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to the priestess, uncertain what to make of her. “What am I, then . . . Eshe, is it? My mother spoke of a priestess named Eshe, though I don’t remember much.”
    “I remember your parents. Looking at you, I knew you at once for their son. You have your mother’s intellect, your father’s contrariness. But any gifts from them are dwarfed by the gift of Qiangguo’s Heavenwalls. You are power, Innocence. The kind of power that wizards and warlords will want to claim.”
    “And you want to claim me instead?”
    She raised a hand. “Hardly. I might want to employ you someday. But most of all I want you and your parents somewhere safe. Where you won’t become the trigger for a war.”
    Innocence laughed. “You think very highly of me.”
    “I know the eye of a storm when I see it.”
    “I am my own man, priestess. Let me be.”
    “All right. For now. I will stay with the village priest and argue about the liturgical calendar to keep myself warm. But I will be back.”
    “Do what you want. You have no hold on me.” He hesitated. “My parents . . . they are both alive?”
    Eshe studied him as she rose. She nodded. “So my sources tell me.”
    “Are they looking for me?”
    “I suspect so. They are heading west, haphazardly, aboard a frequently crashing flying craft. It may be many months before they reach you.”
    “That is as it will be.” He spoke as a Kantening might, but as he rose, he bowed in the manner of Qiangguo, remembering how Walking Stick had taught him to respect his elders. Eshe surprised him by bowing likewise, with no self-consciousness, here in a room of the Outer World.
    As she exited the Rat, Eshe glanced at the sky and back into the room. “I think this may be a break in the weather,” she told them all.
    A number of men took her advice and returned to their homes or shacks. Before long the Rat was sufficiently emptied that Nan and Freidar made noises about closing up, and their ward was too occupied with plates and bowls, mugs and knives, to worry about Eshe of the Fallen Swan. Below the surface of his thoughts, however, memories shifted like horses that had fallen asleep beneath the snow.
    At some point Nan steered him to his straw-covered shelf by the stove. She covered him in a blanket. He tumbled into the deep sleep of cold nights.
    He dreamed he hovered over the jagged contours of Fiskegard, the island and the snowfall patchily illuminated by a cloud-veiled moon. He floated far above the sea, yet the sound of surf beat in his ears like slow thunder. Looking around he saw translucent waves glowing silver all around him, as though a second ghost-ocean had manifested far above the first. He could still see the ordinary world, but this spectral sea stretched wide all around. Its waves slammed into some unseen headland, scattering into starry droplets.
    “Aiya,” he swore. “What is this place?”
    He did not expect anyone to answer, but someone did.
    “You drift within the Straits of Tid.”
    He saw a ghostly beast like a dolphin with a horn such as unicorns were said to possess. The horn resembled an icicle and the body a patch of star-speckled darkness. Upon it rode a young woman in battle gear. She bore a spear and roundshield and wore a byrnie of gleaming steel. Her helmet was a round cap with a spectacle guard masking much of her face, though he saw her braided red hair and the icy blue of her eyes. She looked older than him, sixteen perhaps, though her voice had a hint of childish laughter in it that made him wonder.
    Dreaming—if such he was—made him bold. “That’s not very informative,” he said. “And if I ask you your name, will you say you are the Rider of Zot or the Guardian of Zed or the Slayer of Zeep?”
    “Tid means ‘time,’” she said. “You drift upon the edge of the Straits of Time, where its waters wash the rocks of the present. And I have taken the name Beinahruga, though you can call me Cairn.”
    “Charmed.”
    “And you?”
    “You may call