I'm coming, said Patience silently, trying hard not to think consciously of the murder in her mind.

The head named River babbled on and on, looking less and less like her father the longer she watched. Good.

She didn't need the distraction.

Once they were on the water, Sken was in her element, and lorded it over them all. Never mind River muttering commands from his jar, which dangled from a pole near the helm; Sken was glad enough to follow River's orders about where to steer, once he showed that he really did know the river. Steering was the pilot's business-everything else about the boat was Sken's to decide. Only Angel, lying in comfort at last, without the bouncing of the road, only he was exempt from her orders. All the others, Sken kept them hopping with the business of a boat making the tricky upriver passage under sail and oar.

She took particular pleasure in ordering Reck and Ruin to climb the mast and fiddle with the two sails-she watched with unbearable satisfaction on her face as they dangled over the water doing her bidding. The height didn't seem to bother them, nor the work, but the water itself seemed to make them uncomfortable. And credit Sken with this: she did not abuse her authority. Like any good captain, she knew that the geblings would obey her, but only as long as she ordered them to do what was clearly needful.

Patience did her part as well, a full share of work, like any of the others. At first Sken was uneasy ordering her about, but if she left Patience without labor. Patience would come and ask, until Sken barked out commands to her as easily as to anyone. Patience was grateful for anything that engaged her mind. The Cranning call was relentless, but it was easier to live with when she was busy. So she spent many an hour braiding lines, raising and lowering sail, or leaning on the helm as River ordered their way upstream, tacking across the current to keep the wind, easing into deep channels with oars or poles to get past the tricky places-it was a vigorous, hardworking life, and Patience came to love the river, partly because of the peace it brought to her, partly for the life itself. Sken's coarseness and crudity became vigor and strength, when seen within the river life.

For all that Sken was a good captain, though, she was not perfect. Patience noticed within a few days that Sken tyrannized Will without mercy, perhaps merely because he let her do it. No doubt they weighed about the same, but she was a good meter less in height. It was comical, watching him pull on a rope or haul something above or below deck, his massive muscles rippling along his body as he worked, while all the time the jiggling fat woman scolded and cursed him. Poor Will, thought Patience. All the pangs of marriage, and none of the conveniences. But he bore it well and didn't seem to mind. It became part of the equilibrium. Patience let it go.

It was early morning. Will was drawing up the anchor while Reck was raising the sail. Ruin sat in the bow, staring glumly ahead. Sken sent Patience to secure a line when Reck threw it down, and the task brought her near to Ruin, who was not working this shift.

She saw him shudder at her approach. "Is it that strong, when you feel him calling me?" she asked.

He nodded, not looking at her.

"Who is he, this Unwyrm?"

"Unwyrm. Himself."

"But what does he look like?"

"No one has ever seen him."

"Where did he come from?"

"He was born from the same belly as the geblings."

This was a religious language, of course, and Patience mentally deciphered it into her own version of reality.

"He's agebling, then?"

Ruin shrugged. "He might be. Only more powerful than any gebling. And he hates us. That's all we know about him." He raised a lazy hand to point at the river.

"This water-he fills it with hate and sends it down to freeze us."

"The call-does it work like the way that you and Reck call to each other?"

"We can't control each other, if that's what you mean," said Ruin. "We feel it, and that's all. We feel it best between siblings. The closer your blood. Reck and I are twins."

"But Unwyrm does it at will?"

"He even does it to humans. None of us can do that."

"So he's like a gebling, only more powerful."

Ruin seemed angry. "He's nothing like a gebling."

"Then why do you call him he? How do you know I he's a male?"

"You know he is, too. Because he's looking for the seventh seventh seventh daughter, and not the seventh seventh seventh son." Ruin turned slowly to face her. He was smiling, and it wasn't pleasant.

"What good would it do him to mate with a human?

The offspring would never be viable. Starborn and native life can't interbreed."

"You humans put such touching faith in your myths."

He was just trying to torment her. Patience had seen him do the same with Reck, and she refused to pay any attention to it. "Is he one of another species, then?"

"Perhaps. Or maybe he's the only one of his species that ever lived."

"That's impossible. Species don't come out of nowhere.

They have parents. There are generations. I know enough science for that."

"The best thing about science," said Reck, walking up behind Patience, "is that it keeps fools from ever discovering the truth, or even discovering that they don't have the truth already."

Ruin frowned at her. "Maybe human science," he said.

Reck grabbed the fur of the back of his hand, then slapped his hand away. "Ow," he muttered. He cradled the hurt hand in the other, as if it were a deep injury.

Reck smiled sweetly. "You're no better a scientist than the humans are."

"I've seen what I've seen, and not what I wanted to see or expected to see, which is more than you can say for any of them." His gesture toward Patience was fluid with contempt.

Reck tossed her head. "If you asked the Wise among the humans, they'd say the same to you. You never see anything that you aren't prepared to see, and when you do, you name it with the old names and pretend you understood it all along. And then everybody tells everybody else what everybody has already agreed to say, and everyone feels reassured about the world."

"You're so wise," said Ruin nastily. His anger, Patience saw, was not all pretended.

"That's what Mother commanded me to be, when she named me Reck, child, it means think, it means calculate, it means wonder about the causes of things."

"Your names are commands?" asked Patience. "Then your parents had sweet plans in mind for you, Ruin."

Ruin and Reck both looked at her as if they had forgotten she was there. They had shown her more of their private relationship than a human was supposed to see. Patience was ashamed of herself for making them feel embarrassed. She, too, had forgotten that she had to be diplomatic. A diplomat is always the wary stranger, never the intimate friend. To the surprise of all and the liking of none, they had forgotten, for a moment that they were not and never could be friends.

Patience smiled ruefully and walked away, feeling their eyes on her back like knives. But not as sharp as the yearning that almost immediately swelled in her. Cranning.

Was this great need the torture that Father's head endured, when the headworms sparked all his longings?

Did he break under this pressure, or was his much worse?

Will I come before this Unwyrm, who wants a woman, not a man, and break under this need like a disbodied head that has lost all will to resist? Will I be so hungry then that whatever he wants me to do, I'll mindlessly do, with no thought of resistance?

With that thought in mind, she spent the morning making something for herself from the things she found in Angel's strongbox. A pellet of poison, which she could take if things went wrong.

"What a clumsy solution."