Sayna waited at the edge of the sea, her hair whipping her face to the rhythm of the winter gale.

She would have to go home soon; she knew that. If it were just a question of the cold, it wouldn't be an issue. But there was work to be done, and her sisters were waiting. With Papa gone, they never seemed to get ahead. She gave it another twenty minutes, but no boats docked, no fire appeared in the sky over the port far out in the bay to signify a landing from the orbital station.

Not today, then. Nothing docked after dark. Even if Papa had arrived at the station today, he wouldn't be able to reach home tonight. No one was crazy enough to risk Medzhibosh Bay at night, not even the Regent.

She hoped.

As the weak sun began to set, Sayna turned inland.

The wind accosted her as soon as she dared to face it, a hundred darning needles pressing into her skin, prying into the corners of her eyes. If only the capitol were closer to the equator, in the tropical world where the sun never waned!

Sayna laughed at herself. Better cold winds than hot lava. Carpathia's tropical regions had been almost unpopulated since the last time Sheol had gone up, and, judging by the amount of shaking that went on even this far north, the world wasn't ready to settle down just yet. There was a minor tremor even as she made her way home. Nothing to worry about--all the buildings on Carpathia were built to handle the planet's showy tectonics--but enough to slow her down as she got to the edge of town.

"Oy, Princess!" someone shouted and she grabbed hold of a handy statue to ride it out. The person came closer. She recognized him as one of the craftsmen who was suffering from the Earth-based embargo of Carpathian exports, but couldn't bring his name to her mind. He lurched over the shaking ground, and grabbed the statue's other arm companionably, just as the tremor ended. "Think there'll be another shock?"

Sayna shrugged. "Isn't there always?"

"Yeah, sure... " The craftsman looked furtively over his shoulder. "You, eh... there's wondering about your papa, Your Highness. Have you heard anything about the embargo?"

"Nothing yet, sir. I'm sorry. When my father returns, I'm sure he'll make sure all the tradesmen know what happened on Earth."

"Yes, I'm sure, I'm sure." He shook his head sadly. "It will be a great thing when we can sell our goods again. I've had offers, many offers, from private collectors, saying they would help to get--"

Sayna held up one hand. "I will make sure my father knows the craftsmen are supporting his efforts to restore trade." She smiled at him tightly, hoping he would take it as a hint that he shouldn't give her any more information about possible smuggling. Papa was dead set against Carpathia breaking the embargo illegally, and the tradesmen were aware of it. Illegal trading was what had gotten the planet in this mess in the first place.

Illegal trading and, of course, the Sweep labs.

The craftsman stopped speaking immediately. "Yes, of course, Your Highness," he said, and looked behind him. "The tremor seems to have passed. I should return to my shop. I still have on-world orders to fill." He bowed at the waist, then turned and left.

Sayna watched him disappear into the shadows. Carpathia's small, distant moon didn't provide much light at night, and the lights that ran along the sidewalks cast the world into reverse shadows.

It was time to go home.

The sky was crystal black by the time she saw the storefront, the clear window sending out a circle of whitish light. In weather like this, Sayna always thought it needed a menorah, but the holiday schedule wouldn't sync up with Earth's calendar for another fifteen years. Sayna had written a paper in her last year of secondary school, recommending the institution of a holiday to commemorate mid-winter here--just some reason to light candles and fight off the long nights--but her teacher had strongly suggested that she keep her theories to herself. The strange, mongrel culture that the colonists had self-consciously created for Carpathia wasn't particularly religious, but doing something to further alienate the world from its Earth origins, Miss Kolokov had said, would certainly set teeth on edge. After some thought, Sayna had reluctantly agreed.

Through the window, she could see her sisters standing at the corner, doing an inventory of the ridiculous souvenirs that were their main business these days. Off-world tourists always found it part of Carpathia's quaint charm to buy their toy scepters from real princesses. Sayna didn't mind working in the shop, per se--the tradition of idle nobility had never been ensconced on this mercantile world--but she did miss the grace of the old days (at least the old days as she imagined them), when the shop had sold real Carpathian treasures, from fine spices and textiles to gems and precious metals, molded by the finest craftsmen into jewelry known the galaxy over. When Papa had left to meet with the Governor, Sayna's sisters had asked him to bring back the latest fashion finery and wild gadgets, but Sayna herself had asked only that he bring her something real, something that wasn't a plastic imitation of a crude enough reality. A rose, maybe. Something that only lived to be beautiful.

"Will you come inside for heaven's sake, Sayna?" The door was open, and Sayna's eldest sister, Yetta, was beckoning from the porch. "You're nearly frozen solid already! You'll catch pneumonia, and Papa will kill me!"

Sayna smiled. "I'll hike to Sheol and pick a Sweep before he gets back."

"No you won't. You'll leave me to lava-walk my way to it."

"Well, getting to it is the easy part… " Sayna grinned at her sister. It was in poor taste to joke about the Sweep, or about Sheol--both had caused Carpathia endless sorrow--but it always felt good to acknowledge them and put them in their place.

"Will the both of you get in here and close that door?"

Sayna glanced over Yetta's shoulder, where their middle sister, Ruri, had appeared, a blanket wrapped dramatically around her.

Yetta rolled her eyes. "Yes, Beruriah, I'm sure you're going to die any minute now." She reached down to Sayna and pulled her gently onto the porch steps. "Come on, little one. I left the stockroom just for you."

Sayna followed her sisters inside, and settled herself into the stockroom to count cheap holos of the Rock of Eliezar and postcards of sunset over the Bay and of the Gates of Sheol. Ruri brought her a bowl of soup not long before midnight, and asked if she wanted the lights left on, or if she was planning on actually sleeping at some point.

"I sleep sometimes."

Ruri shook her head. "Sayna, I'm not kidding. I worry about you. You barely sleep, you only eat when we tell you, and you wander off in the cold to wait for Papa for hours on end."

