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crunched. A lean dog followed him a few steps, looking hopeful, but Jeon hitched his pack up higher on his shoulder and ignored it and the dog veered off. At the foot of the trail up the cliff, several people were waiting to go up to work in the castle. They waved to him and he waved back. He knew they cared more about his red hair than they did about him.
    The black rock of the cliff was pocked with caves and over the years people had hollowed these out into houses and stores and shops. The two biggest caves, well back into the cliff, held the brewery’s vats and oasts. The brewery itself stood next door, dug far into the cliff, with a wooden porch built along the front. Slowing his steps, he looked for his brother, Luka. There was already a little crowd in the brewery and Jeon went on, not wanting to go in there among all those people.
    Ahead, at the butchery, the beach widened, rising to a little prairie just inland. On this stretch of sand, an old cypress tree stood, a fat trunk like a bundle of barrels under a sparse prickly crown. A wooden bench encircled the trunk and Jeon saw his two older sisters sitting there.
    He walked toward them. Someone from the town had brought a new baby out and Mervaly had it on her lap and was cooing at it, smoothing its little body with her hands, as if she molded it into shape. The remains of a christening feast littered his sister’s skirt, the bench she sat on, the ground at her feet. Beside her Casea sat with her needle and a long strip of cloth over her knees, patterned in colored thread. When Jeon came up she gave him a quick, eager look.
    â€œWhat did she say?” Casea crossed her long white hands over the fabric in her lap. Mervaly looked toward them, keen.
    â€œI can go find her,” Jeon said. “She says she’ll have to go back to the monastery, but first she wants to see her.”
    Mervaly said, “I’ll never let her go back to that place.” She lifted the baby, kissed it, and held it out to the mother. They settled into a long discussion of naming. Casea threaded her needle with purple silk. A few red and white chickens had come over to peck at the crumbs on the ground. Jeon looked around the beach, at its widest here, fringed with shops and awnings. The weavery was shut, across the way, and the forge. Everybody knew there was a storm coming up, in spite of the blue sky. The butcher’s boy Guz walked by, his tray suspended before him from his shoulders, hawking his father’s meat pies.
    In among all these familiar people, there walked a clutch of Imperial soldiers in their puffy striped doublets. The doublets looked soft, but Bedro, who had gotten into a fight with one of them, said underneath they were hard enough to break your hand. Jeon watched the soldiers; like all the Imperials they were big, square-shouldered men. Each of them carried a ten-foot pike, double bladed, leaning on it as if it were a walking stick.
    The striped doublets made them stand out among the fishermen and farmers here like rocks in the soup. They stared at everybody, at everything, clutching their pikes, their helmets on their belts. They stayed in their little pack, always.
    Jeon said, “Why do we have to let these hayheads here?”
    â€œYou know perfectly well,” Casea said, busy with her needle, stitching a meandering line into the white cloth between her hands. “Because Papa got himself killed fighting on the wrong side.” She glanced at him, at Mervaly, and across the common at the Imperial soldiers. “Which we should all take a lesson from.”
    Mervaly said, “Let Mother deal with this.” She kissed the baby’s mother and waved her off. They three sat alone under the cypress tree.
    â€œMother,” Casea said, “has only gotten us into more trouble.” She lifted her face to Jeon, her skin pale as eggshell, her wide black eyes like onyx. “Are you sure you can find Tirza? There’s another