“This is one of those songs that begins right in the middle,” said Weaver the next morning, after they had got under way and found a solid marching rhythm. Or, in the cases of those who didn’t march, settled into a flight pattern apparently meant to scan the path ahead of them while keeping an eye peeled for airborne threats. Corvus was of the view that no force in the Land short of a battalion of angels would dare take them on; but he was nervous anyway, and would be until they got beneath the Evertempest, after which he would be nervous for different reasons.

At some point between Cloven and Lost Lake, Weaver had modified her kit. During the journey’s first phase, from the Hall of the Calladons to West Cloven, she’d been carrying a couple of flutes and a harp that required so much tuning that it was useless. Those were gone now, and in their place she had an instrument called a Road Organ. Though to refer to it as a single instrument was to understate its ambition, for it comprised several devices that looked to have been crafted in different historical epochs by artisans with clashing views as to what the point was.

The preparations involved in grappling this thing to Weaver just after breakfast and checking out its various systems had led to a lot of foreboding and dreadful glances between Mard and Lyne. Even Prim, who enjoyed Weaver’s singing, set forth on the day’s journey with a certain amount of trepidation as to the scale and duration of the planned entertainments. But when Weaver began to play some little marching ditties on the Road Organ, Prim thought that they blended so naturally into the mood of the place that it wasn’t at all like enduring a performance.