Something shifted, decisively. It was obvious, suddenly, that this gathering would not allow the Crobuzoners to be murdered, even through the drawn-out pretense at mercy the Lover had suggested. It was obvious that the long, sometimes easy, sometimes cruel process of press-ganging would have to begin, and that many months of effort would be expended on the men and few women imprisoned below, and that eventually many of them would reconcile themselves to their new life, and some would not. The latter would remain imprisoned; and only eventually, after long efforts at persuasion, might they, perhaps, be executed.

"What’s the fucking hurry?" someone shouted. "Where you fucking taking us, anyway?"

The Lover gave in then, swiftly, with charisma; shrugging in exaggerated humility, she acquiesced, announced her order rescinded. She won a ragged cheer from an audience still eager to forgive a bad suggestion made in anger. She did not answer the heckler’s question.

Bellis remembered that moment later, and saw in it a fulcrum. That was the moment, she would tell herself in the weeks to come, that everything changed.

Vessels now too broken to sail hitched themselves to the city and were pulled on by the untiring avanc. It swam at a steady pace, without sudden darts or caprice, a little more than five miles an hour.

North.

The days were full of services for the dead: homages and homilies and prayers. Rebuilding began. Cranes twitched; the city bustled with subdued crews refitting the broken buildings, restoring what they could and changing what they could not. In the evenings, the pubs and drinking dens were full but quiet. Armada was not convivial, in those awful days. It was still bleeding, had not yet scarred.

People began to ask questions. Delicately, very carefully, they probed those wounds in their minds, tender places that the war had left. And when they did, terrible uncertainties arose.

Why did they come?people began to say to themselves and to each other (with shaking heads and lowered eyes). And how, across half a world, did they ever find us?

Can they do it again?

This slow, burgeoning spirit of anger and query raised wider issues than the war itself. Each question bore others.

What did we do to attract their notice?

What are we doing?

Where are we going?

With the days and insomniac nights, Bellis’ numbness began to ebb. She had spoken properly to no one-she had spent time with no one-since the battle. Uther Doul had done without her; she had not found Carrianne or Johannes. Except to rake through the rumors that proliferated like weeds, Bellis had hardly spoken for days.

On the second day after the fighting, she began to think. Something in her woke, and she viewed the damaged city with the first emotion she had felt for some time-a cold horror. Bellis realized curiously that she was aghast.