"I miss him. I wish he'd hurry back."

"Yetta and I miss him, too, Say, but you're the only one making yourself sick. I know Yetta was trying to make a joke about it earlier, but it's no joke."

"I'm fine. Honestly. I--"

There was a crash from the front of the store, as the door blew open and a plate of glass shattered.

Ruri was on her feet in a second, and Sayna wasn't far behind.

"Yetta!" Sayna yelled. "Yetta, are you... "

But her voice trailed off as the entered the main room of the store. Yetta was standing in the kitchen doorway, a hand-lamp held at shoulder level. The figure lying in the shattered glass sat up slowly, glanced at his bloodied hands, then held out his arms to them. "Daughters... " he whispered. "I... am... home... "

He passed out.

Sayna cleaned the cuts on his hands and face. Yetta pulled his icy clothes from him and wrapped him in his finest robe. Ruri heated the soup again, and zapped warm-packs to lie behind his head.

"I'm sorry I frightened you," he said, half an hour after regaining consciousness. "I tried to land after dark. I missed by a few feet and got quite a jar. I didn't realize how late in the year it was, or I would have hired a ride here instead of trying to walk."

"You should have walked to a medic's!" Ruri said.

"I'm a foolish old man, daughter. I didn't know how badly my head had been cut in the landing, and it occurred to me that the people of Carpathia would hear soon enough about their Regent's little mishap without my guaranteeing it by wandering into a medic's room at midnight with blood on my head."

Sayna noticed that Ruri seemed ready to launch into a Papa-what-were-you-thinking tirade, and cut her off with a quick hand gesture. "It's all right, Papa," she said. "You're home safe now, and that's all that matters."

He reached out and touched her face gently, an unreadable sadness in his eyes. "I wish that were true, Saynela," he said. "Oh, how I wish that was all that mattered." He coughed. "But things didn't go well with the Governor on Earth. The rumors are true. Kira's Plague left him... scarred. And that worked on his mind. He's quite mad."

"Oh, Papa," Yetta sighed, "then he won't re-open the trade routes?"

"I'm afraid not. There will be no new fashions and no Earth-design technology on Carpathia for awhile." He smiled weakly. "Bring me my coat, Sayna."

Sayna went to the large chair where Yetta had thrown his clothing, and brought the outer coat to him. He reached into one of the deep outer pockets, and pulled out something long and tube-shaped, wrapped in soft white paper. He unrolled it to reveal a wilted rose.

"I did bring your rose, Sayna, though it seems the worse for wear."

"Oh, you didn't need to worry about that, Papa."

He laughed, and it turned into a coughing fit. When it passed, he said, "I didn't worry about it, love. The governor himself flung it at my feet. Right about the time his bodyguards were throwing me into the nearest shuttle."

"Papa, they didn't!" Yetta exclaimed.

"Oh, I exaggerate. I was escorted."

"But why?"

"We had a difference of opinion, and I will leave it at that."

"But the trade routes... what would make him stop talking about them like that?"

"Like I said, he's mad."

Sayna stroked her father's hair. "That's all right, Papa. You don't need to say any more."

"Yes, you do!" Yetta was up and pacing, her concern for his health allayed long enough to melt into concern for the job he'd gone to Earth to do. "Papa, this was important! He's been stopping trade for twelve years, at least real trade. Just because he found out that someone somewhere on Carpathia sold Kira Sodek a nasty bug. It's not fair! We needed to fix this. What difference of opinion could you possibly have had that you couldn't smooth over at least until your negotiations were done?"

"He asked me to sell what I will not sell." He looked miserably at Sayna. "For the price of a rose, he wanted my youngest daughter."

Sayna's fingers went stiff, pushing the rose off the coverlet. "Me? Why me? What does he want with me?"

Papa shook his head, and pulled his covers up around his neck. "It doesn't matter. He won't have you for it." He closed his eyes "I'll go back, Yetta. Just as soon as I have some rest and lose this cough. I'll fix this."

Sayna heard the conversation that followed--maybe forty minutes worth--but not much of it sank in. Yetta and Ruri agreed that Papa had walked out for the right reason; she caught that much. Then they talked about the old days. And something about Kira's Plague. Sayna knew little about either, in practical terms, though she studied the old days and imagined them regularly. She'd only been six years old when the they ended, when Governor Megid traced Kira Sodek's last route and punished Carpathia by cutting off all its lifelines. And as to the plague itself, she knew as little as anyone else, other than whoever sold it in the first place: probably a leftover from the Sweep labs, one of a handful that had somehow escaped the Big Blast. A dark chapter in Carpathia's history, and so on and so forth. No details anywhere, and the Governor's Palace wasn't forthcoming with the nature of the symptoms.

What Sayna did know, in no uncertain terms, was that the routes needed to be re-opened before Carpathia became permanently mired in kitsch, forgetting its identity in the rush to package and pasteurize itself. And she knew her Papa. He had already made up his mind about the Governor, and would never compromise about anything with him. He was a stubborn man. Carpathians loved him for this. Sayna loved him for this. But it was bad politics, and there was no getting around it.

So when the house grew quiet, her sisters and her father finally sleeping deeply, she took her signets from the safe, the rose from her father's floor, and her heaviest coat from the closet. When she opened the door, she had a moment's fear that the blast of cold air would wake the household, but no one stirred.

The barest hint of gray dawn was in the sky when she arrived at Medzhibosh station. It hadn't taken much money to get the ferry operator to make an early run; he'd seen her every day, and assumed she meant only to look for her father. Papa's shuttle, thank heaven for small favors, was on the far side of the landing dock, and gave no one cause to question it.

