Bek looked at their passengers, who were sitting around a map, talking about where they wanted to go next. Two from the Borderlands, three from the deep Southland, and a Dwarf—all had signed on to see country that they had only heard about. They were five weeks out of Patch Run, where Bek and Rue had begun a series of stops to pick up their customers and take on supplies. They had three weeks left in the Eastland before they started back.

“Your sister?” Rue suggested, nodding toward the airship.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

He didn’t want to voice what worried him most. One of the reasons a Druid airship would come for them was that something had happened to Pen. Word would reach Grianne, and she would come to tell him herself. But he wouldn’t let himself think like that, not just yet. This probably had something to do with the Ard Rhys or the state of the Four Lands.

They kept watch as the airship sailed toward them through the fading afternoon sunlight, moving unerringly toward their campsite. How it had located them was a mystery, since few knew of their intended destination. A Druid could find them with help, but only Bek’s sister possessed sufficient magic to track them with no help at all. He could see now that it was indeed a Druid airship that approached, so he began to suspect that she was aboard.

The other members of the expedition had seen the ship and come over to stand with their guides. A few asked what she was doing there, but Bek just shrugged and said he had no idea. Then he asked them to move back into the campsite and closer to where Swift Sure was anchored, a precaution he would have taken in any event.

“Are you expecting trouble?” Rue asked him, cocking one eyebrow.

“No. I just want to be ready.”

“We’re always ready,” she said.

“You are, at least.”

She smiled. “That’s why you were attracted to me. Don’t you remember?”

The big airship eased out of the sky to the grassy shelf that fronted the encampment and overlooked the woodland country west. Anchor lines were dropped fore and aft, and a rope ladder was thrown over the side. Bek recognized the Athabasca, one of four ships-of-the-line in the Druid fleet, capable of great speed and power. He was impressed by her look. But not even a Druid ship could match the speed of Swift Sure.

A Druid began to climb down the ladder, dark-robed and hooded, swaying unsteadily as he carefully placed one foot below the other. A big man, Bek saw, powerfully built and strong, but unfamiliar with airships and flying. He stepped off the ladder, pulled back his hood to reveal his face, and started toward them. Bek had never seen him before, but then most of the Druids at Paranor were unfamiliar to him. Except for his sister and Ahren Elessedil, who was no longer at Paranor, he had met only one or two others over the years, and those he barely remembered. The Druid life was his sister’s life, not his, and he had kept himself deliberately apart from it. Sometimes he felt badly that he was not doing more to help her in her work, but it was not work he had ever cared to involve himself in and so he thought it better not to pretend he did.