There were stories of intrusive spirits, browners or kelkin, fleeting invisibly through the city, moving things. Objects put down were discovered again inches from their place-in places where they might have been left, but had not been. Things that were dropped broke and then were not broken, and perhaps had not been dropped but waited on the side.

The Scar,Bellis thought with dull wonder. It’s bleeding.

The sea and sky became very suddenly dangerous. Rain clouds appeared and raged and very suddenly went again, not quite hitting the city, skirting it. The avanc dragged Armada through violent patches, where the waves were suddenly choppy and high, in a tightly circumscribed area, with gentle waters clearly visible to either side.

Tanner no longer swam, but only dipped himself daily. He was afraid to immerse himself for long. The sounds and lights from beneath the water were strong enough now that even those on the city above could hear and see them-ejections from unseen things.

Sometimes clots of the sentient weed passed by Armada, and sometimes there were other shapes on the waves-they moved and could not easily be identified, that looked at once organic, random, and made.

Still the Brucolac floundered and did not die. The deck below him was stained with his emissions.

Walking the decks and corridors of the Grand Easterly, over the quiet city noise Bellis heard faint and cryptic music. It was hard to trace, evanescing across frequencies, audible at random moments and places. She strained and made it out in snatches. It was ugly and uncanny: a web of halftones and minor chords, mutating rhythms. A dirge overlaid with plucked strings. On the second night she heard it, she was sure that it came from Uther Doul’s room.

The flotsam, the strange currents in the sea, and odd events in Armada grew more frequent and powerful as the avanc plowed on. When, on the fifth morning after the mutiny, something was seen bobbing within two miles of the city, no one was surprised. But when telescopes were turned to it, a great screaming cacophony of excitement began. The lookouts on the Grand Easterly barked for people’s attention and ran madly from room to room, looking for the Lovers.

Word swept the city with startling rapidity through every riding, and a great rush of citizens congregated in Jhour’s aft edge. A small aerostat set out overhead, over the treacherous currents, toward the speck that eddied closer and closer to the city. Those in the crowd were gazing out at it, sharing their telescopes and jabbering in incredulity as its outlines became clear.

Clinging to a ragged raft of wood and ocher canvas, staring up exhaustedly at his home, was Hedrigall the cactus-man, the renegade.

"Bring him here!" "What the fuck happened?" "Where’d you go, Hed? Where’ve you been?" "Bring him the hell here!"