Thanh Lan wanted the order back. She wanted her home back. She wanted to be sitting in the kitchens again, listening to Mei go on and on. She wanted to have those barbed, frustrating conversations with Abbess Linh about the order's mission. And she knew she wasn't ever going to get any of that, but she could get something else: the satisfaction of saving the life of the order who had saved her own life.

I led Pilot Uma on the circuitous route through the spaceport that I had taken the morning Nina and I came upon the Grand Faerie Lord. [Addition: There were more direct routes. However, from reading my great grandmother’s records, I theorized that our search for the Faerie was based not so much on the location, but on the path one followed.] [Revision: I was correct.]

Trist reared back. “No!” She might be trapped by the ancient rules of the hunt, but she would not have them say she had asked for it. “I didn’t call you. There’s nothing I’m so desperate to be free of that I’d take the chance of faltering during a ride.”

Three times he has seen it now, a spindle-limbed silhouette. In its general shape, it resembles his own appendage—it has two arms, two legs and one head—but there is something deeply unnatural about the way it moves. Each time Harwen pursued it, the creature vanished into the scrub. He fears it is an omen; a signal that his calm existence cannot last forever.

Without realizing it, I grabbed at Mama’s sleeve, the way I used to when I was younger and our shuttle hit some unmapped debris or popped a fuse unexpectedly. It was the kind of reflexive gesture that didn’t mean much, but the stare Mama sent over her shoulder as she shook me off was severe and unmistakable.