THE TANG of salt air stung Sart’s nostrils as she reined in her ihstal mount on the sandy beach at Silirtahn. Waves crashed against the shore, leaving squiggles of foam against the pale brown sand. The ihstal whistled, and Sart leaned forward to stroke its neck. The ihstal either hated beaches or liked them too much, and from the eager whistles that had become more frequent the closer they drew to the sea, Sart guessed that, for this particular beast, it was the latter. If she’d had the time, she would have happily allowed her mount to gallop up and down the beach, to feel its lithe muscles bunching and stretching beneath her and the wind in her face.

As it was, she was two turns late to meet Culy, and she wasn’t sure if the message she’d sent ahead of her with a rider before she acquired her own transportation had arrived or not. The waymake of Silirtahn was finally visible in the distance, and she walked the ihstal toward it. A Salter stave-holder met her halfway, hys driftwood staff inset with murderously sharp oyster shells that covered the top foot of it. Sart couldn’t tell hys gender.

“Sart Lahivar,” sy said, tossing hys hair back from hys face and lowering the staff in acknowledgement.

“Have we met?” Sart eyed the stave-holder, trying to place hys face.

“I’m Valon ve Avarsahla, and no, we haven’t met. Culy, however, has spoken of you very highly.”

“Ah.” Sart dismounted her ihstal, keeping one hand tight on the animal’s reins. Its long neck stretched out, nostrils twitching at the breeze. The stave-holder hefted hys—her, Sart amended, having heard her appellation—staff and motioned toward Silirtahn. “Culy’s been expecting me. I ran into some trouble.”

“So your message said,” Valon said. A small smile spread across her face, which would have irritated Sart had she not found Valon’s dimples endearing.

“Culy got my message, then.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What do you mean, you’re afraid not? Where’s Culy?”

“Sy had to move on. I’ll tell you about it in hys hut. You’ll have a place to stay as long as you’re here.”

“That was thoughtful of hyr.” Now irritation did spread through Sart, tickling at her like a feather between her shoulder blades. “By how long did my message miss hyr?”

“Two days.”

“Rot.”

Valon motioned to a line of posts with her staff, and Sart carefully tied the ihstal to the first one in the line. So Culy had had to move on, and Sart had bought an ihstal for nothing. At least the Salters folk in Silirtahn were an easy enough lot to get on with. They liked Sart’s tricks and turns, and she never had to want for opponents at the shells board, no matter how much she’d lifted off them with her winnings in her last visit. If she remembered correctly, last time she’d paid a visit to Silirtahn, she’d left with a sack of dried oysters, a new spade, and a conu fruit that must have washed up on shore somewhere. Veritable treasure.

She’d learned that you could tell a lot about a person by where sy spent the most time, and Salters folk may have been born in Crevasses or Sands or even Taigers, but once they came to Salters, they didn’t stray far from those waymakes even though they, like everyone else, moved with the turning of the cycles.

Sart followed Valon into the waymake, raising her two forefingers to her lips in greeting to a few familiar faces who exclaimed her name as she walked past. Apart from Crevasses, Sart liked to visit Silirtahn the most out of all the region’s waymakes. Friendly folk. For stories and a few tricks you’d have their friendship, as long as you didn’t steal from them or bring rovers their way.

About the rovers. Sart winced. “Valon,” she said. “Have you heard of a rover leader called Wyt?”

Valon looked startled, nodding. “Up near north Sands, somewhere around the edge of Boggers. She’s got a big encampment there, some twenty rovers who listen to her and do what she says. I heard tell they were looking for weapons.”

“I’ll be an ihstal’s turd,” Sart muttered. “You heard right on that tell. I got picked up by a band of rovers. Was passing myself as a halmer.”

Valon frowned at Sart. They passed by a sandsmith, the heat from the forge reaching out to the path as the smith pulled a ball of glowing glass from inside. Shelves stood beyond the smith, rows of glass trinkets littering them and glinting in the dim sunlight that cut through the thin layer of clouds. Green and blue, clear like the seawater, shone bright. Red and purple items, mostly broken, glowed but did not shine, their glossy sheen dulled by the sea’s tossing them against the sand. Where they came from, no one knew, but occasionally salters would find the red and purple glass items along the beaches. Pretty, if one liked baubles. Sart didn’t care for them herself.

