“I could still manage the stairs,” Malta insisted indignantly, but secretly she was glad of his thoughtfulness. She did not feel as agile as she usually did, and her feet were often swollen and tender.

“Off we go, then. I’m sure I’ve put enough of everything in that trunk, and if not, there is the first one that was taken down to the boat this morning.”

“That was just the baby’s things. Just in case he surprises us in Cassarick. And Tillamon? Is she packed yet?”

“My sister is waiting for us at the lift.”

Malta cast a longing eye at the other wardrobe, but Reyn seized her hand, tucked it firmly into the crook of his arm, and opened the door. From the set of his mouth, Malta decided it was time to pretend to be meek and wifely. She caught up only one extra cloak and swirled it around her shoulders as he led her out into the day.

Not much sunlight reached the household level of the family tree even on a bright day. On gray winter days like this one, forest twilight was the rule. In the high treetops, a wind was battering the forest. She knew it only by the occasional flurries of leaves and needles that drifted down. Most of the trees that would shed their leaves for this season were already bared, but there were enough evergreen trees in this section of the Rain Wilds to shelter them from all but torrential rains.

The lifts were a series of platforms with basket-weave sides that traveled vertically from canopy to earth, operated by stoutly muscled men working a system of lines and pulleys and counterweights. Malta did not enjoy using the lifts, but she no longer feared them as she once had. In truth, she had dreaded taking the long spiraling staircases that wound around the tree trunks and were the only alternate routes to the forest floor.

Tillamon, cloaked and heavily veiled, awaited them. Malta wondered why but said nothing. Reyn, in his typically brotherly fashion, was not so discreet. “Why are you veiled as if for a trip to Bingtown?”

Tillamon stared at him through a mask of lace. “To visit the lower levels now is almost like going to Bingtown. There are so many staring outsiders in the city now. And not all of us, little brother, are so fortunate as to have had our changes make us lovelier.”