy to a people that—Why!—appeared afraid of music, made no sense . . . but it went along with the rest of the prophecy just for that.

An image of a slender, pale-haired man tossing a pillow up on a tall stone appeared in the Sphere. It had the flavor of her first images—past the assorted scryers—of the ancient battle that all sense, but no reason indicated had raged in a previous life of hers—theirs . . . where the need for the destiny had originated. A destiny that, apparently, as someone called Avelon, Aarian—

Fire flared in the Sphere, bright and sleek as scarlet silk. Aarian, The Fireson, the Sphere showed, was protected . . . by the danger. Jith made a wry face, thinking: as Ryver would say, typical border guard luck. It wasn’t surprising. All the scraps Aarian got into with the sailors, dicing or drinking, he came out of with grins and slaps on the back. Aarian, she thought, was one of the Destiny’?s oddest choices—though Fireson certainly fit his temperament.

Now for the last of The Four, their Dawn Queen. Saeshi as Dawn Queen made equally little sense. The pale-haired girl wavered into the Sphere swathed in jewel-like emerald green. A mime dressed in black bowed to her and began to weave stories for her with his hands. Saeshi smiled up at him shyly.

Good, Saeshi seemed safe enough; now for The Thirteen.

The mime made a sweeping gesture with his hands—which turned into black talons and ripped Saeshi in half lengthwise. Jith’s heart slammed and she choked on a breath. A black as deep as a thousand nights seeped out of the wound. Saeshi cowered and put her arms over her head, then her head snapped up— The image froze.

Jith let out a hiss of exasperation. Pinpricks of light flicked in and out in the darkness, but never quite blossomed. The darkness turned into a bowl of night-black water, accom-panied by a terrible wrenching feeling, similar to the ones during the storm.

Jith straightened on a feeling of panic. Did that mean the black mime had already struck! It hadn’t looked like it; Saeshi had been in the cabin peacefully asleep when she’d gotten the Sphere.

A face faded into view, reflected in the black water. A new scryer? Flyaway, dusty-hair framed a weary face wearing a do-or-die expression. Thirteen stars appeared in his bowl. The young man looked ready to weep in despair to see them.

Thirteen stars. The Thirteen? What about them? The scryer plucked one star out of the bowl as if expecting the worse and not caring any more. He opened it like a locket. Inside of it, Osin snatched his head up, eyes widening, expression matching the young man’s.

Though she had never known Osin previous to the time he had returned to the valley with Zeph and Thaye, all wounded from a fight with Guild assassins, Taslin insisted the confusion was the fault of the head wound his brother had gained in the fight. To her, Osin was a pale image of Taslin in both manner and looks—though he certainly could be as wild as his younger brother when he chose. Over the course of the voyage, Osin had gone from being friendly to Aarian to avoiding him and hovering near Reed—though he rarely spoke to the broad-shouldered, sandy-haired Iget fisherman.

Was Osin in danger? No, his danger had passed. What was wrong with him then? The Sphere blackened, turned ash-gray at the edges, then cleared to reveal the plain-faced girl scryer with drab blonde hair. Tears stood in her eyes. She was reading for a beautiful youth with a mane of golden waves oddly parted by a streak of red. The youth mimed at her, reaching out as if stroking long hair, his expression full of questions and tinged with hope as if he had nothing else.

SkyShadow looked up and smiled at him and the youth’s hand moved, touching the Guildman’?s face searchingly as if blind. Then he drew his hands away and showed his palms—ugly burned circles centered each one. Jith flinched. Did that mean SkyShadow was in danger of being burned?

Someone had already tried to kill him several times in Trade, Guild. She couldn’t imagine how he had stayed alive, but he had, and appeared unruffled by the attempts. When she had suggested he wear a sword, he had just shrugged one shoulder and said he preferred not to. Not wouldn’t, not didn’t know how to use one, not refused, but very mildly said he preferred not to. Jith shook her head. SkyShadow, though she liked him, was incomprehensible to her.

Aarian had begrudgingly saved him once, VerlinHawk more cheerfully another.

