“An ordinary princess, you mean? I haven’t the faintest idea! No doubt if we could communicate with the other plane of existence from which we all seem to have originated, we could get an answer straightaway. As it is, we can only speculate. Your speculations are probably as good as mine, Princess, now that you have seen El’s cathedral at Secondeltown and killed a high lord of the Autochthons with your brain and made off with his sword and his horse.” He glanced at the former. Prim had taken it out of its sheath to rub oil on the blade, lest salt air rust it. The mount they’d been forced to abandon on the shore, since Firkin could not accommodate large beasts. “Whether by dumb luck or perhaps by some volition hidden from the likes of you and me, you have managed to live a long, quiet, and blessedly uneventful life in an out-of-the-way Bit, shrouded by an Eternal Veil, until recently. It was not until you came into womanhood, embarked—willingly I might just point out—on a Quest, passed out of that Veil, and set foot on the Land that all hell broke loose.”

“Now, that is the part I wish to speak to you about,” Prim said. “When we parted ways from Edda and the others in Cloven, you abandoned us.”

“I had to abandon someone. That’s the thing about parting ways.”

“Why us? You must have known the dangers of Secondel. We could have used your help.”

“Both of you. I abandoned both groups, you see. Edda and Burr and Weaver are just as vexed as you are.”

“How could they be? Brindle is dead!”

“His decision to pass on surprised me, I’ll grant you that. Had he decided otherwise, we’d have rescued him. Difficult. But well within the scope of a Quest.”

“It goes to show how desperate he believed the situation to be. All because of a lack of information—which you could have supplied, had you been there!”

“I have so much less information than you seem to believe,” said Corvus, “and when I am not with you, helpfully imparting such information as I do have, I am flying into the dodgiest situations you can imagine trying to get more. To the Island of Wild Souls I have lately been, arguing with tornadoes and temblors incarnate, and the Last Bit, and decidedly unwholesome parts of the Bewilderment, and I have even made an attempt to fly into the Evertempest: the perpetual storm that squats over the Knot. But it turns out I’m no Freewander. I cannot get anywhere near that thing.”

“Hmph. Well then,” said Prim, looking again at Mard and Lyne, who were pushing Firkin’s dinghy out into the channel, headed back to Firkin along with the rest of the crew. “All I can do is take you at your word. Do you think they suspect anything?”