‘I know you think my word isn’t worth much, given who I am and what I’ve done, but I promised to stick by you, and I will. And you need someone to look after your interests. You might not be turned by the Season, but I can’t help thinking these women may have found another way to beguile you.’

‘I don’t trust their Invisible College, but I like them well enough. And we have a common purpose.’

‘Maybe so, but do you think they’ll come to your rescue if you get in trouble with Foeless Landwalker and his Night Riders?’

The desert coast seemed endless, but at last patches of marsh and grassland began to appear in river estuaries and deltas, and beyond the broad bay at the mouth of the Blackwater River were ranges of hills covered in tropical forest. A day later, Coral announced that they had crossed the waist of the Mother, and Pilgrim realised that they must have passed and left behind the territory of his tribe, and the territory of Gentle’s coastal tribe too. There was a silly but solemn ceremony in which Pilgrim, Poppy and Fragrant, who had not crossed this imaginary dividing line before, were doused with buckets of seawater while reciting pledges to the Mother’s sea aspect, and then the windjammer turned away from land and sailed north and west across open ocean. It was a shorter route than hugging the sinuous coast of the Neck that linked the Union and the New Territories, but still about as far as the distance they had already covered.

One night Fragrant, who was at the helm, called everyone up on deck, and they saw that the sea all around them was glowing with cold blue fire. The bow wave of the windjammer shimmered and sparkled, and as their eyes adapted they saw a vast pattern of flickering spokes or rays that slowly turned against each other, as if some secret mechanism of the world had risen to the surface. Coral explained that the glow was generated by myriads of tiny organisms, but that did not make the vast display any less wonderful. Gentle said that it was a good omen, and no one disagreed. Pilgrim thought that it might have little or nothing to do with their enterprise, but if it improved Gentle’s morale it was a kind of blessing.