Sayna pulled herself into its hatch, being careful not to upset its balance; Papa had missed by more than a couple of feet, and the whole works was tilting precariously on the platform--one good tremor would have sent it into the Bay. She would have to ease it upright before launching, but she had done so before. Papa was a lunatic about landing, and all three girls had learned to get the shuttle out of his scrapes. Still, it was close. Staff was beginning to arrive when she finally launched to Orbital, praying that her luck would hold and one of ubiquitous tourist transports would be leaving soon.

She was gratified to find a line of sleepy tourists, obviously just rolled out of their night-boxes, waiting to board. It was so simple that she never stopped to think about what she was doing until the electron-tunneling sails went up, and the transport pulled her out of Carpathia's heavens, disappearing into the strange and placeless place that skipped ships across the night.

The woman beside her must have seen an odd expression on her face, because she said, "Oh, yes, dear, I have trouble with the food on Carpathia, too. Awfully heavy. But I think it's just an adorable little place, don't you?"

Sayna smiled wanly. It was too late to turn back, at any rate.

The Governor's soldiers met the transport at Earth Orbital, and escorted her coldly to a private shuttle. "We were informed that you might be on board," was all the answer they would give her when she asked why they were waiting.

When they docked at the Boston Harbor station, the captain of the guard asked for her signets and any other identifying marks he might send ahead to the Governor.

"They'll be returned," she told him as she handed them over. "See to it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why yes, your Serene Majesty. Any more requests from the Poisoners' Princess?"

Sayna closed her mouth quickly; she didn't need trouble, and thought it well to remember that the Governor's forces didn't think of Carpathia as "just an adorable little place." Politics, she reminded herself. You won't do anyone back home any good by making enemies before you even get to the Governor.

The trip to the Governor's Palace on Beacon Hill didn't take long at all. It was October and Indian summer here, and New England was trying to show off its autumn pyrotechnics, but no one in the convoy took time to notice. Sayna caught a glimpse of bright red leaves here and there, but was too nervous to take them in.

She was asked to wait for a moment in a cavernous marble hall, while the captain of the guard "announced" her to the Governor. She heard a growled "What?" and a moment later was led into a small study, practically claustrophobic after being in the entranceway. Her signets and the rose lay spread on a large desk; behind it, an alcove reached to the back of the room, shadowed by an overhanging staircase and enclosed by walls on three sides. In that alcove, a figure was seated in a large chair. She could see only that he was large; beyond that it was impossible to make a judgment.

"He actually sent you?"

The tone of voice coming from the alcove was one of dull incredulity. Sayna searched for a face to speak to, gave up, and addressed the shadow. "My father refused your request. I chose to come because Carpathia needs its routes re-opened."

"I never expected you to actually come."

"Then would you demand it from my father?"

"It was something I remembered from a fairy tale my nurse told me!" The shadow shook its head. "When he said he daughter wanted a rose, I thought about it, and I figured, what the hell, I'll ask for something outrageous and maybe he'll go away. I never thought... never imagined... " A motion in the dark, the flap of a large hand. "It doesn't matter. Stay. There won't be another transport to Carpathia for quite some time."

A fairy tale. Sayna felt a flush of hot blood in her cheeks. She should be feeling anger, resentment… this man had toyed with her life and her father's mind, and continued to persecute her world for no legitimate reason. Instead, she simply felt foolish. She should have guessed. She was fairly sure that she'd read the same story at some point, and should have recognized it. Embarrassment was paramount right now. Anger could wait for later.

And neither was going to get the better of her. She was here. She would take some action. She drew a deep breath, and looked up again. "Will you re-open the trade routes?"

"No. No, I don't think I will. If I'd intended to make that treaty, I'd have made it with your father." The sound of a dull clap, then Sayna heard someone enter behind her. "Take her to a guest room," the Governor said. "We'll send her home when we can."

Sayna was starting to follow the small, quiet servant out when something struck her mind. "Wait. There are tourist transports every day, or practically every day. If I'm to be sent home anyway, I could--"

"The tourist transports won't be visiting for awhile."

"Why? What do you mean? What... "

Megid didn't even bother looking up. "Sheol is coughing again. Orbital's not sending anyone down, and no one's going up. Too much ash. Bad weather."

Sayna's heart lurched. "My father and sisters... "

"Are probably getting a little dirty snow in the yard, and a lot of wind and lightning. Only your scientists were crazy enough to build right in Sheol's path. It paid them back in spades fifty years ago. Will you please go to a room now? I have work to do."

"No." It was out before Sayna knew it was on its way. She bit her lip.

"I beg your pardon?"

She swallowed hard, her head swimming with images--holos of the Big Blast, of ash spreading like wings around Carpathia's equator, melting into fragments of nightmares of the Sweep labs and Kira Sodek... "I want to see you," she whispered.

"What?"

"If I'm staying here, I want to see your face. I want you to come out and let me see you." Her voice sounded firm enough to her, though her heart was racing.

"Why? So you can brag about what your home-growns managed to accomplish?"

Sayna bristled. "I want to look into the eyes of the man who would kill a whole world to punish one man."

There was a tug on Sayna's sleeve; the servant--Sayna noticed for the first time that the man was hooded and wore deep, concealing sleeves--was trying to usher her out. She paid no attention beyond pulling her arm away.

There was a long moment when nothing happened, then a shadow rose in the dark, and stepped forward slowly.

Sayna drew in her breath quickly, trying not to make it sound like the gasp it was. What had done this? What could have done it? What had they been doing in Sheol?

His hands were clumsy blocks of flesh--barely more than paws--covered with coarse hair and tipped with claws. His face looked partly feline, partly something else, something Sayna couldn't name. His teeth were sharp and pointed, incisors prominent under his thin upper lip. His eyes were the eyes of a bird of prey, yellow-flecked and piercing, and feathers spread up from his temples to form horn-like peaks.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"What should you be sorry about?" he asked with a sneer. "It's not your fault. I'm killing a whole world just to punish one man, remember? And that man isn't you. So what are you sorry for?" He turned and went back into his alcove. "Take her to a guest room. Please."

