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the Eldritch Realm slid away. She felt it pass through her soul as it left, a cold burn followed by a nausea that was closer to revulsion than motion sickness.
    Earth and Fragrant Harbor lay ahead.
    Cloud Terrace

CHAPTER 1
    Earth
    8 MONTHS LATER…
    Lunae was in the tower room of Cloud Terrace, a chrysalis in her hand, when Dreams-of-War came to find her. The chrysalis rested velvet-light against Lunae's skin, a woven parcel too large for her childish fingers to close all the way around. She sat cross-legged on the window seat, looking out over the jumbled tenements as they stretched down from the Peak toward the harbor. Her Grandmoth-ers still used the old names for the city: Hong Kong, Fra-grant Harbor, the City of Sails. She tested each one on her tongue, staring down into the late-afternoon shadows be-tween the immensity of the tenements.
    Across the water, at the edges of High Kowloon, the crimson sign of the Nightshade Mission burned through the haze, casting a glitter over the sea. A junk was coming in from the east, the filament sails turning in a glare of gold to catch the wind. Lunae thought she glimpsed its dragon figurehead and imagined it gliding over long-drowned lands, coming into port beneath the volcanoes of the north.

    Far above the horizon, the maw of the Chain arched upward: the initial segment of the Earth-Mars pathway. Even in daylight, Lunae thought she could identify incom-ing ships as the maw turned, but it was hard to see through the smoky air, so she looked back to the chrysalis in her hand.
    There was a sudden twitch inside her head. Beyond the window, the view changed: a darker day, with the red sign of the Mission flickering through fog. Farther east a great lamp glowed, warning ships away from the walls of the fortress-temple of Gwei Hei. The chrysalis, too, shifted and altered. A silk-moth now sat upon Lunae's palm, beat-ing iridescent wings.
    Lunae's mind twitched again. The chrysalis was back, as tightly wrapped as before. The afternoon sunlight flooded in. Lunae smiled, but then a voice behind her said, "And what do you think you're doing?"
    Lunae jumped. Dreams-of-War stood in the doorway, her armored hand tapping impatiently against the lac-quered wood. Lunae looked up into her guardian's icy green glare.
    "Nothing."
    "What's that you're holding?" Dreams-of-War strode across the room, steel-shod feet clicking on driftwood boards, razor teeth glistening wet in a sudden shaft of sun-light. Her wan hair flowed down her back, unbound to-day, suggesting that her guardian must be in a relatively good mood. Enboldened, Lunae held up the chrysalis. It rested in her palm, innocent, untransformed.
    "I found it under the windowsill. It will be a silk-moth one day."
    "So it will," Dreams-of-War said, seemingly appeased, then added, " one day . You are not to exercise your talents, except at the beginning and end of your lessons. I've told you before—the Grandmothers have insisted upon it. Do you understand?"
    Lunae nodded. "I understand." Then she added, re-luctantly, "I'm sorry." There had been a time, not long ago, when she had obeyed her guardians without question, but recently the restrictions placed upon her had begun to chafe. No point in asking for forgiveness, though. Dreams-of-War did not believe in it.
    It was not, she had said, a Martian concept.
    Lunae looked up at her guardian. The armor, as green and iridescent as an insect's carapace, flowed over the Mar-tian woman's skin, covering everything except Dreams-of-War's angular face and her hair.
    A dragonfly-Samurai, Lunae thought; rows of needles bristled from Dreams-of-War's breastplate like viridian thorns. Her mailed hands were demon-clawed.
    Once, Lunae had woken with a toothache and, unable to locate her nurse, had sought out Dreams-of-War in-stead. She had often wondered whether her guardian even slept, but sure enough, when she stepped into the red lac-quer room at the far end of the eastern wing, there was Dreams-of-War, lying