Fern was Rett’s equal when it came to the actual sailing of the ship, but she seemed to have more of a head for business. In a way this made her somewhat troublesome, since, by the time they met her, all of the business arrangements had been settled. So there was nothing for Fern’s mind to work on save the larger picture of what they were actually doing. And this was poorly understood by all—even, apparently, Corvus. Fern’s wish to know more—even to shape the Quest’s direction—was clearly exasperating to Corvus. And yet if Fern had not been driven by that sort of curiosity, she would never have agreed in the first place to go on the Quest. You could not have one without the other; Quest-goer-onners were not ordinary souls, and so Quest leaders had, as Prim now understood, to devote a great deal of attention to contending with all of that want of ordinariness.

The peninsula marked on the map as the Asking was said to have all of the shortcomings of the desert to its east, where climate, vegetation, etc., were concerned. But since, unlike said desert, it did not lie between two more interesting and hospitable places, there was really no reason to go there at all. It just reached far out into the ocean and trailed off. If it were literally true that the peninsula had been formed by Egdod’s asking himself “What lies out this way?,” then the answer was nothing.

This topic was quite literally on the table in the sense that Prim had taken advantage of the spotlessly clear weather to unroll the big map. The table, like everything else that mattered aboard Silverfin, was bolted in place. She and Querc had been looking at it and Corvus was looking at them. They were up at the front end. Abaft, where the tiller was, Fern was meeting with her crew, including Mard and Lyne.