Sayna followed the servant without complaint this time. She noticed his webbed fingers when he splayed his hand to open the door, and when he spoke she understood why he'd remained quiet--his bisected upper lip made it nearly impossible to understand him. When he left her alone in the ornate guest room, she sat lost on the edge of the great bed and wept.

She dreamed of Sheol that night, and awoke drenched with sweat, her sheets--though top of the line--not able to control her body temperature any longer. She wrapped them around herself, letting their cooling fibers try to catch up with her, but to no avail. She remembered searching the Valley, through the mud and steam, crying out for her sisters, and for Kira Sodek. She didn't remember how it ended.

It was just past dawn when she decided she could no longer remain in her room. She needed news of home, needed to try and get to her father, needed--

"Breakfast?" The word was mumbled almost unintelligibly beside her.

She turned to find another servant, this one with a horribly elongated mouth, lips drooping a good two inches beneath teeth. "I... well, yes. Are you the cook?"

The sides of the face twitched, but the weight of the sagging flesh made the real expression unreadable. The tone of the grumbled words was not, however. Sardonic, bitter. "Head security. Can't see? Best shot in... "

Sayna lost the rest, and the man showed no interest in making himself understood. He led her down the grand staircase and around the corner into the dining room, then pointed her toward the table, where Dov Megid himself sat glancing at the morning's news on his handscreen. He wasn't as horrific at second glance, she supposed, once the shock had worn off. But he was still not something she was sure she could eat with.

He tossed his handscreen across the table, letting it skitter on the deep-varnished surface. "Take a look," he said. "Top menu news."

Sayna opened the newsfile, and saw a satellite picture of the night side of Carpathia, a glowing rose growing out of the equator. She looked up. "That's not just the mountain," she said. "That's a fissure. A basalt flow."

"That's what they say if you read the article."

"I don't need anyone else to say it." Her eyes were drawn irresistibly back to the small picture. It was live, and she could see the inexorable spread of molten rock. From here, the movement seemed infinitesimal. Nearby, it would overtake a runner; the lava was more fluid out of a fissure than it ever would have been from the mountain. "The weather?" she asked. It was all she could get out. She couldn't take her eyes from the picture long enough to read the article.

"What you could expect. There's flooding. The warm air is causing a lot of high winds. There are some firestorms coming out from the edges of the flow." He pushed a plate of bread to her. "Here, try some of this. It's really quite good."

"I'm not hungry. I have to go home."

"Not possible. No one's going into that."

"I have to reach my father or my sisters."

He sighed. "Talking to Carpathia is hit or miss from here. Or anywhere. We've got the sat-link, and I could get you through to Orbital, except that we're trying to keep that open for emergencies. Getting through to the surface in the middle of that? Not likely." He reached across and took the handscreen from her. "Your highness, there's nothing you can do from here. There's no sign of flooding from the polar caps yet, and there probably won't be. I'm sending people to fix your orbital climate stabilizers now. You shouldn't have let them get this far out of whack."

"What do you care?"

"Let's just say I'm sentimental."

Sayna felt her eyes narrow. "It's the Sweep. You'll torment Carpathia, but you won't let it blow itself up because you want the Sweep. You are insane."

"If I wanted it, I'd have gotten it by now."

"You don't know what you're looking for. And no one on Carpathia would tell you. You really are crazy, you know. Do you know what the Sweep does when it doesn't work? It burns you up from the inside out, it--"

Megid's hand crashed down onto the table, smashing his handscreen. "What do you think I have to lose?"

"Your life?"

He laughed. "That's seeping out my pores as we speak. Kira's Plague works slowly, but it works in the end. It's starting to change my blood."

"And you're rejecting it?"

"No. That's part of it. This was a Sweep tester, or at least that's what my best people think. It was made to beat the rejection response, so that they could be sure it was the Sweep they were studying and not some natural function of the human body."

Sayna lowered her eyes. It was more information than anyone else had, and she knew just enough about the Sweep scientists to know that, in all likelihood, Megid's "best people" were right. Her heart started to go out to him, then her eyes fell upon the handscreen resting between his arms. That was her world, and he had cut off its lifelines in vengeance for an action any sane man would know was unpreventable. It was his father that bombed the city of Jania flat in his war on the Erez colony--Kira Sodek's home--not the people of Carpathia. It was madness for him to take the Sweep, but if he wanted to persist in it, she wouldn't hinder him. Maybe the wretched thing could finally do some service to its world before being erased from it. "Send me home," she said. "Send me, and I'll get you a Sweep. I know what it looks like. My father showed it to me once." In fact, he had lectured all three girls about it, rather extensively. The Regents of Carpathia had made it their business to learn as much as they could about what had happened in Sheol, so that someone would know the way around it the next time some fool decided to try for the fountain of healing. They had also, for three generations, run a fairly deliberate campaign of misinformation--mislabeling the plant in botany manuals, making the exact method of consumption something a mystery, even creating fictitious exploration routes so that people looking for the Sweep would chase their tails along unused paths rather than stumble on the same route the first colonists had. Sayna didn't like the tactics, but she also didn't like the idea of people coming en masse to her world to try suicidal experiments. Even Dov Megid. But he was serious, and he had something to trade for it. "If it works, you re-open the routes."

"If it doesn't work, you'll do it yourself, won't you?"

"Either way. Do we have a deal?"

"You're going to go down into Sheol Valley during this?"

"If I don't go now, that flow could bury the last of it. We've done the best we could to keep the miserable weed from growing anywhere else."

For a moment, he said nothing, just stared at her intently across the table. A feather loosed itself from beside his eye, and floated to the floor on an unfelt air current. He looked down at the handscreen, then back at Sayna. "No," he said. "You're not going there. I won't have that on my head." He stood and left the room.