VerlinHawk, also a Guildfighter, also, like SkyShadow a former caravanmaster and, unlike SkyShadow, an apprentice storyteller. The Sphere showed clearly that Verlin’s danger was past. He’d been poisoned while they were in Trade waiting for the ship to unload to accept passengers. Two days in one of the Halls that he and SkyShadow belonged to, which Verlin laughingly called healing halls but she guessed were Reverie Halls—commonly called the Pleasure Guild—had found him cured. The day they were to board, VerlinHawk had come back alive, if grey and weak. The only danger left, the Sphere showed, was to his heart—which came as a surprise since he appeared footloose and unwilling, if not unable, to attach his heart to anyone past friendship. That love waited in VokenTrac at a many-towered fortress half shrouded in mist.

Well, at least it told her all the inhabitants of VokenTrac weren’t pirates, shapechangers, or the mutant beasts as they appeared to be in Verlin’s plethora of wild and eerie tales. Tales which he said he’d gained from his uncle, who had been to VokenTrac . . . who had also, it turned out, been Saeshi’s long, lost father. The man had died before anyone had realized the fact, but he’d had six other children, one of which had been with them: Yeth. Jith had disliked the lanky Guild player on sight, but in the end she had pitied him. Like Osin, Yeth’s mind seemed to have turned on him.

Like Osin . . . Jith hugged herself as a sudden chill brushed through her. What if the only danger to them wasn’t death? What if the mind confusion of Yeth and then Osin were no accident?

She closed her eyes hard. Who else was acting oddly? Thaye. But, to her, he had never acted anything else. She had assumed it was because he was a prince and therefore thought that much differently than she.

Thaye, Isle prince and fifth level Guildfighter; Ceyna and Shea’s father. A contrary and confusing man. One of the Thirteen: Destiny’s PromiseKeeper. Was he in danger? She checked the Sphere.

The beautiful, dark-haired scryer straightened, her expression switching from amused exasperation to concern. In her bowl, a grayness like a storm rolling in surged sluggishly around Thaye. It didn’?t appear to be life threatening. But what was it? It crashed against the side of the bowl like an ocean’?s wave. Thaye struggled step by step through the greyness, his face set and haggard, tears streaming from his eyes. Was it grief he waded through? His wife’s death had been nearly two years ago. Fresh grief? What would he grieve for?

His children.

Jith closed her eyes and held her breath, almost too afraid to ask. Ceyna? She cracked her eyes open. The honey-haired scryer grinned up at her, fluffed his hair and fluttered his eyelashes outrageously. Jith was startled into a laugh. The scryer grinned. His client, a scrawny boy with scraggly black hair, grimaced.

Ceyna, the Ancient One of the prophecy, not ancient at all but closer to nine, was in no danger, thank all the gods that Mach don’t believe in. Ceyna lifted her face to the sun and began an Isle song, spinning in time to the music, long brown braids whipping in the self-made wind. At last she made herself dizzy enough to fall, laughing, to the deck of the ship. Danger skirled over her head, around her—but that could be said for all of them. Shea, Ceyna’s younger brother, hovered at the edge of the vision, avoiding danger like a cat walked on water so as not to get its feet wet.

As if her thoughts had called the child—which they might have—Ceyna finished whirling around the nearby deck support and leaned against it, waiting to see if she was welcome.

‘‘I’m checking to make sure no one else is going to die,’’? she answered the look. Ceyna came to tuck her face in the hollow between Jith’s gold mail clad breasts and hugged her tight. ‘‘Want to help?’’ Ceyna’s energy, even though young and barely focused, was strong and steady.

‘‘Who are you up to?’’ Ceyna asked, tucking herself close.

‘‘I was just checking you, your brother, and papa.’’

‘‘Shea watches out for him. Try him again. Let me see.’’

The Sphere moved to the child’s bidding. The image was the same: Thaye surrounded by sluggish, surging grayness.

Ceyna sighed unhappily. ‘‘Papa is saying he wishes he’d never come again. Do Davin now.’’

‘‘It looked like grief to me.’’ Jith made it a half-question; Ceyna didn’t respond. The Sphere answered that Davin was safe until they reached land. She’d have to warn his mother. Not that Beryl would listen.

‘‘Is there anyone left?’’ Ceyna asked and the question made Jith’?s heart slam, before she realized it’s true meaning. Her thirty-one were already down to twenty-four. She didn’t want to remember the deaths. She answered Ceyna belatedly with a list of the remaining Thirteen.

Ceyna glanced up at her with a knowing look and said, ‘‘Do Taslin next.’?’

