“Will you?” she asked mildly.

Umbo was annoyed at her doubt. “If I don’t,” said Umbo, “it’ll be because I’m dead.”

“I wasn’t doubting your word,” said Auntie Wind, amused but kind. “I didn’t understand you to have so much precision in your movement in time.”

“It’s fairly recently acquired,” said Umbo. “But now, yes, I can place myself in time with some exactness, especially if it’s near a time where I remember having been. Like now.”

“Then I will wait here,” said Auntie Wind, “though it’s dry and hot and you have many days’ travel ahead of you.”

Let her think what she will, Umbo decided. He had no interest in taking days to find Loaf. He had the knife, which was also a “phone”—a communicator that could call for the Larfold flyer. So he walked only a mile from the shore before the flyer came to him. He didn’t bother making it find a landing spot; it lowered a ladder and he stepped onto it and waited as it drew itself—and him—upward through the floor of the vehicle.

Thus it was not even nightfall on the same day when Umbo came to the settlement between folds where Loaf trained soldiers for Umbo’s army. It was inconvenient that whenever Umbo arrived there, he was treated as king. Fortunately, he had refused to allow much folderol to develop, because, as he pointed out, Param was the reigning Queen-in-the-Tent, and he was merely King Consort. So the greetings were only a distraction as he searched for Loaf; there were no time-consuming visits to be paid for protocol’s sake.

He could hear Loaf barking orders to a field of clumsy oafs trying to master the use of the short spear. Apparently these were town-born recruits, because they didn’t even know the rudiments of quarterstaff and staff fighting that any child in Fall Ford would know just from rough play with the other children. Even privick girls learned how to defend themselves with the quarter, even if the full staff was too long for them to do more than vault streams with it.

Loaf would not be happy to be interrupted, so Umbo didn’t interrupt him. There was no urgency—Umbo had taken the flyer out of laziness and a desire not to expend more of his own life in meaningless walking, not because there was any time pressure. No matter how long this errand took, he would return to Larfold at the time he promised, or earlier.

Loaf noticed him right away, but Umbo deliberately looked off in another direction, then sat on the ground, sending a clear signal that he did not intend to interrupt. Loaf nodded to him, then returned to his work.