air.
“That’s right,” said Willowspear, staring straight ahead as he steered.
Smith looked at the white scum high on the tideline and knew what it was, then, and when the first of the black skeletons emerged from the fog, he clenched his one fist. Gradually the fog lifted farther, and he saw the wilderness of mud and ashes that had been Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he cried.
Lord Ermenwyr shrugged.
“It wasn’t your people, at least,” he said. “It was the Steadfast Orphans. They destroyed it, lest it be profaned.”
Lady Svnae bowed her head and wept.
Smith made out the shape of the landing ahead of them. Its red-and-yellow banners were gone; a scattered mound ashore was all that remained of the caretakers’ hut.
“Please, can we put in?” he asked. “If there’s any chance one of them is still alive, I’d like to get him out.”
Willowspear steered to the bank, and brought them up against the pier like a master. At Smith’s signal Stabb and Strangel dropped the anchor. Smith got unsteadily to his feet and peered through the drizzle.
“Ai-ai-ai!” he called.
A moment later there was an indistinct response, echoing from someone unseen.
Smith looked hard. Gradually through the fog he made out shapes moving, pale upright figures in the landscape. A wind came off the river, sighing in the rigging and the waving reeds, and the mist opened, and the scene before them became clear.
There were people struggling in the wet churned ashes, turning the earth with spades, raking it level, bringing muddy armfuls of roots or even small trees to be planted. One man stalked from west to east, moving with a smooth and endless rhythm as he drew a fistful from the seed bag he carried, swung his arm wide, scattered seed on the earth like rain, dipped again.
The three standing stones were toppled, lying in a blackened tangle that had been rose briars, but there was a team at work raising one of them with makeshift levers and ropes. And on the bank of the river a woman stood, weaving hurdles from green willow wands.
She was a tall woman robed in white, though her robe was work-stained and muddy, and so were her feet and hands. Rain dripped from the wide brim of her hat. With strong hands she wove the slick palings, effortlessly shaping walls, driving them into the mud with a blow to set them; and where she struck each one it sprouted, gray catkins on the nearer, green leaves already shooting forth on the first she had set. Were the walls flowering, too? No; white butterflies were settling on them here and there.
“It’s Mother,” said Lord Ermenwyr, in a ghost of a voice.
She raised her head and looked at Smith. He caught his breath.
The woman had clear, clear eyes, and their gaze hit him like a beam of light. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, but somehow that fact went unnoticed by his flesh. She was spare and perfect as a steel engraving, and as ageless. She was simple as water, implacable as the white comber rolling, miraculous as rain in the desert.
They went ashore and picked their way through the ruins at the pier’s base, and the lady walked down to meet them.
Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat. “Why, Mother, whatever are you doing here?” he inquired cautiously.
“Making a garden,” she replied. Her voice was beautiful, too.
Willowspear knelt before her, and she raised him with a hand under his chin, smiling. “Don’t worry,” she told him, and the phrase seemed to resonate with meaning, silence a hundred unspoken questions. “Now, let me see the hero.”
Smith wondered whether he ought to kneel. He had never felt so awkward in his life, obscurely ashamed of his maimed arm and the fact that no one had shaved him in three days.
“G-good morning, ma’am,” he said hoarsely. “There were some men who were stationed in—in the ruins over there. They were just watchmen. Were they killed, when the Orphans burned the place down?”
“No, they weren’t,” she said. “They got into the reeds and hid themselves. Though poor Mr. Bolter was dying of pneumonia when we arrived.” She turned and pointed at the stone, just lurching upright in its cradle of rope. Smith squinted at the figures surrounding it, and realized that three of them were Children of the Sun, covered though they were in mud and ashes like all the others there.
“Mr. Bolter!” the lady called. “Mr. Drill! Mr. Copperclad! The ship has