What will I do?thought Angevine. She kept thinking that she would go along to see what Tinnabol had for her… and then of course she remembered that he was gone. It was not that she missed him. He had been courteous and pleasant to her, but there had been no closeness. He had been her boss, and he had given her orders that she had obeyed.

But even that was an overstatement. He had not really been her boss. Her boss was Garwater-the Lovers. It was Garwater money that paid her wages, Garwater that had commissioned her, in the first days after her arrival, to serve the strange, muscular, white-haired hunter. And having disembarked from a ship taking her away to slavery, from a city where her Remaking had stripped her of rights, made her work a duty, to be told that she would be paid as if she were any other citizen had stunned her. It was that which had bought her loyalty.

And now Tintinnabulum was gone, and she was not sure what she would do.

It was hard, having taken pride in work, to be reminded that it did not matter what she did, so long as she labored, for money. Eight years of her history had sailed with Tintinnabulum and his hunters.

It was just a job,she told herself. Jobs change. Time to move on.

"Where are we going?" Bellis asked Uther Doul.

She had finally given in and asked him.

As she had expected, he did not answer her. He looked up at her question, then down again without a word.

They were in Croom Park, in an evening darkness stained with the colors and the strong smell of flowers. Somewhere nearby, an inbred nightingale sounded its attenuated song.

I want to know, Doul,Bellis felt like saying. There are ghosts clinging to me, and I want to know if the wind wherever we’re going will blow them away. I want to know which way my life is likely to turn. Where are we going?

She did not say any of that. Instead they walked.

A path was visible in the moonlight. It was rough, formed by footsteps rather than design. It wound up the steep slope of bushes and trees that rose above them, broken here and there by the remnants of architecture-railings and stairways, their shapes visible like optical illusions below the garden’s surface.

They climbed the incline onto the raised, tree-shadowed plateau that had once been the poop deck. It looked down over the ships of Curhouse, lit up with their traditional green-and-white lanterns. Bellis and Uther Doul stood in the darkness below the trees. The park moved sedately beneath them.

"Where are we going?" said Bellis again, and again there was a long time when all they could hear were the boat sounds of the city.