“Pa! Pa!” Tilly held out her arms, bouncing on Bene’s hip. “Kiss me, Pa! Kiss me!”

He kissed his daughter, holding her tenderly and tight. She patted his cheek with her grubby little hand.

“Go see the people, Pa. They’ve got yellow hair, like straw.”

His heart thudded hard, sickening, but only Bene had heard. “Yes, Tilly, that’s right,” he whispered. “But never say that again. Never talk about the people. They’re our special secret.”

“Pa,” she said, and hugged him. “Come home soon, Pa.”

He drove out of the hamlet with his head high and his back straight, and didn’t weep ’til he was well out of sight.

Almost halfway to the Black Woods he joined up with two others making the same long trip. It was good to have company after nearly three weeks on the road with only the donkeys to talk to, his dreams to steal sleep and Lur’s suffering lands to fret him. So far now from the hamlet, he’d hoped to see a sign that there’d been a little rain somewhere. That the long drought was easing. That the threat of famine was in retreat.

But no.

“I don’t recall things ever being so grim,” said Bannet of Salting village, astride his dusty, ribby horse. “These mages come to us for help? We can’t help ourselves. We can’t hardly feed our own children. What makes ’em think we can feed theirs?”

Jervale slapped his reins against the donkeys’ peaky rumps. “Salting village thinks to turn ’em away?”

Bannet shrugged. “Salting village wants to know more about ’em.”

Riding a spit ahead of them on her own underfed nag was Del, from the southern fishing village of Westwailing. She was a comely lass, with a bright flirting in her eye. Something about her made Jervale stare. He couldn’t hammer a nail into it. He only knew that his bones jumped every time she spoke.

“Lur’s fishing folk don’t much care for the notion of feedin’ strangers,” she said, scornful, shifting round in her saddle. “Every elder I’m speakin’ for told me to tell these mages the same thing. Go back where you came from. Lur’s got fratches of its own.” She shrugged. “So that’s what I’ll tell ’em. Too sinkin’ bad if they don’t like it.”

“Jervale, your face says you reckon they won’t,” said Bannet, uneasy. “What are we riding into, d’you say?”

He found them companionable, but he wasn’t about to trust them with his dreams. “I try not to think on it, Bannet. We’ll learn what’s what when we get to Gribley.”