Sayna sat down wretchedly, lying her head on the table between her outstretched arms. Her finger caressed the handscreen, but she didn't feel compelled to pull it to her and learn that the news had not changed. She was here with neither reason nor welcome, and she had no way home.

She thought she might have trouble escaping the palace, but no one, in fact, even tried to stop her. She was a guest, not a prisoner, however unpleasantly her host was behaving. She asked directions to the public transit lines, and caught the mono at the Charles Street station, along the river. A help terminal at the Park Street hub told her how to connect to the waterfront.

It hadn't taken her long to hit on the idea of the engineers' transport that Megid was sending to fix the climate stabilizers. She had no doubt that he'd casually mentioned it so that she would pick up on it. He might not want to have the responsibility on his head, but he obviously wanted her to get his Sweep for him. Mind games. Like his game with the rose and the fairy tale. Well, Sayna was willing to play. She'd get his Sweep, and she hoped he'd choke on it.

The transport would be official, so it was almost certain to take off from the Governors' docks in Boston Harbor. It wasn't difficult to find Rowe's Arch, named for the wharf it had once opened onto, once she knew to look for it. The wharf itself had been renamed Barilan, after a long ago Governor. In point of fact, Bostonians still called it Rowe's Wharf, so Sayna had marked herself as an outsider immediately when she'd asked the way. "Barilan Wharf?" an old man scoffed. "Why, I think you need to look in New York." His wife suggested London. A prostitute traipsing down Atlantic Avenue just looked at her blankly, apparently not used to questions that didn't involve strange fantasies.

It was a pretzel-seller who finally took pity on her and told her where to look for Rowe's Arch. She thanked him, and ran as fast as she could. She was barely able to make the last ferry to the transport dock--the gray-uniformed engineers on board looked at her strangely, but she was too weary to make up a cover story. She shrugged, and just tried to look as if she belonged.

The workers studiously ignored her when she disembarked with them. Sayna tried to imagine the memo. "BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNOR: Small stowaway to Carpathia. Not to be interfered with. Do not feed or tap on glass… " She shrugged. She supposed she could walk onto the bridge and take a seat at the captain's feet without fear of being removed from the shuttlecraft, but she decided to continue playing it her own way. She went down a series of ladders into the lower decks, seeking a supply room. Not a cargo bay; they were known to have low oxygen. Not a janitor's closet, because things might not be tied down as tightly as they should be, and a thousand years of space flight had never made take-offs perfectly smooth. She finally found what she was looking for, on the third lowest deck of the shuttle. A small room, lined with metal shelves. Each shelf held sealed metal crates, each of which was magnetically sealed to the shelf. It was safe and out of the way.

She sank down to the floor, curling into a safe ball with her arms wrapped around her knees and her eyes closed. Going home. Earth had been a mistake. And Carpathia had started tearing itself apart, and Lord knew what had happened to Papa and Ruri and Yetta.

Something soft floated across her face, and she opened her eyes, expecting maybe a cobweb, or a dangling tag from one of the crates.

Instead, a mottled brown feather slid floated serenely down, landing beside her foot.

She looked up.

Dov Megid was perched on the top shelf, leaning on his elbows. "I wondered how long it would take you," he said. "If you'd taken much longer, we'd have had to leave without you."

She didn't speak to him on the voyage, though he tried several times to engage her once he'd climbed down from his hidden perch. It wasn't just the irritation of being manipulated, it was…

She shook her head. It was just hard to know what to say to Dov Megid; that was all. What do you say to a man who is dying horribly because someone sold a lab-bug to his enemy? How do you talk to someone who is deliberately going to take a medicine that makes the old game of Russian roulette look safe? How do answer inane small talk from such a person?

Sayna didn't know. After three hours, he finally got the impression, and lapsed into silence. Sayna missed the sound of his voice. The other two hours of the trip seemed much longer. She wondered why he didn't just go up and join his own people, but couldn't quite bring herself to suggest it.

They arrived at Orbital just as the nightline was crossing Medzhibosh Bay. Sayna could see it moving across the surface of the world like a curtain. But beyond that, to the east, she saw Sheol in the darkness--the red flower of the basalt flow was tracing the lines of the valley, and pouring into the sea. White clouds blocked part of the view. They looked so peaceful from above. It was hard to imagine what was happening beneath them.

A misshapen hand landed on her shoulder. "Come with me," Megid said, leading her down a narrow hallway.

"How are we getting down? I checked; my transport has been confiscated."

"I'm the one who had it confiscated, and I have it, and we're going to it. I've put appropriate volcanic gear in it. But I don't want people to see it leave. You'll need to pilot it yourself. I believe you are capable?" He looked at her face, and she confirmed it with a nod. "There seems to be a good collection of people here who are desperate to get down to the surface, and I don't want them to see the rules broken. The last thing we need is to have treasure hunters bribing pilots to drop them don into that."

"What do you care? You can just blame it on Carpathia for trying to get every cent out of the tourists."

He turned on her, hawk's eyes flashing. "Sayna, I am beginning to lose interest in whether or not you believe me, but I actually do care about the welfare of my people, as much as you care about the welfare of yours."

She started to look down, then her temper rose. How dare he try to make her feel guilty for suspecting the worst of him? She'd seen it. "At least," she said, "any of your people who aren't originally from Carpathia or Erez."

They had reached a small hatch, and Megid stopped and looked at her blankly, as if she'd slapped him. Then he tapped in the code, and the hatch popped open. Sayna went in first, and took her place at the controls. Dov Megid strapped in beside her.

She adjusted the viewscreens to show her full planet. Sheol stood out, of course; it wasn't hard to find the place she was seeking, but she would need to find a place to land.

"Anywhere likely?" Megid asked.