Jith grimaced inwardly. The child knew her too well. A pair of dice flipped up in the Sphere and tumbled down slowly. She closed her eyes, afraid to see them land.

Ceyna said, ‘‘It’s all right, you can look.’’

Jith made a face to be caught again. ‘‘Sometimes I wonder if warning people will make it worse,’’ she said, half to herself.

‘‘If the Sphere didn’t wanted you to warn them or try to help, it wouldn’?t warn you, would it?’’ It felt like the right answer. Jith hugged the child a thank you.

The dice had landed with a winning score. No danger to Destiny’s Quester, Taslin—nothing serious anyway. Dicing quarrels, like Aarian. The sailors had VokenTrac names for both of them: Taslin, they called ‘‘Ytte’’ and Aarian what sounded like ‘‘?vello’’ but Ryver said was ‘‘V’llo’’, a short form of ‘‘vanae thllo’’, which meant sun-hair. That ‘‘ytte’?’ meant red had been no surprise to her at all.

Aarian and Taslin were a pair: dicing and gambling, learning VokenTrac words that weren’?t fit for polite company. Also a pair of devilishly handsome young men. Aarian with his blond mane of waves and suggestive brown eyes; Taslin with his coppery tousle of curls and mischievous, merry attitude. Get the two of them together with their sailor friend, Everin—who reminded her of Verlin in all but his good looks, and his friend, Myr, who could have been Laichlan’s younger and prettier brother . . . and Gilda would drift over to them instantly.

Gilda, the Sphere, informed her, didn’t belong to the prophecy. The vivacious blonde scryer had said that often enough herself, and cheerfully begged to go just the same.

‘‘What about Uncle Laich?’’ Ceyna asked.

‘‘I already did him,’’ Jith replied quickly. Laichlan claimed the destiny held his death. She was afraid to ask. From the center of the Sphere, huge puppy-eyes gazed out at her mournfully. Tears tracked clean streaks down the pretty, young scryer boy’s cheeks and he huddled under a single, thread-bare blanket.

‘‘I asked about his singing sword,’’ Ceyna volunteered.

‘‘The Willmaster said it is a chattel of power like this,’’ Jith returned, tapping the edge of the silver chalice. And she felt certain finding it would be the first step to his death.

Sere expected death from the destiny, too, she was certain from the look in his eyes. He had never said outright, though. She checked the Sphere. The girl scryer with unruly red hair, lay asleep in a room full of flickering flames . . . with eyes. Not a natural sleep, the Sphere informed her, a drugged one, one she might never wake from. A future image, it added. A healer came, checked on the girl, and left, her face grim.

Did that relate to Sere?

Jith had scried his danger first in Trade. Large, sharp, and thick with destiny’s weaving, there seemed nothing she could do to avert it. Wren had refused to credit her warnings and Sere just glanced at his sister, then turned away, silent as usual. Not only was Sere generally quiet, but he appeared to be detached from everything and everyone except his sister.

She had heard, however, that he was anything but detached from Laichlan’s younger brother. Verlin had found it amusing, and made a point to bring it up in front of Laichlan every time the Tyre Warrior settled into a bout of stiff pride.

The danger hadn’t changed, the Shrive Island Lordling twins—both named Serenity—would continue to protect each other . . . until they reached land.

How many more of her friends would their venture into the land of pirates and dark sorcerers take? Why were they even following the destiny at all? She shook her head. They were. She was. She had no intention at all of turning back. What had Ryver said? ‘‘I’m going because I’?m going.’’

She rolled her eyes at the illogic of it, then turned back to the Sphere. Ryver’s hairy face filled it. The image backed away, showing Ryver fighting for his life—but not who he fought. Danger surrounded him, thick and dark. Jith leaned closer and asked urgently and silently for more details. The image in the Sphere went up in flames and the Sphere cleared. Jith growled wordlessly. Ceyna buried her face against her side.

Ryver usually protected Saeshi. She asked aloud, ‘‘Is Ryver Saeshi’s expected rescuer?’’

An image of Reed and Osin superimposed over one another answered, and a feeling of terror and panic so strong she couldn’t breathe. The image faded into a stronger danger, but not one that stole her breath This one made her skin crawl. Joreiff. The minstrel, the Sphere indicated, was in constant, hovering danger. Jith hugged herself and doubled over to stand the feel of it. Joreiff wasn’t someone who could defend himself. Yet he had lived through more than she had, more than any of them who still lived had. Minstrel’s luck, Ryver would say.

