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over her shoulder and walk on.
    “Well listen, Miss No-Name, I don’t know what you were doing in Dorking, but when we are finished with this hunt, I’d advise you not to stay in the southern woods. Too many Rangers and hunters. Go north. They say there’s a place up there where scolds live in peace with mortals, and there’s no police. You could build yourself a life there.”
    This time, she seemed to be listening. “North,” he repeated. “Follow the birds in spring. I hear it’s a place on a hill, name of Edinburgh.”
    She frowned at the name, apparently trying to make sense of it. He repeated it. “Edinburgh.”
    “Adum-brae?” she managed.
    “Close.” He chopped the name up into palatable syllables. “Ed-in-burrow.”
    “Ad-um-brae,” she said again. He shrugged, pleased at least she had expressed fleeting interest in something he had said. “That’ll probably do. Adum-brae it is.”
     
    They saw the stone monument rising on the crest of the downs long before they spotted the multitude of figures that were ranged around its base. The hunter already knew what was there, and was ready for the inevitable shock, but the scold halted when she saw the throng of dead people positioned around the towering shrine, unmoving and devoid of any discernible human scent.
    He waved her on as his mule caught up. “Nothing to be afraid of. They’re not alive.”
    The scold stood stock still, and he trotted on through the thistles to where the first of the bodies stood rooted to the ground. Despite his reassurances, the place always instilled a sense of ill ease in him. The sloughed-off bodies of thousands of people who had gone air-side were perfectly preserved in a variety of poses around the vast marble statue. Some were running, some sitting cross-legged or kneeling in circles, others lying on the ground, wrapped in each other’s arms. Many just stood there, looking up at the skies to which their one-time occupants had ascended, leaving their skins – treated with chemicals against decay and the elements – here on Earth, a memorial to all those who lived and died before the promise of deliverance. Beneath them, Oriente knew, was a great burial pit, where the tens of thousands of bodies from London had been interred during the frenzied final years of the Exodus.
    The chemical treatment had prevented the bodies from rotting, but not from being annexed by nature. Some were almost entirely entwined in ivy, while others had faces blackened by moss and mildew, birds’ nest peeking from mouths that gaped open in joy. A half-hearted caretaker, underpaid and dispatched every few months from London, had scythed back the weeds from the figures closest to the statue, and even scrubbed one of two back to their original polish. The overall impression was nevertheless of a horde of vegetal zombies shambling toward the giant stone figure rising in their midst. As the mule weaved its way through the frozen crowd, Oriente glanced over his shoulder. The scold was skirting around the edge of the display, unsure what to make of the macabre assembly.
    He passed smiling, elderly grandparents now young and coltish in their off-world paradise: eternally sulking teenagers, happy families chasing a stuffed pet dog. There were at least three people mounted on embalmed horses. Some of the clothes had been improperly treated and had rotted, revealing glimpses of bare flesh beneath. In places, a figure had toppled and lay face-down in the long grass.
    Oriente reined in his mule at the foot of the stone plinth. It was bracketed by two giant feet belonging to the figure that soared above him. He craned his head, squinting in the light reflected by the off-white marble. Far above, the craggy stone face stared into infinity.
    “Hey Fitch,” Oriente said to the statue.
    The plinth, rising twenty feet above him, was scored with writing in dozens of languages, all bearing the same message:
     
    In memoriam
    To those who died.
     
    A