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camera.
    â€œIt’s a machine.”
    â€œMummery?” Ralo said.
    At the word, two of the eldest kids stepped back, putting some space between the camera and themselves, and tugging on the younger children. The expression of distrust on their faces was much like Dega’s had been, when she was eyeing up the steel hunting knife.
    â€œIt’s a completely safe and pretty cool machine, as it happens,” Sophie said. Was it silly to be insulted?
    â€œThen you’re not a spellscribe?”
    â€œWhat? Like Bastien? No.”
    â€œOr Sylvanner?”
    â€œI don’t know what that means.”
    A little kid tugged on her skirt, offering her an ordinary clamshell and pointing at her camera.
    â€œOnly if I don’t recognize it,” Sophie said firmly. “That’s a ribbed limpet.”
    â€œChildren don’t Fleetspeak.” Ralo said a few words and the children sprinted back to the beach, chirruping and scanning the sand.
    Suddenly I’ve got an itsy bitsy research team, Sophie thought. “Ralo, can you explain about … Sylvanner?”
    â€œThey like to write new spells,” he said, swinging a repaired mat of thatch onto the shelter roof. “Earn coin.”
    â€œThey’re a … people? A corporation?”
    â€œSylvanna is one of the great nations.”
    â€œOh! Dega asked if I was Verdanii. Is that another nation?”
    He nodded, clearly amazed at her ignorance.
    Nations she’d never heard of. She pondered that. If Stele Island and Sylvanna and the others were part of an archipelago of small islands, tucked into … which ocean was most likely? She wouldn’t have believed they could escape notice, but for the magic.
    They must use it to conceal themselves. That’s why I don’t know where I am.
    It was a strangely reassuring thought, one that made her feel as though she might not be that far from home after all.
    A cry of triumph from the kids. One skinny four-year-old dashed up, holding one of the float pods for the ubiquitous seaweed. Inside the pod was a crimson eel, barely wider than a strand of spaghetti, and it was brooding over a clutch of red granules. Eggs?
    â€œGood!” Sophie set it up so the sun was shining through it, exploiting the natural light, and took a macro shot. She let the kids look at the resulting image for three seconds before shutting the camera down again.
    â€œSo Sylvanna does … they research new magical spells?” Sophie asked Ralo.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThis is bad because—”
    â€œThey are crooks,” Ralo said. He pointed at the sea pod, struggling with either the concept or the translation. “This eel are ours. If they uses them in a new scrip, the scribing, they should pay.”
    If this was a delusion, it was getting complex. International politics and conflicts about resource use? And magic that seemed to operate under something like patent law. “Could any of this be tied to the attack on my aunt?”
    Ralo gave a peculiar little shrug, indicating, she figured, indifference.
    The morning passed. The kids found her a shell with an interior that was crimson-colored mother-of-pearl. She set it on a board next to the body of a seagoing bat, collecting specimens she could photograph in a group. They led her to a stand of delicate orange flowers that looked like miniaturized helliconia. Using signs, she asked them about the moths. They pointed at the cliff tops. Too far away.
    At midday, Ralo broke out bowls of seaweed and fish broth, carefully dividing the mushy lump of one cooked dumpling among the children. He and Sophie got the soup without dumplings. If anything, the broth made her hungrier.
    The woman, San, returned to nurse her baby. She looked half dead with exhaustion. She spoke to Ralo in the islanders’ dialect, pointedly excluding Sophie.
    Sophie gave them some space, sitting in the sun with one of the kids. If she could get home,