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girl felt no great desire to become a sikara; she had dreams of doing other things in her life besides studying and preaching.
    Istala was the other side of the
cuar
coin: olive-skinned, her hair a true blue-black, her demeanor studious. The ten-year-old loved to listen to the priestesses and their music. She perused Urec's Log on her own, wrote out prayers, and burned the paper strips in hopes that Ondun Himself would see the smoke.
    The crowd roared outside, incensed by something Sikara Fyiri had said, and Istar glanced up from the thick tome. The third girl in the room, Cithara, at eleven years old, was harder and more moody than her two half-sisters. She turned away from the open balcony with a sniff. “You should not listen, Mother Istar. Sikara Fyiri spreads poison against you.”
    Despite the knot in her stomach, Istar did not let herself show any distress in front of the girls. “I am proof against her poison. She can talk all she wants.” She took the girl's hand and drew her back to the table and their studies.
    Cithara was the daughter of the soldan-shah's late wife Cliaparia, whom Istar had stabbed to death in broad daylight. Covered with blood, staggering through the souks, Istar had been horrified at herself, but she had felt no guilt. Cliaparia had killed her baby son… Criston… the soldan-shah's heir.
    Six years ago, when Omra had rushed back from his conquest of Ishalem, the soldan-shah easily found proof of the other woman's crimes. His rage had been thunderous. He dispatched proclamations to all the soldanates absolving Istar of all blame in the killing. “I would have executed Cliaparia myself. Istar was merely meting out the soldan-shah's justice.”
    Omra had wanted to exile Cliaparia's little daughter—his own daughter—though the girl was much too young to bear any responsibility. But when Istar had looked at the child, something changed inside her. She had caught a glimpse of her humanity again, much as she had upon finding the long-lost note in a bottle from her beloved Criston Vora. “You cannot punish the girl for the sins of her mother,” she had insisted.
    The soldan-shah was puzzled, for Istar had more reason than anyone else to hate Cliaparia and her family. But she stood firm, and he relented. Instead of letting the girl be exiled, she raised Cithara as one of her own daughters. Though Omra still didn't understand her motives, the arrangement had worked well for the past six years. The three girls were inseparable.
    Outside in the square, Fyiri continued, “Ondun will keep His back turned from us as long as we remain tainted, as long as there are those among us who hide behind masks and whose thoughts are never truly known.”
    Another veiled reference to Istar. She found it ironic, actually. Masks? With her golden-brown hair, light skin, and blue eyes, Istar could never pretend to be one of them. She had never wanted to be here in the first place; she was born to be a village wife with a Tierran sailor for a husband. But Omra had taken all that from her more than eighteen years ago. Now this was her only life, and she had made the best of it.
    “Don't worry, Mother,” Istala said in a quiet voice, speaking for herself and her sisters. “When we all become sikaras, we will never hate you, no matter what they try to teach us.”
    With beautiful cushions piled about her, Istar sat on the dais in the throne room. Acting in the soldan-shah's stead, she waited to receive Soldan Huttan's emissary from Inner Wahilir.
    Beside her, a fluted silver pot filled with hot water, fresh mint leaves, and honey was accompanied by a single eggshell ceramic cup. Istar would not waste social pleasantries on the emissary. She had met Ualfor once during a banquet with Omra, but she doubted he had even noticed her; he was a man who saw only the “important” people in a room.
    As Soldan Huttan's mouthpiece, Ualfor was delivering a proposal to annex certain border lands on the edge of Yuarej soldanate,