Rafe moved the boat ably through the high waves as they got closer to land; Merolanna alternately clutched the side of the boat and Utta. At times they actually lifted off the benches, then slammed down hard in the next trough. For the first time, Utta wished she had changed back into women’s clothes, since they would have offered more protection for her rapidly bruising fundament.

At last they were through and into the shallows. Rafe grounded the boat on a sandbar. “If you walk up that way, won’t get your feet too wet,” he said.

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

“For one silver urchin? You’ll want a bodyguard or a troop of soldiers, and you won’t get them for one merely urchin, will you? I said I’d bring you here and take you back. Means I’ll sit and wait, not go in ’mongst the Old Ones. Their kind don’t like my kind.”

Utta helped Merolanna out, but despite the duchess’ best efforts, the hems of her long skirts still dragged in the water. “Why don’t they like you?”

“Us?” Rafe laughed. His face changed when he did it, looked both more and less like an ordinary man’s. “Because we stayed behind, didn’t we?”

Utta did not get to ask any more questions because just at that moment Merolanna slipped and fell. As the older woman floundered in the shallow water, Utta struggled to lift her until Rafe jumped lightly out of the boat to help. Together the two of them managed to get the dowager duchess upright again.

“Merciful Zoria, look at me!” Merolanna groaned. “I am soaking wet! I’ll catch my death of something, that’s sure.”

“Here, wait,” said the young Skimmer, then splashed back to the boat. He returned with the sealskin. “Wrap this around you.”

“Thank you,” said Merolanna with a certain amount of ceremony—certainly more than this isolated cove had seen in some time, Utta could not help thinking. “You are very kind.”

“Still not going with you, though.” Rafe waded back to the boat.

“Your Grace, I suspected this was not a good idea before. Now I am certain of it.” Sister Utta was trying her best not to peer at the empty houses on either side of the Port Road because they didn’t really seem empty: the black holes of their windows seemed something more sinister, the eye sockets of skulls or the mouths of dragon caves. Even here on the outskirts of town, where the houses were low and the winds brisk, the fog still hung in cobwebby tendrils and it was hard to see more than a few dozen paces ahead. “I think we should go back to the castle.”

“Do not try to change my mind, Sister. I have come all the way here and I will speak to the fairy folk. They can kill me if they want, but I will at least ask them what became of my son.”

But if they kill you, why would they let me go? Utta did not speak this thought aloud, not out of any desire to spare Merolanna’s feelings, but because in her growing hopelessness, suspended in this foggy dreamworld as if they were ghosts roaming aimlessly in the realms of Kernios, she did not think it would make any difference. Utta knew she had cast her sticks, as the old gambler’s saying went, and now she must shake out her coppers.