We’re drawing nearer to the city now. Makemin is peering at it with his goggles and looking glasses, Nikhinoch stands by him with his hands behind his back. Makemin points suddenly at something in the air before us. I can’t see anything but some streaks. As I watch, an uncouthly flapping near-invisibility vaults over and around the ship with a sound like a leather umbrella being shaken out.

“A Predicate,” Silichieh says.

“It’s an ungainly flier,” I say, as it wobbles away from us and back toward the city. So we come to know the city—Vscriathjadze, they’re telling me it’s called—has not fallen into enemy hands, and we may approach without fear of attack.

The steep brae shawls itself around us; the grade is only just recumbent enough to prevent our calling it a cliff, and covered in a blazing new green, right down to the water. There are no waves, and the surface barely heaves against the shore. Mountains with green sides, and Vscriathjadze sits in a narrow groove between them. I’m glad to see mountains again, surprisingly glad.

The harbor is like a huge loophole in the rock; we must pass through a narrow gap like an inverted triangle to enter it. Drawing near, I see the stone is unnaturally smooth, with many small marks of human work there, peering out from fronded mats of fern and quivering vines. On top of the outer enclosure to the harbor perch two towers of heavy gneiss with elongated eaves, and a man emerges from one of these waving small flags. Saskia’s voice resonates from the bridge. Our ships’ huge grasshopper legs slow, nearly stopping, and the stacks begin to vent steam. The man high above us goes away, and presently a small launch chugs out of the gap and pulls up alongside with the pilot. He’s a boxy yellow man in a quilted jacket, who tugs his cap’s visor at us, eyes flitting from face to face in search of the one to whom his deference is chiefly due, and bows a little at the waist. Nikhinoch accompanies him to the bridge, and in time we begin to advance smoothly through the gap. Why didn’t he come out to meet us earlier, when we were threading that maze at the estuary’s mouth?

The harbor is as steep as a chimney, and completely paved. We’re in a vast mortar cone, hundreds of yards across, with straight and switchback stairs cut into the sides. The circle of sky over us is confused by a jumble of crane arms, dangling chains and ropes. The docks radiate from a curved platform against the wall opposite the opening. As we pass through the gap, I look up at a narrow strip of satin blue, and little curds of dense cloud racing across it.