The map, as improved by Edda’s needle and thread, agreed with what they could see off to port: a place along the sere coast of the peninsula where a stream flowed out from its stony guts and limped all the way to the ocean without drying up. Or so it might be guessed from the color of the surrounding landscape, which was a somewhat greener shade of brown than what stretched to either side of it. Straddling the outlet was an orderly arrangement of low buildings, and a single high watchtower, made of sun-dried mud bricks. A stone mole protected a moorage, above which several bare masts protruded. Between them and it, a galley was crawling like a many-legged insect across a simmering pan of water. All of it was military, for there was no settlement and no commerce here. The galley was going through the motions of trying to intercept Silverfin so that it could be boarded and inspected. It would fail. The entire point of keelsloops was that they could go faster than such galleys, provided there was wind. And along this coast that was almost always the case. Yesterday they had outrun two such, and Fern said that tomorrow they would have to outrun one, maybe two more. Beyond that they would be so far out on the Asking that the Autochthons didn’t bother maintaining such outposts.

“It seems—I don’t know—expensive,” Prim remarked. “I may be just a barbarian princess, but even I can see that it doesn’t add up.”

Corvus performed his bird shrug, a small gesture magnified by huge wings. “Each of those outposts has only a few expensive-to-maintain Autochthons. There’s plenty of fish. As to other necessities, they are resupplied by ships out of Secondel. Almost all of the souls are Beedles, purpose-grown to live in such places and to row boats. They grub in the muck for clams and seaweed. It’s worth it, even if you do no more than take seriously the reason they claim.”

“What reason is that?” Querc asked.

Prim knew. “To keep Sprung out.” She rested her hand on the part of the map that showed the Bits and Shivers. “We mostly live up here.” She tripped over the “we” since, as she had to keep reminding herself, she wasn’t actually Sprung.

She swept her hand a short distance south and a little to the west. It now lay on the north coast of the Asking—the same coast they could see over the boat’s port rail. “If you don’t mind sailing out of sight of land for a few days and trusting to the mercy of the sea, you can make that voyage easily, far out of sight of the watchtowers of Secondel and Toravithranax. Fetching up on the shore of the Asking, you’d perish of thirst in a few days—”