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content and still human?
    She had to take the risk for her own sake, and for Kai.
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    Tashi signalled to a scribe.
    "Please send the following to my sisters. 1, Fourth Crown Princess, hereby delegate in my absence my voting powers to Second Crown Princess. I trust she will think as I would have of the beloved people of Kai in all matters concerning the rule of our Islands.'"
    The message was despatched by carrier pigeon. Tashi watched the bird soar over the canal locks that the barge had already passed through on its journey to the sea. She wondered if she was being a fool. Had Second Princess merely calculated that inexperienced Tashi would react gratefully to her show of concern? As representative of both Kai and Lir-Salu, Safilen would augment her influence at court as rival to both her co-rulers.
    Be quiet, Tashi snapped at her cynical side. Let me at least think that I have one friend at court. Don't spoil it for me! Sometimes the heart has to rule over the head.
    Tashi had seen maps of the Known World but never comprehended its
    vastness until this voyage across the Northern Ocean. Gerfal lay over a thousand miles away, beyond the Empire of Holt, beyond anything that Tashi found familiar. The Blue Crescent navy could not land at any Holtish port, of course, so had to sail far to the north to the islands of the Ice Archipelago for supplies midway through the journey. Fortunately, the winter had not yet frozen the seas, but Tashi woke to darkness each morning in her state cabin and had to say the Four Blessings well before the sun rose. Ice covered
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    the inside of her windows, froze her breath and made icicles on the rigging, which crashed to the ground each day when the sun, feeble and low on the horizon, nudged away the darkness for a few hours. The people of the Archipelago were suspicious but not hostile, providing furs, meat, and fresh water to the twenty ships in Tashi's escort. They encountered no challenge from the Pirate Fleet. Any scout ships soon disappeared back to Holt when they counted the strength of the Crescent navy.
    By late November, just as the seas further north were locking the
    Archipelago away for the winter and the sun no longer rose, the fleet turned south for Gerfal. They arrived to be greeted by a flotilla of the much inferior Gerfalian navy and were escorted to the port of the capital, Falburg. The Gerfalian sailors could only whistle with amazement at the size and firepower of the Crescent ships with their white square sails and ferocious figureheads of dragons and bul s embel ished with gold paint. The Islands alone knew how to manufacture gunpowder, and the smallest of the
    Crescent ships had at least twenty cannon, the largest over a hundred. The marines were armed with long rifles, a technology unknown on the
    mainland. There, the crossbow was the main long-distance assault weapon.
    The flagship of the fleet moored at the dockside to receive the
    representatives of King Lagan. Tashi sat once more on the Throne of Nature, brought out on deck for the purpose. She was dressed in her most elaborate gown, figured with leaves and wild animals
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    in honor of the forested land of Gerfal. Her face was painted white, her eyes outlined in kohl, her hair hidden under a veil of green silk. An orange sash clinched her waist and fell to the deck in a swirl of color.
    Lord Taris, Prime Minister of Gerfal, knelt before her. Behind him knelt a stocky young man with red hair, introduced as his son, Lord Usk.
    "Your Royal Highness, on behalf of the King and al his people, I welcome you to Gerfal," Lord Taris said in Common Tongue, the shared language of the Known World.
    "Thank you, Prime Minister," said Tashi, following the script written for her by the Etiquette Mistress. Though she was fluent, she felt awkward speaking Common. "I bring greetings from my sisters, the Crown Princesses of the Blue Crescent Islands, and I bring gifts." She nodded to a line of servants waiting with the appropriate