Scillara wandered through the village, looking for whatever might prove useful on the voyage they now planned. Rope, baskets, casks, dried foodstuffs, nets, gaffs, salt for storing fish – anything.

Mostly what she found were the remnants of villagers – all worried by dogs. Two squat storage buildings flanked the avenue that ran inward from the jetty, and these were both locked. With Barathol's help, both buildings were broken into, and in these structures they found more supplies than they could ever use.

Cutter swam out to examine the carracks, returning after a time to report that both remained sound and neither was particularly more seaworthy than the other. Of matching length and beam, the craft were like twins.

'Made by the same hands,' Cutter said. 'I think. You could judge that better than me, Barathol, if you're at all interested.'

'I will take your word for it, Cutter. So, we can choose either one, then.'

'Yes. Of course, maybe they belong to the traders we met.'

'No, they're not Jelban. What are their names?'

'Dhenrabi's Tail is the one on the left. The other's called Sanal's Grief. I wonder who Sanal was?'

'We'll take Grief,' Barathol said, 'and before you ask, don't.'

Scillara laughed.

Cutter waded alongside one of the swamped sculls beside the jetty. 'We should bail one of these, to move our supplies out to her.'

Barathol rose. 'I'll start bringing those supplies down from the warehouse.'

Scillara watched the huge man make his way up the avenue, then turned her attention to the Daru, who had found a half-gourd bailer and was scooping water from one of the sculls. 'Want me to help?' she asked.

'It's all right. Finally, I've got something to do.'

'Day and night now.'

The glance he threw her was shy. 'I've never tasted milk before.'

Laughing, she repacked her pipe. 'Yes you have. You just don't remember it.'

'Ah. I suppose you're right.'

'Anyway, you're a lot gentler than that little sweet-faced bloodfly was.'

'You've not given her a name?'

'No. Leave that to her new mothers to fight over.'

'Not even in your own mind? I mean, apart from blood-fly and leech and horse tick.'

'Cutter,' she said, 'you don't understand. I give her a real name I'll end up having to turn round and head back. I'll have to take her, then.'

'Oh. I am sorry, Scillara. You're right. There's not much I understand about anything.'

'You need to trust yourself more.'

'No.' He paused, eyes on the sea to the east. 'There's nothing I've done to make that… possible. Look at what happened when Felisin Younger trusted me – to protect her. Even Heboric – he said I was showing leadership, he said that was good. So, he too trusted me.'

'You damned idiot. We were ambushed by T'lan Imass. What do you think you could have done?'

'I don't know, and that's my point.'

'Heboric was the Destriant of Treach. They killed him as if he was nothing more than a lame dog. They lopped limbs off Greyfrog like they were getting ready to cook a feast. Cutter, people like you and me, we can't stop creatures like that. They cut us down then step over us and that's that as far as they're concerned. Yes, it's a hard thing to take, for anyone. The fact that we're insignificant, irrelevant.

Nothing is expected of us, so better we just hunch down and stay out of sight, stay beneath the notice of things like T'lan Imass, things like gods and goddesses. You and me, Cutter, and Barathol there. And Chaur. We're the ones who, if we're lucky, stay alive long enough to clean up the mess, put things back together. To reassert the normal world. That's what we do, when we can – look at you, you've just resurrected a dead boat – you gave it its function again – look at it, Cutter, it finally looks the way it should, and that's satisfying, isn't it?'

'For Hood's sake,' Cutter said, shaking his head, 'Scillara, we're not just worker termites clearing a tunnel after a god's careless footfall. That's not enough.'

'I'm not suggesting it's enough,' she said. 'I'm telling you it's what we have to start with, when we're rebuilding – rebuilding villages and rebuilding our lives.'

Barathol had been trudging back and forth during this conversation, and now Chaur had come down, timidly, closer to the water. The mute had unpacked the supplies from the horses, including Heboric's wrapped corpse, and the beasts – unsaddled, their bits removed – now wandered along the grassy fringe beyond the tideline, tails swishing.

Cutter began loading the scull.

He paused at one point and grinned wryly. 'Lighting a pipe's a good way of getting out of work, isn't it?'

'You said you didn't need any help.'

'With the bailing, yes.'

'What you don't understand, Cutter, is the spiritual necessity for reward, not to mention the clarity that comes to one's mind during such repasts. And in not understanding, you instead feel resentment, which sours the blood in your heart and makes you bitter. It's that bitterness that kills people, you know, it eats them up inside.'

He studied her. 'Meaning, I'm actually jealous?'

'Of course you are, but because I can empathize with you I am comfortable withholding judgement. Tell me, can you say the same for yourself?'

Barathol arrived with a pair of casks under his arms. 'Get off your ass, woman. We've got a good wind and the sooner we're on our way the better.'

She threw him a salute as she rose. 'There you go, Cutter, a man who takes charge. Watch him, listen, and learn.'

The Daru stared at her, bemused.

She read his face: But you just said…

So I did, my young lover. We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by.

And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would'be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

Chaur held on to the steering oar whilst Cutter and Barathol worked the sails. The day was bright, the wind fresh and the carrack rode the swells as if its very wood was alive. Every now and then the bow pitched down, raising spray, and Chaur would laugh, the sound childlike, a thing of pure joy.

Scillara settled down amidships, the sun on her face warm, not hot, and stretched out.

We sail a carrack named Grief, with a corpse on board. That Cutter means to deliver to its final place of rest. Heboric, did you know such loyalty could exist, there in your shadow?

Barathol moved past her at one point, and, as Chaur laughed once more, she saw an answering smile on his battered, scarified face.

Oh yes, it is indeed blessed music. So unexpected, and in its innocence, so needed…

The return of certain mortal traits, Onrack the Broken realized, reminded one that life was far from perfect. Not that he had held many illusions in that regard. In truth, he held no illusions at all. About anything. Even so, some time passed – in something like a state of fugue – before Onrack recognized that what he was feeling was… impatience.

The enemy would come again. These caverns would echo with screams, with the clangour of weapons, with voices raised in rage. And Onrack would stand at Trull Sengar's side, and with him witness, in helpless fury, the death of still more of Minala's children.

Of course, children was a term that no longer fit. Had they been Imass, they would have survived the ordeal of the passage into adulthood by now. They would be taking mates, leading hunting parties, and joining their voices to the night songs of the clan, when the darkness returned to remind them all that death waited, there at the end of life's path.