She studied the flow, and tried to remember the lay of the land. It had been several years since she'd visited that part of the world. Which way would the lava find the least resistance? She had to make a choice, and she made it--there was a low mountain range, right at the edge of the flow. It wasn't far from the labs, and the Sweep had once grown profusely there. It might be the best bet, though nothing was certain, and never would be where Sheol was concerned.

"We'll land on the spine," she said. "Strap in tightly. It may be bumpy."

With a jolt, they disconnected from Orbital, and began falling toward the fire.

They knew they had gone wrong when the temperature controls went haywire.

"We're going to burn," Dov Megid said, his voice tight, but controlled. At first, Sayna thought he was consigning himself to fate--just wait for the end to come--but then he placed himself in the co-pilot's seat, and took up the compensatory controls. He was just explaining his action in doing so. "You keep us straight and head for our landing site. I'll see what I can do with this."

She nodded, and focused on navigation. The heat in the cabin was increasing steadily, and perspiration was beginning to drip into her eyes. She wiped it away quickly with the end of her braid, trying not to interrupt her vision for more than a blink. Beside her, she could see Megid's malformed hands skating over the control panel, and a far-off part of her mind marveled at his ability to do so. The temperature continued to rise.

"We must be above one of the firestorms," she said. "It's combining with the heat from penetrating the atmosphere--"

"Yes, of course, yes…" Megid muttered in slightly irritated distraction.

Sayna took the hint, and didn't speak anymore.

The spine was a low range--no one had even bothered naming it, other than to call it the spine--but the approach to Sheol was still topographically dangerous. The land had shifted many times, and straight, flat rock faces often reared up. Sayna needed to take the heat guards off the portholes to see her way through here; computer navigation was worthless in this environment. Megid kept his hands moving, controlling the temperature of the hull enough to keep the melt-points cooled down. Now that they were solidly in the atmosphere, he had a bit more freedom to concentrate on the internal controls, which was good, as Sayna was beginning to lose concentration in the heat.

They were, in fact, flying over a firestorm. Sayna could see it sweeping out from the edges of the basalt flow in angry red whirlwinds, tearing through the green valleys like a river escaping a collapsed dam. Those were the valleys in which the Sweep had been contained. It might already be too late.

"It's not too late," Megid whispered, his voice intense. Sayna didn't know if he was speaking to her, or to himself.

"It might be." She thought about saying that he might prefer simply dying of Kira's Plague, that it couldn't be more painful than dying from the Sweep. But a hot wind blew up, and she needed all her energy to maintain her heading. She guided them to the highest peak in the spine, or at least the highest that had a flat place near the top, and lowered the landing gear. The shuttle came to a stop. The heat was stifling.

Megid was already up, and opening the metal crate he'd stowed. He pulled out an environmental hazard suit--heat resistant material, a gas mask, and coverings for the hair--and handed it to her. She took it gladly. Being overcome by a firestorm was not a pleasant way to die. Neither was being scorched by a fumarole, or buried by a basalt flow. Of course, the suit wouldn't protect her from that last at all, but at least it would be quick.

Megid pulled his own suit on, and was only a step behind her in getting to the hatch.

Just as she opened it, the world shook violently, and a plume of red rock shot into the sky, perhaps ten kilometers away.

A second seismic shock hit, and a piece of the mountain fell away, destabilizing the shuttle.

Sayna lost her balance and slid down the gangplank, which now led directly into the firestorm a hundred meters below. Without thinking, she reached out, and Megid grabbed her hand and pulled her back. She would later reflect that there was nothing unusual about it--it was instinct for both of them--but still, something about it made things different. He had saved her life. She wanted to save his in return. It wasn't a momentous feeling, or a revelation of the heart. It was simply a new fact of her consciousness.

"Let's move this back," he said, his voice coming through a speaker in her headgear.

She agreed, and went back to the shuttle's controls to move it back toward the center of the space.

"So," he asked, pulling his mask off. "how do you propose we get down?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't trust the paths yet. The firestorm is moving quickly, though. If we wait, we may be able to rappel down the face of the mountain. It will be hard in the suits, but if we anchor far enough back, we'll have a better chance of surviving tremors than if we're walking on the path and it suddenly falls out from under us."

"But if we wait, the Sweep--"

"Yes. Yes, you're right. We can try the paths. They may be shaky, but there's a chance--"

A hand reached out, touched her arm. The alien eyes waited to catch her own. "No," he said. "I apologize for my impatience. I am merely choosing between deaths. Living is an option for you. We will wait."

The firestorm raged on the ground around the mountain

They waited for nearly an hour.

Rappelling down the mountain in safety gear was not an easy task, but it was not quite as difficult as Sayna had imagined it would be. Mainly, it was a matter of keeping the tubing and oxygen supplies from being jarred too roughly.

Once, Sayna had to reach out and tag Megid's hand to keep him from rappelling against a sharp outcropping, but on the whole, he did well.

They made it to the bottom in ten minutes, and left the ropes hanging there.

Sayna looked around the now-desolate valley. "We came here before," she said quietly. "We camped, and my sisters climbed trees."

"I'm sorry," Megid said.

"I knew about the Big Blast. I saw pictures. But I never thought about it. About what it would have looked like afterward. And this isn't even where the flow is."

"No. That will be… considerably worse."

Looking at the shattered landscape around her, Sayna tried not to imagine it a thousand times more desolate. "Come on," she said. "If you insist on finding a Sweep, we'll find one here. There are still some green areas in the folds of the mountain. But I really wish…"

"We've come this far," he said. "We'll find it."

She sighed, and led him toward the shadows that fell from folds the fire might have missed.

They found the Sweep in one of these clefts. It was an innocuous-looking plant, with dull green leaves and small yellow flowers. Most people would pass it by.

Sayna fervently wished that everyone had.

