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“I might,” Amrita smiled wryly.

Soraya let out a little laugh. “My affection for you had nothing to do with the pirate costume, Amrita,” she said.

“Nor mine for you,” Amrita assured Soraya.

“I am listening. Tell me your plan,” Soraya said, and reached for her wine.

Amrita had been turning it over for the better part of the past week, making notes about everything she knew about the Etruscan people and their receptivity to outsiders. She believed it was still a place where a stranger might quietly arrive, reunite with her daughter, and slip into a whole new life.

“Nothing is ever certain, of course. But I am reasonably confident this can work.” She did not wish to tempt the Fates by exaggerating her confidence. “It has to. You cannot keep sailing in circles forever.”

Soraya was silent, picking at her meal. She finished her bowl before she spoke again.

“You think Etruria is far enough from Alexandria for my atlas to be safe from the scholars?”

“Yes. The Etruscans have their own relationship to knowledge and a great reverence for natural magic. Callimachus and his ilk have no business there. No one would be looking for you.”

“This is precisely why I sent my daughter there,” Soraya agreed. “I hoped she might have a fresh start.”

Another silence followed.

“I have been at sea for so long,” Soraya said. She laid her head on Amrita’s shoulder.

“I know.” Amrita stroked her hair.

“I am so tired of eating salted fish.”

“I know that too,” Amrita said. It had only been a few weeks but she was sick of it herself.

Soraya set her bowl down. “All right. Let me think about it. There is much to consider.”

The decision to sink The Tufan took three evenings to arrive at, though Amrita suspected Soraya had known what she would choose from the first night.

They had developed a habit of talking after the Fates had settled into the night watch. The rest of the ship was quiet then, except for the loud, rhythmic creaking of the hull.

“There are too many scrolls to fit on the small tender boat,” Amrita said on the second evening. “Even with a compression charm.”

“I know,” Soraya said. “But we both know there is another way to move them.”

She was quiet for a long time after that.

“You understand what this means?” she said. This was not really a question.

“Yes, I do.” Amrita said.

“Then say it out loud,” Soraya demanded.

Amrita looked at her directly. “Many of the books could be transferred into the atlas. The stories would survive. But they would not be books anymore. Once the human touch is taken away from something it cannot be restored. The marginalia, the oil from someone’s fingers, the water damage that tells you a scroll was read on a boat. All of that is gone. Forever. What remains is knowledge, distilled down to its essence. Preserved, but fixed.”

“You lose everything that made it alive,” Soraya said.

“Yes.”

The lamp between them flickered in the draft from the open window.

“Callimachus did this to so many texts,” Soraya said. “This was his plan for the atlas all along. Shrink entire libraries down into something small and portable. Something that could be carried and controlled.” She looked down at her hands. “I hated him for it. I called it a crime against human memory. And now here I sit, making a plan to do the same.”

“It is not the same,” Amrita said.