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I’d say it was a pelican but it seemed too big, too fast. Thing is, it’s not a deity. I would have sensed that. And I’m not even sure I did see it. Maybe just jumpy, you know?”
    Scowling, Leandra looked aft at the standing islands in their wake. She saw only moonlit rock and vegetation. “You’re sure there’s no ship following us to Keyway? Now would be a very, very bad time to be discovered.”
    â€œI’m sure.”
    â€œAll right. Before you go searching for new ships, double back along our wake to make sure no one’s following.”
    He paused. “Lea, you get us into trouble?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHow bad?”
    â€œI said I didn’t get us into trouble.”
    â€œAs bad as when that mercenary elephant god turned neodemon?”
    â€œThat was barely a skirmish.”
    â€œWe only got out of his camp alive because his lieutenant went insane, and they still ambushed me at the shore.”
    Leandra rolled her eyes. “You recovered from the crushed pelvis the very next day.”
    â€œSo we’re in hotter water now? How hot? As bad as the jellyfish neodemon or the mosquito goddess?”
    Leandra suppressed a shudder. “We got out of those scrapes alive,” she said, though in truth, many in their party had not. “Kai, you’re fretting again. Let me do that. We’re not in trouble now, but we will be if you don’t follow your orders.”
    He stared into her eyes a moment longer but turned away. “Hey Peleki, take us in to Keyway Island. I’ll meet you there. You got the shark’s lei.” He tossed the leimako to the lieutenant, who caught the shark toothed oar and nodded. “Yes, Captain.”
    With that, Holokai flashed a smile at Leandra and dove off the center deck and into the dark water without a splash.
    As Leandra watched her old friend swim away, she held a hand over her belly. The pain from the flare was getting worse. Sometimes her disease would double her over with pain, puff up her face and joints like rising bread. Then she’d have to take the disgusting stress hormone the hydromancers made with their aqueous runes. That would stop the human aspects of her body from attacking her textual aspects, but the drug’s other effects were horrible. She hated her body for its civil wars, her disease.
    Leandra wondered again if, in one day’s time, she might kill the human half of herself. That might count as murdering someone she loved. Perhaps the textual half of her would live on. That thought withered her smile. She would hate to become like her mother. And, anyway, to kill only the human half of herself wouldn’t be possible.
    Leandra turned her thoughts to other people she might have to kill. Having sent Holokai to search for those just coming into the city, she should also consider those just now coming into her affection.
    â€œHuh,” Leandra said in surprise as she added another name to the list. “Lieutenant, pass the word for Dhrun.”
    Lieutenant Peleki sent the command down the ship. While she waited, Leandra considered the white half-moon and its watery reflection amid the standing islands.
    When she was six years old, her father had taken her from Lorn to Ixos for the first time. Their first night in Chandralu, looking up from the Floating City, a young Leandra asked her father why all three moons had followed them across the ocean. He laughed and tried to explain about the moons being so far away that they looked the same from anywhere. She hadn’t believed him.
    â€œMy lady,” a voice said behind her.
    Leandra turned to see that Dhrun had changed her manifestation; the divinity complex was now a tall, fair-skinned, athletic woman. This was the incarnation of a Cloud Culture goddess of victory. She had been known as Nika before fusing with Dhrun, a male Lotus Culture neodemon of wrestling, and his avatar Dhrunarman, the winner of last year’s