“You mean, do they suspect that their traveling companion is a disguised member of Egdod’s Pantheon who can kill anyone by wishing them dead? I doubt it; but if you notice young Mardellian Bufrect treating you even more courteously than he does already . . .”

Prim blushed, and tried to hide it with a grin. “Maybe that’s why?”

“Just maybe.” And Corvus took to the air with a cackling squawk that might have been a laugh. He playfully dive-bombed Robst, who was at the other end of the boat mending a sail, and beat up into the air to have a look round.

Prim, wishing she could see what he saw, summoned forth a memory of the map. They were at the place where the First Shiver forked into two equal branches that both ran to the ocean. The one to the left ran southwest to Toravithranax-by-the-Sea. The other ran northwest and was less frequented. Between them lay the spearhead-shaped island named the Burning Bit, so called because, seen from the high places of Toravithranax, it gave off an orange glow by night and reddened the sun with its smoke by day. Venturing around to its seaward edge would be too hazardous for little Firkin, but if they went down the inland fork to a certain place, they could hike up across a narrow part of the Bit and scout around on its west side, which was not a single coherent coast but an ever-ramifying web of steaming Shivers “cast into the sea,” Edda had told her, pulling silver silk through the map, “like a fisherman’s net.”

That westerly wind prevailed for another day, but thenceforth it bore smoke, strange mineral odors, and even tiny flecks of grit that speckled Firkin’s canvas and crunched beneath their feet on the deck planks. Trimming his sails to it, Robst made good time up the inland coast of the Burner, as he called it. In due course they eased into a sort of dimple in that coast, not really profound enough to be called a proper bay, but enough to give them some shelter. They made camp on the beach in the shadow of a sharp ridge that ran up the spine of the Burner, and built a fire that they used to smoke some fish and oysters that they had collected over the last couple of days. Victualed with that and with some berries and greens gathered along the water’s edge, Mard and Lyne and Prim set out early the next morning, seeking the least difficult path over the island’s crest. In that they were aided by Corvus, who did not abandon them this time. The bird didn’t completely understand the travails of ground-pounders and so they could not always trust his judgment, but he did at least warn them off from a few turnings that would have taken them to dead ends. And in the most disheartening moments of the journey it was a comfort to see him soaring overhead and know that, at the very least, they had not got lost.