‘Yes, and didn’t you hear what the ringmen did at David Water?’ demanded Kate. ‘Men, women, newhairs, kids . . . That woman just over there told me she’d heard they chucked babies in the air for a game, and caught them on the end of their spears.’

Oh well done, Kate, I thought, as Fox and Candy turned to me in terror. That was a smart smart thing to say!

Squatting on the ground in the background, Flame gave a little gasp and clutched baby Suzie against her tiny breasts. She never spoke when the whole family was together. The older women always talked over her, and she’d learned that if she ever did manage to get a word in, they’d just pour scorn on what she said.

‘And they’re cruel to low people,’ Davidson said. ‘They’re cruel even to their own low people. I spoke to one of their paddle-men once, when he’d had too much badjuice. He said the low people over there have to dig for metal all waking long in little holes deep under the ground, too small to stand up in or even to sit up straight. You need big big fires, apparently, to burn the metal out of the rock, so they cut down all the trees, all the trees in a whole valley, until the only light and warmth comes from fires and lamps. It’s almost as dark and cold in the clusters round those holes, this bloke told me, as it is up in the ice and snow, but they still have to live there when they’re not underground, never seeing proper treelight from one waking to the next.’

‘I bet those are just stories,’ muttered Trueheart, but so quietly that only I could hear. ‘I bet they say things like that about us as well.’

‘We’re going to Circle Valley,’ Tom decided. ‘Not now, but in a couple of wakings, when we’ve have time to make ourselves some warm bodywraps.’

‘Quite right, Tom,’ Davidson said. ‘It’s the only way we can go. And if the Johnfolk do follow us over there, I’ve heard there’s a path over the Dark on the other side of Circle Valley too, over the Blue Mountains, to Half Sky.’