‘I’m very interested in that landing field of his, and the outline of the flowersipper.’

‘You think the visitors told him to build it?’

‘He doesn’t have to be in contact with them to know about the mark that’s sometimes found where they have been sighted. Witnesses have described it. Wallsheets have published sketches of it. But if the visitors are real, if the mark is their mark, it’s possible that Foeless Landwalker’s giant replica has attracted their attention. That we might find some trace of them in the vicinity. Judging by reports of sightings, the Broken Isles is a place they favour.’

‘I’m trying to picture your face if they appear,’ Gentle said, ‘and this Landwalker fellow steps forward to meet them.’

‘I hope I would tell myself that truth is what matters, not who finds it first. And I hope that I would be able to make sure that Master Able was properly credited for believing that sightings of the visitors were of interest when few did.’

Gentle looked towards the cockpit at the stern of the windjammer, where its captain, Coral Seagrass, stood at the wheel. ‘Our new friends will want some of that credit. Might not be much left for you.’

26.

It took a little over two moonspans to reach the Broken Isles. The three women from the Invisible College took turns at the windjammer’s helm, and after a few days Coral Seagrass let Gentle try his hand. Although the college was a collective in which every member had an equal say, it was most definitely Coral’s boat. A calm, taciturn woman, she had been born into a fishing family on the east coast of the Union, and was presently studying the reefs for which she was named. When she had been much younger, she told Pilgrim, she had spent two years aboard a clipper ship, masquerading as a cabin boy, sailing the triangle route from the Union eastwards across the ocean to Akeban, Akeban to the north-east coast of the New Territories, and back to the Union. It was commoner than he might suppose, she said, and some women spent their entire lives in masquerade, but after learning the tarpaulin trade and seeing more of the world than most men, she’d wanted to return to her tribe and raise a family.

‘Yet here I am now, not as done with adventuring as I thought,’ she said.

Gentle proved to be a useful recruit to the ship’s crew. He scrubbed the deck every morning, spliced broken lines, climbed nimbly amongst the yards and ratlines to let out or take in sails, ran trotlines from the stern to augment their meals with fresh fish and served spells at the helm, although never on his own and never at night. Despite the women’s fine words about mutual interest, there were limits to trust on both sides.