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southern hemisphere, and returning far to the west of Gurishal, they would do the impossible—sail
around
the White Fleet, that impenetrable naval wall, sweep down on Gurishal from the Mzithrinis’ blind side, and return the Shaggat to his horde? Preposterous! Unthinkable!
    So unthinkable that it could just come to pass.
    No, King. Do not welcome the future, do not hasten it. A cracked mirror, that is all it will prove: a desert where we maroon our children, a broken image of the past
.
    The Cactus Gardens were the pride of Simja. Tended by a guild of botanical fanatics, they stretched over four dry acres in the heart of the city, a patch of earth that had never been built upon. There were cacti tall as trees and small as acorns, cacti that climbed and cacti that wriggled along the ground, cacti disguised as stones, or heavy with armored fruit, or bristling with six-inch spikes.
    At the heart of the garden rose the Old Sentinels: two rows of ugly, blistered, thousand-year-old plants that groped like tortured fingers at the sky. Between them walked Isiq and his daughter, hand in hand, alone. The procession had swept on without them, into the Royal Rose Gardens next door. Their eleven minutes had begun.
    “Failed,” said Isiq.
    “Stop saying that,” said Thasha, pulling a wayward spike from her gown. “And pick your feet up when you walk! You never used to shuffle along like a clown.”
    “I won’t waste these last moments bickering,” he said. “Nor will I ask you to forgive me. Only to remember, to think of me now and again, should you somehow—”
    Thasha put a hand to his lips. “What a silly ass you are. Why won’t you trust me? You know I have a tactical mind.”
    Isiq’s brow furrowed. Despite his best efforts he had dozed off briefly in the night. One moment he had been seated on a bench in his cabin, his great blue mastiffs snoring at his feet. The next she was kissing him awake, saying that the Templar monks had drawn their boat alongside the
Chathrand
, waiting for her. A new steadiness had shown in her face, a resolve. It had frightened him.
    Now between the monstrous cacti he pressed her hand to his chest.
    “If you have devised some plan, you and Hercól and those mad-dog tarboys, it is for you to trust
me
. Reveal it now. We’ll have no other chance to speak.”
    Thasha hesitated, then shook her head. “We tried, last night. You started shouting, remember? You forbade us to speak.”
    “Only of madness. Only of running, or fighting our enemies head-on, or other forms of suicide.”
    “What if suicide’s the answer?” she said, looking at him fiercely. “No marriage, no prophecy come true. It’s better than anything you’ve come up with.”
    “Do not rave at me, Thasha Isiq. You know His Supremacy left me no choice.”
    “I’m tired of that excuse,” said Thasha sharply. “Even today you’re saying ‘no choice’ when the most dangerous thing would be to take no risks at all.”
    “That is juvenile idiocy. I know what risk is, girl. I have been a soldier three times as long as you’ve been alive. You have courage, that’s something no one denies. But courage is just one of the virtues.”
    Thasha heaved a sigh. “Daddy, this is the
last
thing—”
    “Another is wisdom, rarer and more costly to earn than skill with a blade. And dearer than either of these is honor, which is a sacred trust, and once lost not easily—”
    Something changed in Thasha’s face. She snatched her hand away and boxed him in the ribs. The blow made a dull
clink
.
    “Ouch! Damn! What’s that blary thing in your coat?”
    Isiq looked embarrassed. “Westfirth brandy,” he said.
    “Give me some.”
    “Out of the question. Listen, girl, we have just—”
    “GIVE ME SOME!”
    He surrendered the little bronze flask. And the Treaty Bride, head to toe the image of a virgin priestess of old, tilted back her head and drank. After the fourth swallow, quite deliberately, she spat brandy in his