But the early settlers of Carpathia had been eager to sample the delights of their new world, and had tried every plant that screened negative for toxins. The Sweep--then simply called the Carpathia buttercup, according to the history--had been tried as a tea. A mild pneumonia epidemic had been going through the camp, enough to discomfit people, but not enough to really slow them down. The tea had been given to six of them.

Five had died that night, burning up as the Sweep mis-tagged their DNA and caused them to reject their own cells as foreign bodies. The sixth had a brief fever, but woke up cured of the pneumonia. Not merely feeling better--cured. The viruses were gone, and all that was left was hacking out the last of the body's defenses.

The five were forgotten, the sixth remembered. The Sweep was tried on cancer patients, with a similar effect. When it worked, it was much better than the months of treatment in hospitals. When it didn't work, death was quick. And it had a lasting effect as well--those who survived the treatment ever after had strong immune systems, and no one who had survived it was known to have succumbed to illness or disease. Most simply died peacefully of old age.

Rumors had spread, and never mind that it killed more often than it cured. The Sheol valley had to be officially forbidden to all but the scientists (not that it prevented all the adventurers). Then the experiments had begun, the cooked-up bugs to test the strength of the Sweep, allegedly to try and control and duplicate it. After awhile, it had become apparent that the scientists were simply playing dangerous games, creating genetic mutators in order to watch the Sweep destroy them. Had the Big Blast not destroyed their work, the Regent (Sayna's great-grandfather, at the time) would have.

Her hand rested on the stem.

She could pick it, then run and throw it into one of the small brush fires they'd passed. It was the only one they'd seen so far. Maybe it was even the last.

"That's it?" Megid asked, looking over her shoulder.

She could also say no, give him another plant and tell him that the mutations had gone far enough that it had rendered the Sweep's actions completely unpredictable, and it hadn't ended up doing anything.

She did neither thing, just nodded, and said, "Yes. This is it." She dug it up by its roots, and laid it in his hands.

He looked at it with something like awe.

"Leave it," Sayna said abruptly. "Just leave it here. Or better yet, throw it into the fire. Let it burn."

"It's my only chance."

"It could kill you."

"I'll die anyway."

They locked eyes for a moment, his strange, alien irises reflecting the burning sky. Then Sayna looked away.

It took them two hours to make it back to the shuttle, because climbing the rock face was slower work than coming down, even with some of the mechanical lifters in their suits still working in the heat. But they made it, and the Sweep made it, and the shuttle was in one piece, waiting for them.

Sayna sat down at the controls, and started to program for the intra-atmospheric flight to Medzhibosh station. Megid looked over her shoulder and shook his head. "We should go back to Orbital."

"You said the worst my father and sisters would be getting was dirty snow."

Megid looked down at the gas mask that now dangled from one hand. "It's probably true, but still, it has to be safer off planet. I'm going to call for a planetary evacuation…"

"They won't go."

"The planet is tearing itself apart."

"They'll figure it's done it before. Planets put up with more abuse than you're giving them credit for."

"It's not safe."

Sayna looked at the Sweep pointedly. It was now lying across his lap, bright yellow flowers incongruous against the dull gray suit. "Anyone planning to take that shouldn't be lecturing about safety."

He nodded impatiently. "All right. We'll go to Medzhibosh. Then I'll order the evacuation. And I'll take this back to Earth."

"If you're going to take it, you should take it here."

"Is this some sort of taboo?"

"No. But my father is the closest you will come to an expert on the Sweep."

Dov's eyes narrowed. "Your father went away with a rather bad impression, I'm afraid."

"Not bad enough to let you die over it."

Dov stood, went to the porthole. Through it, they could both see the sunset--it was extraordinary, with all the dust in the air--and leaned his forehead against the wall. "Very well," he said. "I put myself in the hands of Carpathia."

Sayna nodded, relieved, and took off.

Medzhibosh Bay was turbulent, but the landing platform had been constructed with Carpathia's flashy tectonics in mind, and the landing wasn't any worse than usual. The sun had finally set by the time they stepped onto the dry ground by the docks. Sayna could feel the wind whipping her hair from behind, much warmer than it had been a few days ago. She led the way into town.

The door of the shop opened before she'd made it halfway down the block, and Ruri ran out. She put her arms around Sayna, and kept saying, "You're back safe, we've been worried, why did you run…" until it all faded into a comforting drone.

Sayna pulled away. "Ruri, this is Governor Dov Megid."

Ruri glared at him. "Now what do you want of us?"

"It's all right. He needs help. I offered it to him."

Ruri clearly didn't like it, but she said nothing further. She just looped her arm through Sayna's, and walked with them up the stairs of the shop.

Papa was behind the counter, but the business was closed down--no tourists during the eruption--and he didn't look terribly unhappy about the latter. He greeted Sayna with a kiss, then drew back when he saw Dov standing behind her. "What is he doing here?" Sayna started to answer, but Dov stepped forward on his own. "Sir," he said, "I owe you an apology for my behavior."

Papa said nothing.

Dov took a deep breath. "What I said was foolish and ill-advised. I had not realized that my reputation for… somewhat irrational behavior… would cause anyone to take the request seriously."

Papa looked at Sayna. "You are well, daughter?"

"I am well."

"You look the worse for wear."

Sayna found herself seeking Dov's eyes, hoping that he would explain it, but he didn't. "We went to Sheol," she said quietly.

"In the middle of this? Why, Saynela?"

"To re-open the trade routes."

Papa glared at Dov. "What have you demanded of her? Another ill-advised dare?"

"No, sir."

"He needed a Sweep."

Papa's eyes widened, then softened somehow. "I see."

"Sir," Dov said, his eyes still downcast, "I know the risks. I choose to take them."

Papa pursed his lips, paced a bit, and then, to Sayna's surprise, nodded. "Yes. I see. But no one is to know."

"Understood."

A deep sigh. "Very well. Come with me."

