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saw himself—a small head and feeble arms emerging from this massive metal shirt. He jerked his arms inside and ducked down, troubled by the reminder of the distance between him and a full-grown soldier. Then he crawled out, a snail abandoning a shell. “I’m going after them, Cortie. I gotta find out who they are.”
    She blinked her eyes sleepily. “Pop says you should stay in the wagon,” she yawned.
    Dust floating on the air crackled as the torch’s flicking tongue caught and consumed it.

    There goes Wynn
, thought Luci to her sisters. And then her smile boasted,
I told you I’d find him
.
    Luci’s identical sister Madi raised her chin in defiance.
Foolish orphan. He’s just spying on the big folks again, jealous of anyone important. Let’s leave him alone
.
    The triplets rarely spoke aloud to one another. Thoughts passed between them clearly, but they often confused which one was thinking, and their feelings rarely matched. This frequently left them looking pained as they wrestled in mental entanglement.
    Luci thrust out her lower lip. She would take a liking to any boy she pleased, and her sisters would have no say in the matter.
You’re the one who wants to grow up and marry Cal-raven
, she snapped in a wordless retort. Brushing off her weed-woven trousers, she stepped out from behind the stone slab that had fallen across the corridor just outside the armory. Following Wynn, she heard the quiet clatter of her sisters’ stonecrafted jewelry close behind.
    Madi, Luci, and Margi were as different in opinions as they were alike in appearance and gifts. Born stonemasters, they took regular lessons from Abascar’s only master of that art—the king. Cal-raven had shown them how fingertips could read a rock. Like the gift of firebearing, healing, or wild-speaking, stonemastery was evidence of direct descent from Tammos Raak, the man who first crossed over the Forbidding Wall into the Expanse, followed by the parade of children he had freed from captivity.
    While they were proud of their stonemastery, they kept their telepathy secret. Double blessings such as theirs were rare indeed. Those so greatly gifted were often assumed to be schemers and crooks.
    When the triplets’ parents had joined the assembly in the quake’s aftermath to wait for Cal-raven’s instructions, Luci had turned to her favorite distraction—the rascal merchant boy who had, much to his own dismay, charmed her.
    But what had begun as distraction turned troubling the farther Luci led her sisters in pursuit. Wynn seemed afraid, his concentration so fierce that he had not noticed his followers.
    They emerged from the tunnel to walk along a high tier under the night. Wynn was well ahead of them, shadowing the soldiers as closely as he dared. They followed him up a weedy slope.
    Summer constellations glistened—the Golden Heron, the Healerfish, the Wildflower, and the Changeling. And there, low on the northern horizon, the Kite People, six clusters of stars like men and women in flight, trailing strands of dust that bound them to a single blue star with a waveringaura. The sisters paused together, and not for the first time. Starlight always enchanted them, as if it were a strange music composed only for them.
    Luci led them through the bowl where they had helped Cal-raven sculpt a towering Keeper and along narrow ledges, tempting gusty winds to cast them over the cliffs.
    Coming around a bend, they saw the soldiers slip into a crevasse in the cliff face. Wynn climbed along the vines just above the entrance and hung there like a bat, upside down.
    The girls, seeing him stop, clustered together on the path. He saw them, hissed, and waved them off.
    Luci ventured on, bare feet padding along the path. “You’re gonna get in trouble,” she whispered.
    Wynn held out a hand to quiet her, listening intently.
    Wind moaned through the Red Teeth, the field of stone spears far below the precipice. Margi, who seemed drawn to danger, grew distracted and