Querc’s response was to glance up. She pointed into the sky, and Prim, following the gesture, saw Corvus wheeling high above, out of range of the glowing rocks that occasionally launched from the gorge. “I told you that was no ordinary crow, Pick!”

“And I pointed out that that much was obvious!”

Querc was already shuffling through loose pages in a sort of wallet slung over her shoulder. “My notes will show that I predicted the giant crow betokened other visitors to come.”

“Then don’t bother digging them out,” Pick said wearily. “They’re never wrong; and if they were, I’d have no way of proving it, since my opinion would be contradicted by your bloody notes.”

By now the visitors had drawn to within a few yards, near enough that ordinary persons might have greeted them and ventured some remarks in a conversational vein. But Pick and Querc were not ordinary persons. Prim decided to make the first foray. “Hail, denizens of the Last Bit!” she said. “We have come from faraway Calla to gaze upon the far-famed Last Shiver.”

“It’s twenty miles long,” said Pick, and then glanced at Querc as if worried she might pull a sheet from her wallet and contradict him. But she was silent, allowing him to go on: “But you just happened to come directly to us. No, it’s us you want to see, and not the Newest Shiver.”

Prim had no comeback. Querc scrambled to her feet and said, “But as long as you have come so far, you might as well have a look anyway!” She extended an arm toward the brink, only a long pace away from her.