Ryver, the Sphere answered, Danger! Blood! Horror!

‘‘What!’’ she cried, hoping for an image clear enough to give a warning from. The Sphere flared white-gold.

*Some things aren’t to be known,* Omen said into her mind. She started and straightened. The huge white-gold bird perched on the nearest railing, just over her left shoulder. How had it gotten there without her noticing? She pushed to her feet, leaving the Sphere in Ceyna’s lap, and went to it.

‘‘Would I make it worse knowing?’’ she asked, stroking a single finger along its head, not really expecting an answer. Omen answered rarely—and more indirectly than her scryings.

*Destiny must be woven by the weaver.*

‘‘Can I warn them?’’

*You are a part of the weaving.*

She sighed in exasperation for the oblique answer and just spent time with the omen she had asked the gods for . . . despite her country, Mach, had no gods. Even if Omen’s answers were of little help, the bird’s presence was soothing. Omen ducked his head so she could scratch it. She did, putting off any more dire warnings, sorting through the ones she had.

Six of her group were in danger. She had to do something. At least the Sphere was warning her now. Better to know sooner than later. With a sigh, she tucked herself back next to Ceyna. Sluggish gray clouds filled the Sphere.

‘‘Are you asking about your father again?’’

Ceyna shrugged.

The gray in the Sphere thickened, then lightened in color and WinterLeaf faded into view. Jith supposed that gray was grief over the Willmaster’s death. The two had been close since WinterLeaf had grudgingly agreed to learn what he had to teach her—his own talent, Sealing . . . whatever that was. The only talents she understood were her own: scrying and naming—the latter talent being one of Ceyna’s as well.

Grief seemed too mild a word for the thickness of the clouds around the Domain Guildfighter, Jith decided. Devastation came to mind. Why? She hadn’t realized WinterLeaf had become that close to the Willmaster. Had they, of all inconceivable things, been sharing a bed? It made no sense, as old as the Willmaster was and considering WinterLeaf’s obliquely stated preferences for those of the same sex.

‘‘Ariel,’’ Ceyna prompted the Sphere, and WinterLeaf washed her gray away with tears and sudden laughter.

Ariel, Destiny’s Eternal Spark, still trying to get someone to teach her Guildfighting, had persistently tagged after WinterLeaf since they had set sail. Being a sixth level Guildfighter, WinterLeaf could protect her young countrywoman . . . even in the face of the grief surrounding her.

Who was left?

‘‘Beryl and Kye,’’ she answered her own question aloud.

Beryl stalked danger but appeared to never catch it. Even if danger had grabbed Kye by the throat, it couldn’t touch him, the Sphere assured her. As heartening as that was, why not? The Sphere didn’t answer. Jith sighed sharply.

Was there any more?

Saeshi! Ryver! Reed/Osin! Warning! Danger! Blood! the Sphere imaged—a warning forceful enough to harbor more than one death. She hoped not. She hoped her warnings would avert it all. Maybe it wasn’t better knowing, as Aarian insisted. But at least she could tell Ryver to keep a weapon at hand. Their captain had refused to let them wear their swords on deck, but she knew Laichlan was no less armed without his sword and she wouldn’t be surprised if Ryver wasn’t as well. She still had the long knife VerlinHawk had lent her on the way back from Rayho the time she had been attacked by one of the blank-eyed Guild assassins.

Ceyna scrambled up. ‘‘I’ll go hug WinterLeaf for us.’’

Jith smiled and tugged one of the child’s long brown braids lightly. ‘‘Thanks. What about your father?’’

‘‘He won’t listen to either of us. I’ll tell Shea to tell him. He won’t listen to Shea either, but he won’t forget Shea told him like he would you or me.’?’

Jith wrapped the Sphere, then hugged the girl again. ‘‘You are far too wise.’?’

‘‘The Ancient One is supposed to be wise,’’? Ceyna replied pertly, then grinned and twirled around several times before skipping out, singing the song she had been singing in the Sphere. It was doubly appropriate, since the name of the tune was ‘?‘Spring’’—though spring as a season on the ocean lost much of its meaning.

Jith caught up her gold mail cap and stuffed her hair under it, then followed Ceyna out on deck, arriving just in time to see Omen launch from the topmost mast and wing swiftly in the direction they were sailing.