Fish were eaten. A midden of small bones out back of the hut suggested that this was far from the first time. They had rigged up a system of nets and traps that they could deploy from the cliff top, hauling the fish straight up out of the surf “already cooked,” Pick claimed, possibly in jest—it was hard to tell with him.

Querc was of a slightly more talkative disposition. She related her story. She was Sprung. Her family were seekers and traders of gemstones who roamed about the empty southwestern quarter of the Land between Toravithranax and the Central Gulf. From time to time they would make a foray into a city to conduct business, but their dealings had become complicated enough to require, and profitable enough to pay for, training a member of the family to read and write. Querc had been chosen from what sounded like a healthy surplus of children. Off she went to Toravithranax, where she was, after a couple of false starts, accepted into the Academy. She applied herself to the tasks assigned her by the acolytes of Pestle. A year went by, then another, then three more with no word from her family. She spent the money she’d been given and began to sell off, one by one, the gemstones her mother had sewn into hidden pockets in a leather belt. Word finally reached her from a cousin in Chopped Barren that the family had fallen victim to a series of disasters that had led to their surviving remnants being pursued across the wastes by a small army of Beedles, purportedly rogues, in all likelihood supported by local Autochthons. In any event they’d split up. This cousin, having made his way at length to a comparatively safe place in a northern Bit, was writing to Querc—the only member of the clan who had a fixed address—on the assumption that various others would have already had the same idea, and done likewise, and that Querc would simply be able to tell him where they had all found refuge. But she’d heard from none of them.