Giddon dropped to the floor of the deck, his face buried in his hands. When, a moment later, Hava lowered herself beside him, there was no way to pretend he wasn’t sobbing.

She was quiet, waiting until he was over the worst of it.

“Did they show her to you?” he finally said when he was quieter, numb.

“Yes.”

“What did it mean?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t mean anything, beyond what we saw. We can’t even know if it’s true.”

“But it was her. They saw her! We need to find them and talk to them again,” he said. “As soon as possible.”

“Giddon,” said Hava, in a low, heavy voice. “She was drowning. Do you really want the silbercows to show you the story of her drowning?”

“Yes,” he said, his tears starting up again helplessly. “Because then we’re there, witnessing it, and it’s less like she was all alone.”

—

Later, as the light began to turn to pinks and golds, a long isthmus came into view far ahead. It formed a bridge to a spreading mass of forests that Giddon, remembering his maps, realized must be the beginning of the rest of the Torlan continent. He was looking across an isthmus at the nation of Kamassar.

“Torla’s Neck,” he said out loud, forming a new understanding of the name of the Keepish province that connected the continent’s head to its body.

“Where’s the Cavenda house?” Hava asked Nev. “Do you know?”

Nev flashed sudden, surprised eyes at Hava. “It’s at the top of the isthmus,” she said, “very near the border to Kamassar. We’re too far away to see it from here.”

“Have you been there?”

“No, I’ve never seen it, but Torla’s Neck isn’t big. Everyone knows where the rich people live. Why are you asking about the Cavenda house?”

“Have the silbercows shown you the picture of the explosion?” Hava said. “With the house?”

Nev was quiet for a beat, turning her face away so Giddon and Hava couldn’t see. “Is the house in the silbercow image the Cavenda house?” she finally asked.

“We think it might be,” said Hava.

“Is it their airship? Their doing?”

“We don’t know. We think it might be.”

“Mmph,” Nev said, an obscure, but plainly dissatisfied, sound.

“What?” demanded Hava.

“I may have abandoned a friend in a time of need,” she said.

—

The Mail crew landed at an airship dock on a cliff above a rocky beach, near a cluster of buildings at the edge of a pine forest. A man came running from the closest building, waited for one of the flyers to shoot an anchor into the landing web, then fed them a dock line.

“The post office is here,” one of the Mail crew said, lowering the ladder. “After we deliver our mail, we can drop you closer to where you live, if there’s a dock.”