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Also, of course, while she remained in custody she would be unable to ensure her passengers' safety or well-being. Given Cally's prior depth of concern for them, having the families together, preferably on Petaybee, was the best way to protect the children, quite young mothers, and elders, all so vulnerable to abuse or neglect.

The gilt com unit in the replica Louis XIV board gave her personal signal. She started toward it but one of Cally's minions blocked her way. She half turned to Hedgerow. "My crew will want a final order from me to surrender peacefully or there could be unnecessary injury or loss of life, and not only to my employees."

Cally gave a curt nod and the minion stepped aside. First Officer Robineau said from the com screen, "Madame, there are two armed soldiers demanding access to the bridge. Your orders?"

"By all means show them in, Adrienne, and stand down," she said, using her officer's first name as if she were an innocuous housekeeper instead of a highly trained navigator and engineer. She could not beat the intruders at this point but if her crew gave the appearance of joining them insofar as to offer them hospitality instead of resistance, everyone might survive this situation. If open resistance was futile, killing them with kindness might yield intelligence advantages at the very least. And Adrienne Robineau was quite an attractive woman highly adept at social interchange. "Offer them wine or tea perhaps since they are still on duty, and some of the excellent croissants from the galley. They will be with us for the rest of the voyage."

"Oui, Madame. It shall be as you say." Marmie smiled to herself at her officer's quick grasp of the situation. Adrienne, despite her French heritage and name, had no personal ties with La France Nouveau at all. And yet her speech already reflected a strong trace of Marmion's own accent. "And Adrienne?"

"Oui, Madame?"

"Pass along to the others that our-guests-are to be accorded courtesy and cooperation from all crew members. I do not wish to entertain further interruptions while I am in conference with their superiors."

"Oui, Madame."

"The conference is at an end," Cally said. "We will now depart for Gwinnet Incarceration Colony, where you and your crew will be-accommodated-pending your trial."

IT WAS A long swim and Murel was weary. She wanted to go ashore, dry off, fly home with Mum, Da, and Ro, and sleep in her own bed, maybe after a steaming hot chocolate and a biccy or two. She and Ro could dream together as they sometimes did and share what they'd done while they were apart. He was okay.

She was certain he was okay. She'd know if he weren't.

Sky brushed against her consolingly. Deep sea otters will not harm Ronan, Murel.

Seals-bad seals, not river seals-sometimes eat otters, but otters do not eat seals.

As if mentioning otter-eating seals had somehow alerted the species, she received another message. Do not worry, half cousin. Our relatives have surrounded the strange new thing in their fjord and are keeping a close eye on it. No harm will come to your sibling with them watching.

But it was such a long swim. She wished she could have trusted the orcas enough to beg a ride with one of the powerful creatures for her and Sky. But in doing so she'd bring death to the very seals helping her locate Ronan. Perfect Fjord was another day's swim at least, and she didn't see how she could make it without rest.

Sky wasn't made for this sort of swimming either. He normally frolicked in freshwater. Long-distance saltwater swimming was completely foreign to him, and he had been through as much as she had.

Sky, you can go ashore if you want to, she said. You are not a sea otter, after all.

I am a sky otter, he told her. And a space otter and an underground otter as well. I can swim in the sea, so although my face is not pale and round, I am also a sea otter.

In his own way, Sky was as much a shape shifter as selkies or the Honus. He simply didn't bother changing his physical form when he changed his mind about who he was. Her former biology teacher, Dr. Mabo, had an unhealthy fascination with shape shifters-unhealthy for the shape shifters at least. But she would never understand one like Sky, no matter how many otters she tormented.

The farther north they swam, the closer and more wintry the shoreline grew. The ice reached out in broad flat plains from the land. When pieces broke off and upended, they formed the icebergs that seemed to float like castles above the water.

Beneath the water they hung in the depths like upside-down mountains. In places along the shore, cobalt cracked glaciers rose high above the ice floe. The sky grew duller and grayer until time for sunset, when it blazed with volcanic-ash-filtered light before dying altogether. The full moon rose, and for many many kilometers they saw little in the blackness of the sea but moon and ice, ice and moon.

Murel used her sonar to keep them off the ice, singing to herself in the night, hoping to hear the other seals soon, the ones who were the relatives of Pork and her herd. Apparently Pork and the others had lost interest in her problems. Probably they were keeping busy evading sharks and the killer whales.

Before long we should be close enough that I can reach Ro, she told Sky, if our thought-talk can go through the alien city's shield-and I guess it can, since we talked the alien otters into letting Da go.

For once, Sky did not answer.

She turned her head to the side where he had been swimming and saw only water.

She looked all around her. No otter. She dived and surfaced and swam back to the last iceberg. Sky! she called. Sky? And her sonar returned an otter-shaped image to her, just beneath the surface of the water, not swimming but slowly sinking.

***

"THE HONU SAYS Murel went to find Ronan," Ke-ola told Yana, nodding at the smallest of the turtles swimming along beside the fishing boat that had picked him up. "She says bring the copter up to Perfect Fjord, but only her papa should swim out to find them. Everyone else should wait on shore in case they're needed."

"Anybody got an ulu?" Yana asked, referring to the semicircular knife women traditionally used in cleaning and dressing animal skins. "I'm going to skin my daughter alive when we catch up with her. Why didn't she wait for the copter if she wants us to use it?"

"She needed to be a seal to find Ro," Ke-ola said reasonably.

"Sean is in seal form too. Why didn't she get him?"

Ke-ola consulted with the Honu again.

"He was busy, missus," the boy replied. "Murel needed to go quick."

Sean, swimming along beside them, raised his sleek gray-brown head from the water to look first at the Honu, then Ke-ola, then Yana. He lowered his head as if to roll into a dive. "No! Don't you go swimming off too, Sean," Yana called.

"We've got multiple crises and I need to keep track of one member of this family at least. Hop in the boat and change. I have a lot to tell you."

Hopping into the boat was easier to say than do for him, but Ke-ola and the fisherman rescuer cast a fish net and he swam into it and allowed himself to be hauled aboard.

Yana had sent the copter back with Puna, Keoki, Pet Chan, and Raj Norman. After what happened to the Piaf, the Kanakas needed to be with their wounded and what was left of their families, and Pet, Raj, and Johnny needed to strategize while she and Sean sorted out how to retrieve their kids as well as the others.

"The Piaf, its passengers, and crew, including Marmie, have been hauled off to some Federation Incarceration Colony," Yana told Sean once he was in the boat.

"Intergal had Marmie arrested for kidnapping Ke-ola's people and `stealing' the Honus and the sharks. Johnny said once the ship's crew knew what was going on, Com Officer Guthe made sure the channel was open so Johnny could hear what happened on the bridge."