The moorage here was makeshift, with smaller craft simply hauled up on the beach. Robst had everyone pull on the oars for a few moments while aiming Firkin at an empty patch of sand, and ran it up just far enough to stick. Lyne scampered up onto the prow and cast a rope down to the soul who was waiting for them. Thus was Edda able to disembark without causing the boat to bob back up in a way that might have attracted notice. For many hereabouts seemed to have a lot of time on their hands, which they whiled away by staring at newcomers. Edda, the moment she touched down, wrapped herself in a long cloak of simple nubby stuff that was nothing to look at—literally nothing, since, once she had pulled it up to cover her, it concealed every bit of the engrossing complexity in her form. Save, of course, the irises. But one had to stand close to see those.

“My name is Ferhuul,” said the man on the beach, extending his hand in peace, “and I would be bowing in token of my respect if I did not wish to avoid drawing attention to your arrival, my lady.” He averted his gaze, perhaps not wanting to become lost in hers, and clasped her hand briefly. Then he likewise greeted the others, guessing their names correctly, though Mard and Lyne required a little straightening out. He spoke Townish with the accent of Cloven, which was presumably his native tongue. “If you will please follow me,” he said, “I know of a place where all of us can talk in comfort.” He cast a wary look at Burr, but the man-at-arms had had the common sense to leave all of his weapons, save a belt knife, aboard Firkin, where Robst and his three crewmates could keep an eye on them. Satisfied of that, Ferhuul led the party on a stroll up streets that were flat and straight at first, winding and even zigzagging later as they climbed up out of the harbor flats.

“Try to act like you have been here before,” Brindle told Prim, “or at least to some place like it.”

Prim nodded and, for a little while, fixed her gaze on the cobblestones coming and going under her feet.

Practically all of the souls Prim had ever met in her life had been Sprung: descendants of Adam and Eve, which meant that they had come into being within the bodies of mothers who had been impregnated by fathers. As was proved, or at least claimed, by the great family tree on the wall of the Calladons’ hall, every such soul could trace his or her ancestry back to Adam and Eve. Though they each looked a little different, all such souls shared a common form that, according to their legends, had been preordained by Spring in the Before Times.