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political figures, or was it to make an example of Maertyn by showing that even lords were accountable…especially if they requested more equipment? Or was it something else entirely?
    Finally, he pushed the chair back and stood, turning from the pale green screens that held meaningful but irrelevant data. He stretched, then, after several moments, walked from his workroom into the main study. He did not see Maarlyna, and he turned toward the ramp that began just inside the main entrance on the canal side of the station building and headed down to the kitchen, located in the chamber below his work space.
    Maarlyna was not there, but Shaenya was standing before the cook-top.
    “Might I ask what’s for dinner?”
    “Carplet stew, but with a pinenut glaze, and spiced potatoes in yogurt with some greens I gathered from the sheltered garden.”
    “The panels have kept it from freezing?”
    “Them and the water walls. For now. In another two weeks…who could say?”
    “If there’s time next week in Daelmar before I catch the maglev to Caelaarn, I’ll see if I can stop and have a side of lamb sent over from there on Haarlan’s freightrunner.”
    “You’d not have to do that, Lord Maertyn.”
    “I want you, Svorak, and Maarlyna well-fed in my absence.” He grinned. “If I do, don’t you dare save it for my return.”
    “Not if you’d be telling me not to, no, sir.”
    “You haven’t seen Maarlyna, have you?”
    “Lady S’Eidolon?” The cook shook her head. “She came down an hour ago, but not since then.”
    “Thank you.” Maertyn turned and walked back up the ramp and then outside onto the narrow space between the station and the canal wall. He glanced around before catching sight of Maarlyna. For a moment, he just looked, taking in the glint of light off her amber hair and the way she appeared so much a part of the canal and the light house.
    She stood in the weak late-afternoon sunlight to the left of the light house, looking out at the cold gray waters of the ocean. She did not turn as he joined her.
    “It’s peaceful here.” Her voice was quiet, so low he could barely make out her words above the hum of the wind turbines, the rush of the wind, and the intermittent muffled crash of the waves below hitting the enduring blue-gray stone.
    He understood. “Not that many people around.”
    “They didn’t used to grate on me so much.”
    “Times change.”
    “So do people. I’ve changed, Maertyn.”
    “We all change as we grow.”
    “You’re humoring me.”
    “Perhaps a little. Isn’t that the husbandly thing to do?”
    She finally turned to face him. “You never used to do that. You never were so solicitous before…before…”
    “No. I should have been, but almost losing you made me realize how much you meant to me.” His eyes looked into hers, a shade of amber that matched her hair almost perfectly.
    “I know. I don’t pretend to understand, but I know.”
    He leaned toward her and brushed her cheek with his lips. “I’m glad you do.”
    “The longer we’re here,” she mused, “the stranger the station seems, and yet the more like home. I have the feeling that I won’t want to leave.”
    Maertyn nodded. He wasn’t certain he felt quite that way, but then, he’d never felt as though any place had ever been home. In those moments as he stood beside her under the high gray clouds, his thoughts returned to the station itself. As Maarlyna had said, there were so many prosaically strange aspects to the station. There were no vermin, no pests, and, according to the records, domesticated animals howled and moaned if they were kept inside. Yet the old records showed that the former light house-keepers had had fewer accidents and lived seemingly healthier and longer lives than their contemporaries. Had some of them sensed what Maertyn did? At least subconsciously?
    The functionality of the doors bothered him. They had from the beginning. According to the older records, they didn’t