Sart’s feet sank into the sand as they walked. Eventually, they came to a low hut of waxed canvas, its bottom edges buried deep into the sand. Valon pulled back the hut’s door flap, motioning Sart to follow her in. Sart ducked to enter the hut. Inside, lamps of burning seadog oil were spread on a central table with a brazier at the center, burning coals. A bed mat of driftwood raised a pallet off the sand, and there was a tightly wound scroll in the center of it.

“From Culy?” Sart guessed, her heart sinking.

Valon nodded. “If you need me, I’ll be right outside.”

“You don’t have to guard me, you know.”

“Culy doesn’t want you left alone here.”

“Sy didn’t leave anything in here for me to steal.” Sart grumped, flopping down on the pallet.

“I think sy meant for your own safety.”

“I don’t know what sy’s talking about. I’m not a child. Everyone here likes me just fine.”

“Perhaps not a child, but I’m not sure you want to grow up quite yet.”

Valon smirked and exited the hut, leaving Sart to sit and stare into the brazier. After a minute, she unwound the scroll. Each line of Culy’s neat hand made Sart’s stomach sink just a bit deeper into her core. Not only had she missed Culy by less than a turn, but Culy had gone in the exact direction Sart had come from—by way of Sands, but still. Sart reread the note, which asked her to meet Culy in Crevasses at the height of Foresight Moon.

Sart spent about an hour swearing and strategizing, then left the hut to tend to her ihstal. She gave the beast free reign to run up and down the beach near Silirtahn, and the ihstal, seeming to sense Sart’s frustration, opened up its speed, kicking up sand in a glorious cloud of grit for the better part of an hour. When the sky began to darken, Sart made her way back into Silirtahn, tethering the ihstal just outside the waymake again. She’d have to give the beast a name one of these days.

She traded one of the more worn knives she’d lifted off the rovers for five smoked fish and a pouch of salt. They’d make her rucksack smell awful, but she wouldn’t have to worry about food for a few days. The salt she’d be able to trade to someone on the road back to Crevasses if she needed to. After eating half of one of the fish—the rest she wrapped in waxed canvas and tied with gut string—she sat down on the mattress to figure out what to do next. She knew she ought to turn about and head right back to Crevasses; the journey backward would take the better part of the moon’s wane, and she’d have to avoid the Lahi’alar, the roadways that connected the regions like a vast web. Rovers mainly kept to the Lahi’alar, as there they would find most other travelers to rob, and Sart had had quite enough of rovers for a time.

Briefly, Valon’s comment intruded. Sart had seen nineteen cycles pass. Plenty of folk got half as many. She might as well be half a hundred cycles into life for all she’d seen.

Sart took time the next day to rest and wander through Silirtahn, playing a few games of shells with local folk and carefully chatting to passers-through about rover activity. She didn’t learn many new things, but three separate people confirmed what Valon had said about Wyt up in north Sands, and that alone was disturbing enough for Sart. Culy would want to know about this, if sy didn’t already. Sart was beginning to feel like a child’s ball batted back and forth.

A small family caravan entered Silirtahn from the north, and Sart listened to the mother barter urgently with the local sea-speaker for medicine, trading nearly a moon’s worth of dried lizard meat—an exorbitant price—for a small vial of spike-fish extract to treat a dying child. Sart could hear the child coughing in the family’s wagon over the mother’s firm voice. The mother’s tone didn’t convey her panic, but her willingness to part with that much food did. What use was it to save the child’s life today if sy would simply starve next turn? And a starved parent could save no children.

Sart didn’t stick around to find out. By the end of the day, Sart was ready to move on, even if it meant going back in the direction she’d just come from.

She packed up and left in the dark hour before dawn, bidding Valon a plentiful day. Sart wasn’t sure, but she thought Valon’s eyes lingered a bit longer on her than simply being a guard would account for. Sart considered for a moment staying to explore that possibility, then quickly decided against it. Whatever would be would be.

Her ihstal danced on the sand when Sart mounted, whistling excitedly. “Tahin,” Sart said to the mount. “Dancer. I think I’ve found your name.”