To their right was a drop-off that betokened a very long final few moments for anyone who went over it. Far out to sea were sails of large vessels, showing due respect for the danger posed by the cliffs and the sentinel rocks that stood off from them. Strewn along a thin ribbon of beach far below were wracks of ships that had got it wrong. But when they prudently drew back from the precipice and lifted their gaze to the country ahead, they saw a wall of steam piling up from the ground and blocking their view south. It was pearly white. Silhouetted against it, sometimes standing out crisply and sometimes shrouded in the murk, was a hut that had been built apparently on the very limit of the Last Bit where it gave way to the glowing gorge of the Newest Shiver. Not far from it, from time to time, they could make out the silhouette of a man, pacing back and forth—not in the style of one who was actually tending to any particular business, but more like one lost in thought, or trying to find his hat (it was on his head).

As they drew closer—which did not happen quickly, since the ground near the gorge was broken, upheaved, and punishingly sharp—they saw a somewhat smaller figure who seemed to be trying to keep pace with the first one’s restless movements. The big one loped across tilted slabs and leapt between them. The small one moved in a style that it was not unfair to describe as scurrying. Some kind of discourse was taking place between them, the big one pointing at things with an elaborate walking stick and the smaller one looking where he pointed, then writing things down on a tablet. The former had eyes only for the evidently hot and fascinating goings-on down below, but the latter occasionally had moments of leisure while the former stroked his beard or held the stick up to his face. It was during one such moment that she—for by now the visitors had drawn near enough to discern that, notwithstanding a short haircut and boyish clothes, the small one was female—noticed Prim and Mard and Lyne picking their way up the rampart of shrugged-off shards that had accumulated near the brink of this new Shiver. She had seated herself on a slab edge so that she could write on her lap, but now reached up and tugged at the hem of this big one’s garment. This was long, and if its purpose was to protect the wearer from flying sparks and cinders, then it had put in long service and perhaps saved his life. He turned around to face them and repeated the queer gesture of holding the head of his stick up to his face.

“Querc,” he said, “it would seem we have visitors.”