Sayna and Ruri followed them into the kitchen, and they watched Papa brew the flowers and roots into a dark, foul-looking tea. He put it into a heavy mug, and held it out. "Be certain you wish to do this," he said, pulling it away at the last minute.

Dov put his hands on it, took it. "I will consider your words."

"Consider them well. My recommendation is that you pour it down the sink."

He considered, and continued to consider. Sayna watched him for an hour, but he merely stared at the mug. Papa and Ruri suggested that she give him some privacy, and Yetta arrived home at last and gave her the same advice. The three of them retired to their rooms.

Dov looked up at her, and offered a weak smile. "Get some sleep."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Suddenly, I'm afraid of actually doing it."

"So don't."

"We'll see," he said, and said no more.

After awhile, her exhausted body demanded sleep, and her head sunk onto her crossed arms on the table. She gratefully fell into oblivion.

Sayna awoke to a crash.

It was early dawn, and her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. What had…

Then she remembered, and the waking world came at her like a cavalry charge. Her vision was still swimming, but her mind knew what she was looking for.

Dov Megid's hand rose above the edge of the table, fingers grasping at the air. She could hear uneven, labored breathing. The mug was overturned on the table, but there was no spill. He'd taken the entire brew.

"Papa!" she called. "Papa, wake up!"

She didn't wait to hear his footsteps on the stairs--she knew they would come--before she pushed out of her chair, sending it skidding toward the sink, and rushed over to Dov. She lifted his shoulders, and started to drag him toward the parlor, with the vague thought of putting him on the sofa. His muscles were hot and so tense and brittle that she might have been dragging kindling toward a campfire.

The weight changed, and Sayna didn't look up to see which of her sisters had taken Dov's feet. Papa tossed a blanket over him, keeping him still long enough to look into his wild eyes. "It's rejecting," he said.

Sayna didn't answer. She looked across and saw that it was Yetta holding Dov's feet, and beyond her, Ruri was clearing the sofa. They managed to get Dov lying down, and Papa pulled a stool over to examine him. Papa was no medic… but as Regent, he'd made it his business to know what Carpathia's most dangerous natural resource was capable of.

Sayna looked over his shoulder. "I think he took it all," she said.

"Of course he did."

"What happens next?"

"Either he lives or he dies. We will keep him as comfortable as we can."

"When will we know?"

"Soon. A day. Two."

Sayna nodded, and took up a vigil. Dov Megid had not been kind to her, nor had she fallen madly in love with him. She wasn't even sure she could fairly call him a friend. But their lives had been bound to each other, and she would stay. She would stay and be there, for whichever fate came.

An hour after taking the Sweep, the changes began. First, the feathers molted from around Megid's eyes, falling in a lazy clump on the floor and leaving livid red stains on the skin beneath. The hair on his hands began to go next… much more slowly; the hair follicles were native human, just over productive, and there wasn't as much of Kira's Plague for the Sweep to kill.

The fever went higher, and Dov awoke, gasping for breath and tearing at the blanket, delirious. He threw the blanket across the room, then fell back into the cushions in a faint. Sayna retrieved the blanket and put it back.

Five hours.

Papa examined Dov's face. The red blotches around his eyes were weeping some kind of noxious ooze. Papa sighed. "He is fighting, but I'm uncertain that his body has enough of its natural pattern left."

"There haven't been any more changes. His hands and the color of his eyes…"

"Sayna, I'm surprised at you. We can stop it from making the changes, perhaps reverse some of the more recent difficulties. But we can't reverse years of growth. His skeleton is not going to change."

Sayna took one of the blocky hands. The hair was mostly fallen out, and the claws were loosening. "He'll be disappointed."

"He'll be alive. If there is enough of him left."

Twelve hours.

Dov had slipped down into stillness, his breathing shallow but even. Sayna wiped a cool cloth over his forehead.

Carpathia rumbled, and the front window of the shop--after surviving thousands of such tremors--finally gave way and shattered. The wind that blew in carried the stench of sulfur.

Papa glared at it. "I need to go out to the people, Saynela. I need to calm them. The stabilizers will come back, but we can't absorb the panic in the meantime."

"Okay, Papa. I'll stay with Dov."

"What is he to you, daughter?"

"He's a person," she said. "No more. No less. Just a person. And that's enough."

"Yes. It is."

Papa pulled on a coat and went out into the city. Sayna stayed put.

A few minutes later, Dov woke himself up with a string of hacking coughs. Sayna held a handkerchief to his mouth until it was over.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

"I might live."

"Yes. I think so."

It was sunset when the fever broke. It came suddenly almost without warning. There was a great flare in his temperature– Sayna didn't have anything to monitor it, but for the space of ten minutes, Dov Megid seemed to be melting from the inside out, and she was sure they were going to lose him--then he fell back into a deep, untroubled sleep, the fever just seeping out of him.

Sayna allowed herself to sleep as well. A few aftershocks hit the planet over the next six hours, and Yetta and Ruri joined Papa outside, but neither Sayna nor Dov noticed. With dawn, the world was quiet again, or at least as quiet as Carpathia ever got.

Sayna awoke to feel a large hand on her shoulder.

"You should sleep someplace more comfortable," Dov said. "Your back will hurt."

"Probably." She looked up at him. He was standing. He looked tired, and his face was scarred and swollen from the sites that were still trying to reject cells. "How do you feel?"

"Like I'm going to spend the rest of my life with big red blotches on my face. But like there's a ‘rest of my life' to worry about it."

"You could try plastic surgery. It's just scars now."

He grinned; his teeth were still misshapen, but somehow, they didn't look as feral. "That's not how the fairy tale works. It was supposed to magically melt away, and leave me a handsome young prince again."

Sayna raised an eyebrow. "Maybe next time," she said, "you should try cleaning a magic lamp instead."

He laughed. "Would you like to help me look for one?"

"Maybe someday." She rolled her eyes. "But I think for now, we'd both better get back to work."

THE END