"North. Move North now before you have to. Up there they say there is water and plenty of food."

But it was too much for them, even those who knew what Mara thought, and had heard her pleas before, and they were leaving the room, not looking at her, exchanging little smiles.

Dann said to Mara, as if they were alone and all the others irrelevant, that she must be awake very early, and he would come to pack with her. He apparently did not notice that the Kin ignored him as they left. Only Orphne embraced him, told him to be careful and remember that poppy did not suit him.

Meryx and Mara did not sleep.

While Mara and Dann packed their sacks, Meryx watched. He was pale and seemed ill.

Into the very bottom of Mara's sack went the ancient robes she and Meryx had worn last night: "wedding robes" — she said she would remember them like that. Then the one brown garment they had left. A green house dress and a blue one: Meryx would not let her leave them behind. Light shoes. Trousers and tunic — Meryx's — that she had been wearing outside. A clean slave's robe. Matches. Soap. A comb. Salt. Flaps of flat bread. Dried fruit. A small skin of water, in case she and Dann were separated.

In Dann's sack was a spare slave's robe. Loin cloths. The same provisions. The top of his sack was filled with the old can, which held clean water from a good well. The robe he wore was the one he had arrived in, and he said it was a good thing it was stained and old. He had his eleven gold coins pushed well down into the bottom of his knife pocket. Mara too had on the robe she had come in. Orphne had sewn into it a new knife pocket: she had wept doing it. In that was a knife in a leather sheath. Mara had on her head a little woollen cap.

Meryx said angrily that if he had met her like this in the fields, he would have ordered her never to wear that disgraceful old rag again. His voice was thick with tears.

A message came from Candace that she wanted to see Mara before she left.

Mara found her staring at the map whose upper parts were all white — the Ice.

Candace said, "Mara, you are an obstinate woman. And you don't seem to realise you have put me in a position where I must either keep you here by force or let you go off into such terrible dangers."

Mara was silent. She saw, to her surprise, that Candace was not far off tears. She was thinking, Then I suppose she does care for me.

"And you are unfeeling. You don't mind that Meryx will be unhappy and that we shall miss you."

"I know that I shall be thinking of you all."

Candace's laugh was a sad little sound. "You may think of us, because you know us and how we live. But we will not be able to think about you — where will you be? And how will you be?"

And now she was weeping. Mara dared to approach her, and take her in her arms. A frail thing, she was, this formidable old woman, who ruled her tribe with such authority.

"It is a terrible thing," whispered Candace, "you can't imagine how terrible, watching your family get less, slowly disappear." She recovered herself, pushed Mara away and said, very bitter, very angry, "People risked their lives for you. Gorda — the others. The two precious children... And you don't care about that." And on her face was clear to see how her words, her thoughts, were betrayed by what she was seeing: Mara in her travelling clothes, and Dann, as she thought of him.

"Well," said Mara, "no one has yet explained why we are so precious. And who thinks so? — you do." She knew this was brutal: Candace's face showed it. "You are the Hadrons' slaves. And whatever Dann and I were once — then all that is under the sand in Rustam. And if we are so precious, then the important thing is that we survive. And we are not going to agree about that, Candace, are we?"

Candace sat silent. The distance between them was very great. Mara thought wildly that she should again put her arms around the old woman, to make up for what she had said; but what she saw on Candace's face was too bad to be softened by hugs, kisses — even tears.

Candace reached out for a leather bag that lay near on a table. She gave it to Mara. It had in it some light coins, easy to change. Candace said, "And now go. And if you know of someone coming our way, send news of yourself, tell us how you are."

Mara said, "Candace, no one travels south, no one. Don't you understand?"

On the verandah Meryx and Mara stood in each other's arms, feeling how the wet of their tears tried to glue their cheeks together, and not knowing if the trembling was their own or the other's. Dann leaned against a pillar and looked out into the early light: the sun was rising behind the house and throwing great shadows westwards.

Yesterday Dann had gone to find the depot where Felice, who had brought them to the cliff above Chelops, was to be found — or they hoped she was, for there were rumours she was leaving Chelops to go North. Mara let Dann go alone: she did not dare to be seen by the Hadrons, who must know by now that she had told them a lie, and would be looking out for her, to take her for their harem.

Dann had found Felice working on her machine. "It's you," she said. "So you don't like being a slave. And the other one, your sister?" Because of his surprise she said, "Not many secrets now in Chelops — not enough people left to absorb secrets. But I must confess it took me some time to connect that poor little lad with the new boss woman in the Mahondi quarter."

"We want to go North. How much?"

"How far?"

"The River Towns."

"If you stop there you'll have to move on again. They aren't doing too well either. You'll see for yourself, because I have to make a landing to refuel. If you give me two gold coins for each of you I'll take you to where you can get on to the big river. You can go a good long way on that. But you'll have to be here just after sunrise tomorrow."

Dann agreed.

"This is my last trip. There's nothing for me here, and Majab is finished."

When he returned to tell Mara, she said, "When Felice picked us up — when she landed on the road because she saw us down there — it was because her orders were to collect any stray travellers, by themselves, and tell them some lie, and then take them to the Hadrons. Why do you think she won't cheat us now?"

"Four gold coins," said Dann. "Besides, she didn't cheat us last time."

"She might take the four and sell us to somebody else."

"But she didn't bring us right into Chelops, did she? And she told us to avoid it. She warned us."

"We don't have any choice, I suppose."

In the running chair, Mara held her sack, Dann his, and each clutched two coins. Their knives lay beside them on the seat.

They reached the depot as the sun did. Felice was standing in a pose that surprised them, because she was rigid, staring at something on the ground, as if she had seen a snake and was afraid a movement might provoke it to strike. Mara was thinking, When I first saw Felice she seemed to me a wonder in her blue working suit, with her clean face and nice hair. But now compared with the Mahondi women she seems shabby and tired. Then she saw what Felice was staring at but could not at first understand.

Under the skimmer and around it were a dozen or so yellow balls, the size of sour fruits, or Mara's fist, and they glistened and were fresh and without dust, because they were inside a webbing or net of thick slime, like saliva. They were vital and alive, these balls: they seemed to pulse, and as the three watched, one cracked open and out crawled a pincer beetle, and it sat in the mess of its egg and slime resting from the effort of getting out. These were eggs, the eggs of a pincer beetle. And then they saw the beetle itself, half concealed by a wheel of the skimmer, its yellow body, the colour of its eggs, vibrating as out of its back end emerged slowly, one by one, more of its eggs. The great black pincers, the size of its body, stretched in front of it, and its black eyes stared at the three. The newly hatched beetle was crawling up a wheel; other eggs were cracking open, and a swarm of baby beetles were struggling free of the slime. Another reached a wheel.