The Nunghal’s invitation had made her very curious. Istar dressed in nondescript clothes and slipped away when the Urecari went to sunset church services. No one noticed her; no one knew where she was going.
On a busy street near the harbor, she found the inn that Asaddan had described. Inside, sailors and servers filled the common room; the air was heavy with conversation, laughter, shouts, and the smells of sweat, beer, and woodsmoke. She slipped past the crowds and went up the stairs to the Nunghal’s room. He had given her precise instructions.
When she knocked, Asaddan opened the door, but hesitated before leading her inside. “Thank you for coming discreetly, my Lady. My companion has good reason to keep his presence secret, but we hope you can use your influence to arrange a meeting with the soldan-shah.”
Istar pulled aside her veil as Asaddan closed the door behind her. She saw a man sitting quietly on a stool, wearing a fishhook pendant at his throat. He had light brown hair, blue eyes…and impossibly familiar features. Her world collapsed around her.
Twenty years. Twenty years now spooled backward and out of control like a snapped fishing line. She sucked in a gasp, and with it came the only thing she could say. “Ciarlo!”
Her brother recognized her in the same instant, bolting upright and toppling the stool. His mouth hung open as if someone had struck him with a club. Though she was decades older and dressed in Uraban clothes with touches of face paint and fine jewelry, speaking the language of a foreign land, she was still his sister. “Adrea!…Adrea, this is a miracle!”
Ciarlo flung himself at her and they embraced, rocking back and forth. He began sobbing into her shoulder, and she realized she was weeping as well. Adrea. She hadn’t heard that name in so long. “I knew you weren’t dead, Adrea! I had dreams, and I came to find out what had become of you!”
A gulf of empty years stretched out behind her like a blank sea on a sailor’s chart. She had last seen her brother during the Urecari raid on Windcatch. Ciarlo had been at the kirk on the hill, ringing the bell to alert the town. The raiders had ransacked the houses, burned the piers. When they dragged her to one of their ships, she had caught a final glimpse of the small kirk in flames. So many people of Windcatch had been slaughtered that day. Istar—Adrea—had never dared believe that Ciarlo might have lived through it. With his lame leg he could not outrun the raiders, and Urecari scimitars could easily have cut him down.
The two began talking at once, spilling words over the top of each other; Adrea realized that for the first time in ages she was speaking Tierran.
Unable to understand what they were saying, Asaddan said in rough Uraban, “What is this? How do you two know each other?”
Ciarlo rubbed at the tears in his eyes and refused to let go of her. “This is my sister, Asaddan! The one I was searching for. She’s the reason I came to Olabar! Aiden has blessed us both—can there be any doubt?”
An avalanche of questions fell into Istar’s mind, and she didn’t know which one to ask first. Then she realized that Ciarlo had jumped to his feet and run across the room to her. She had never seen him move without pain, not since his leg had been broken. She stood back and regarded her brother. “Your limp, Ciarlo! What happened?”
Though reluctant to release his hold on her, he was eager to show off. “I am healed.” He hopped from one foot to the other, sprang up onto the bed, then back down to the floor. “I can walk and run as well as any man.”
“But how?” Not even the most skilled Saedran physician could have healed an old injury like that.
“The Traveler, Adrea! I met him, and he performed a miracle. He gave me his book of new tales, took away my pain, and made me see my mission clearly—to come here and preach the word of Aiden. And also to find you. I’ve been blessed by two miracles now.”
She was stunned, and each inquiry came with both eagerness and a commensurate weight of dread. “And…Criston? Did he ever return from the Luminara? Is he…” She couldn’t even finish her question. Is he alive? Is he married? Has he found a family and happiness for himself?
“The Luminara was sunk by the Leviathan.” Adrea reeled, but her brother was not finished. “Criston was the only survivor. He came back to Windcatch, but too late—you were already gone. Yet he never stopped hoping for you. He still writes you letters. He seals each one in a bottle and trusts it to the sea.”
Tears began pouring down Adrea’s face. “I received one of them, a long time ago. He still…remembers me?”
“He still loves you. Criston never married again, never found another woman, but he sailed away on a new ship, the Dyscovera. He’ll be home—I know it. We have to return!” Ciarlo was so full of happiness he could barely speak.
Adrea hesitated, feeling tightness in her throat and an aching in her chest. She couldn’t simply leave Olabar and sneak off to Tierra. She was the soldan-shah’s First Wife; she and Omra had three daughters—one adopted, just as Omra had adopted and loved Saan.
Criston’s son. The child that Criston wasn’t even aware he had.
“You knew I was pregnant when…when the raid happened. I had a son, a strong son. Saan is now twenty years old—a sailor like his father. Omra raised him to be a fine young man, and he even looks like Criston.” She hadn’t thought of that in a long time.
“The soldan-shah raised Criston’s son? How can that—” Ciarlo blinked, then his eyes widened as he realized what Asaddan had told him. “You’re the wife of the soldan-shah?” He was aghast, and Adrea didn’t know how to respond.
The Nunghal, meanwhile, watched them both, trying to decipher their conversation.
Adrea squeezed her eyes shut and wiped her face. “So much has changed. There’s so much we need to decide.” She turned to Asaddan and spoke in Uraban again so he could understand. “How can we reveal this to Omra? After the loss of Gremurr, he wants to kill any Aidenist he sees.”
“There’ll be time enough for all the explanations we need,” Ciarlo said. “Right now, by the Fishhook, I won’t let anything overshadow my joy at finding you still alive!”
Outside, a bell from one of the small harbor churches began to ring, then more bells set up a brassy clamor that echoed up and down the streets. Istar knew it should have been well past time for the summoning to sunset services. Below in the inn’s common room, the buzz of conversation grew louder, and people rushed out into the streets. Asaddan went to the second-story window and threw open the shutters, trying to see the harbor in the dusk. The bells grew louder and louder.
With her mind struggling to absorb all that she had just learned, Adrea joined the two men at the high window, glad for the distraction. They could see seven ominous vessels sailing into the harbor accompanied by dozens of smaller ships, fifty or more, all closing in toward the docks.
A man shouted as he ran up the street from the nearby docks, “Olabar is under attack from the sea!”