"There." Pomeroy pointed with his revolver. The pilot had surfaced and was heading for one of the islands. Pomeroy tracked him but never fired.

"Godsdammit," he said as the man reached the little shore. "Only reason the others haven’t gone after him is they can’t swim." He nodded at the cheering crew.

"They’ll fight back with their fucking hands if we push this," Ihona said. "Look at them. And you know we won’t shoot them. You know what we have to do."

So in ridiculous inversion, the hijackers ferried the crew to the island. Pomeroy waved his gun as if carrying out necessary punishment. But they let the sailors off, and even gave them provisions. The captain watched plaintively. They would not let him go.

Cutter was disgusted. "Too fucking soft," he raged at his friends. "You shouldn’t have come if you’re so soft."

"What do you suggest, Cutter?" Ihona shouted. "You make them stay if you can. You ain’t going to kill them. No, maybe we shouldn’t have come, it’s already cost us." Pomeroy glowered. Elsie and Fejh would not look at Cutter. He was suddenly fearful.

"Come on," Cutter said. He tried not to sound wheedling or scornful. "Come on. We’re getting there. We’ll find him. This bloody journey’ll end."

"For someone so known not to give a damn," Ihona said, "you’re risking a lot for this. You want to be careful, people might think you ain’t what you like to think."

The Dradscale was wide. Ditches and sikes joined it, channelling in dirty water. It was unbending for miles ahead.

On the east bank, dry hills rose behind the mangroves, wind-cut arids. It was a desert of cooked mud, and way beyond it was Shankell, the cactus city. On the west the land was altogether harsher. Above the fringe of tidal trees was a comb of rock teeth. A zone of vicious karst, an unbelievable thicket of edged stone. By Cutter’s imprecise documents it stretched a hundred miles. His maps were scribbled with explorers’ exhortations. Devils’ nails said one, and another Three dead. Turned back.

There were birds, high-shouldered storks that walked like villains. They flew with languid wingstrokes as if always exhausted. Cutter had never suffered in so brute a sun. He gaped in its light. All of them were pained by it, but Fejh of course most of all, submerging again and again in his stinking barrel. When eventually the water around them was saltless he dived with relief and refilled his container. He did not swim long: he did not know this river.

The man they followed must have been a vector of change. Cutter watched the riverbanks for signs that he had passed.

They steamed through the night, announcing themselves with soot and juddering. In the hard red light of dawn the leaves and vines dandled in the current seemed to deliquesce, to be runoff streams of dye, matter adrip into meltwater.

While the sun was still low the Dradscale widened and bled into a pocosin. The marsh-lake was met by the end of the karst, uncanny fingerbones of stone. The Akif slowed. For minutes, its motor was the only sound.