Things down there, he had thought, and sometimes he dreamed of what those things could be.

On his way home from that last voyage, he had already been planning his next: a journey back to the Widow's Peaks and then below, following the caves, finding routes deeper and deeper still. He would burrow beneath the false skin of the world that the Widow so mocked.

But then his illness had struck, and his planned voyage had never come about.

He paused, balancing with his feet against one rock and his back against another. The sun did not find its way here, and in the narrow crack below him he could hear the subtle rustlings and hissing that could reveal what he sought. He moved sideways, trying not to let his feet slip down and damage the rock ants' structures. When he reached a larger rock, he slid onto it and lay down, lowering the upper half of his torso into the crack. And there it was, the silvery trace-work of the rock ants' nest, their extruded silk marking the paths of minute cracks and fissures in the rock. The Widow had told him she could read a language in the structure of their nests, but she never told him what that language was, nor what it said. He supposed it was the language of the land, the vague idea of order behind chaos that she alluded to on occasion. But though he changed his angle of viewing, narrowed his eyes and turned aside so that the nest was almost out of sight, he could read nothing.

Across the larger cracks were more elaborate structures, providing bridges and tunnels for the ants, solid as the rock itself. The creatures were as long as his little fingernail, abdomens swollen with the poison he sought.

“So now to find some berry bugs,” he said. He stood from the nest and climbed the rocks, glancing down at the grassed ledge where Lulah still lay. He whistled briefly and she looked back.

“Any sign?”

Lulah shook her head and turned away from him again.

Behind the rocky overhang and farther up the hillside, he found a swathe of yellowberry bushes, their fruits still small and hard. He examined the berries until he found what he wanted—fruits fattened by the larvae laid inside. Splitting the skin, pulling the small larvae out and letting them squirm on his hand, Ramus felt the thrill of forbidden knowledge coursing through him. It was as though the Widow was looking over his shoulder, and he was certain she would be pleased.

He found no more than thirty berry bugs; he hoped that would be enough. He might not be able to infect every horse in Nomi's group, but if only two or three of them were sick, Nomi and the Serians would still be delayed.

Back at the ants' nest, he lay on the rock again, reached down and scattered the bugs across several of the thicker bridges.