The light of the Greater Moon cast silver wonderment over the tops of the foliage, black in shadow; it lit the glass-and-metal walkways over which the Sarronny cadets now filed to the dancing-circle, and the stones that marked the verge of the circle. Not a boundary of light or of metal, but stones, as if that circle had stood there since the earliest days of humanity on the Original World. 

There were images of such places in the archives of the journey-ships.

Under the moons’-light, the dancers’ fierce concentration turned their faces to masks. Martisset leaned forward in her seat, in the shallow hillside that made a natural amphitheater around the dancing-circle. 

The Sarronny cadets removed their boots, leaving them in a neat row on the glass catwalk, and then descended barefoot, thirteen steps to the bare ground of the arena. 

One of them had a length of industrial tubing, another a bucket; the twin brother and sister had brought sparring-sticks from the combat studio.

Martisset hadn’t realized that any of those things were drums until they sounded, among a sudden rush of song.

***

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