On the first stop at a town much larger and finer that any on the other river, they all walked close together, looking out for possible assailants, though the boatmen said these were peaceful people who welcomed travellers for the money they brought in. In this inn they could choose to sleep in a big communal room or in smaller rooms, and Mara and Dann managed to get one of these for themselves. They had not been alone for days, and now they were able to count what coins they had left and talk freely. In fact their supply of small coins was running low, and to change a gold one in inns such as these was out of the question: very likely these people would never have heard of such a thing outside of some tale, or legend. Now there was a bit of luck. One of the boatmen fell ill and had to be left behind. Dann offered to replace him, and so could travel free. He was in the middle of the boat, at the side, and Mara sat just behind him and watched him row. The blue outfit Felice had given him was much too hot, and he only wore a loincloth, like all the male passengers. Mara was watching the muscles work in that strong muscled back: a fine back, yes, but much too thin. All the travellers were losing flesh fast, they sweated so much, and it was too hot to eat. Mara held out her arm free of her sleeve and knew that if Orphne could see her and Dann she would be ordering them special food and rest. Meanwhile Dann was pulling his oar from sunrise to sunset. He was so strong, and so quick in learning everything, always ready to haul water out of the river for everyone to drink, helping people on and off the boat, making himself the best of the oarsmen, so that he could keep his job. At least, in the very middle of the river, the midges were absent. Mara watched the banks with their reeds and tufty palms glide past, and averted her eyes, and then shut them. She was feeling sick, longed to get off the boat and lie down. The dazzle on the water, even the regular splash of water dripping off the oars, made her queasy, and she more than once vomited over the side. On the bench beside her was a woman, who had not said much till then, but now she spoke very low, "You had better not let anyone know what you are carrying, if you know what's good for you." Then it was that Mara realised she was pregnant and thought that she after all had not had much confidence in Meryx's fertility, if she had to be told she was pregnant by this stranger. "There's plenty of people who'll make a grab for you if they know what you've got," this woman went on, and she took from her bag a fistful of dried leaves and said, "Chew these, they settle the stomach." Mara chewed, and they were bitter and dry, but her sickness stopped. This new friend, one of the last people to leave Majab, was Sasha, and she stayed in the seat near Mara, just behind Dann, and kept an eye on her, making her chew dry bread, and drink water, always more water.

When they landed that night she gave Mara a supply of the dried leaf and repeated that she should tell no one she was pregnant. There was no opportunity to tell Dann, because they were in a room with others. Next day Mara asked Sasha if she had a medicine for someone who slept badly, and offered a coin. Sasha took the coin, and gave Mara bark to put in water. She said, "Plenty of people sleep badly these days." As she watched Mara give Dann the water the bark had been soaked in to drink, her eyes were sad. Mara thought, If I asked her she might tell me a story worse than mine. Perhaps that's why we are frightened to talk to each other: we are afraid of what we might hear.

Next morning, as they were walking down to the boat, apart from the others, Mara told Dann she was pregnant, and asked if they might get off this boat so she could rest for a few days. He said, so low she could hardly hear it, that there was someone after him. "He was in the town where we changed boats. I saw him." Mara held him back, because he was already hastening to join the others, and said, "Dann, sometimes you imagine things. Are you sure?" He seemed to shrink and become little in her grip and he said in little Dann's voice, "He was the bad one, Mara." But she held fast, gripping his two arms and said, "Dann, don't do that." And, amazingly, he heard, straightened, shed little Dann, and looked straight at her, and said, "Mara, there were a lot of things that happened in the Towers you don't know about." And now he tried to smile, trusting her. "I'll tell you — some time. I hate thinking about that time." "You do think about it, when you are asleep."

"I know," he said, and pulled himself away and went ahead of her to the boat. If he heard her saying she was pregnant, he hadn't taken it in.

Mara suffered through the long, hot, damp days, the dazzle in her eyes being the worst torment; but Sasha supported her with herbs to chew, and bits of dry bread, and encouragement. "This is the worst part of being pregnant," she said. "Soon you'll feel well — you'll see." Mara could not be more than six weeks pregnant: a period had been scant, had started and stopped and started; another had been late, but she did not expect them to be regular — how could they be, when she had scarcely been a female at all, until a year ago? She wished she could let Meryx know, and kept seeing his bitter, miserable face on the night he had believed she had slept with Juba. If he knew — well, she could imagine how he would look: he would stand differently, taller; and a shrinking and diffidence, almost an apology, that was always in his face, his smile — all that would go. She imagined standing beside him, pregnant, her hand in his, telling the Kin this news, and how he would smile as they all rushed to congratulate him. How far away he seemed — and was; how out of reach — and he was; and yet her thoughts flew to him a hundred times a day and to all of them, in their illusory safe place.

Day after day she sat at touching distance behind Dann, watched his lean muscled arms pulling the oar, saw how his cheeks lost the fullness they had got from the Kin's good food. All day, with the sickness beating up in waves, with Sasha beside her, whispering, "Don't be sick. Don't let them see." How she hated this endless, gliding journey up the middle of the river that reflected blue sky, and sometimes slow, white clouds, and along its edges the reeds and bamboos and palm trees, while among the reflections often appeared the dark shape of a dragon, or the white grin as it propped its jaws open so that the little birds could clean its mouth. How she longed to stop, simply to stop moving; and then on the twentieth morning of this journey Dann woke feverish, and had to agree to stay behind when the boat went on. Now the faces of the people they had been with day and night for what seemed now to be a long time were those of friends, and Mara thought that without Sasha she could not go on. Without Sasha — well, she would have been reported to the authorities by now, and kept to wait for the arrival of the next slaver. She and Dann took a room in a little town, and both of them slept, and slept, he sleeping away his fever, she the nausea of movement. But she had to get up often to sponge off Dann's sweats, and hold water to his lips, making him drink, though it was bitter with Sasha's herbs.

In his sleep he muttered, "We must go on, Mara. He'll catch up with me." "Who, Dann, who?" Once he replied, "Kulik," but there were other names she did not know.

Mara became well quicker than Dann did, and trusting that it was true that the people in this town were friendly, as the innkeeper said, she went out into streets — rather, lanes — of mud-brick houses, and wandered through the town ignoring the people she met, and being ignored. She had seen from the room windows large buildings some distance from this town, and now she walked there, watching the low grass for snakes, and gratefully smelling the aromatic bushes that brushed against her. The clean, medicinal smell so appealed to her that she chewed some of the little leaves, not able to believe they were poisonous, and their effect was to make her hungry. The buildings were tall, six or seven levels, and of stone. There was no surface stone anywhere near, so there must be a quarry somewhere. When she reached the buildings she saw they were old, and it had been a long time since they had had roofs. No sign of a roof, or rafters, no fallen beams, just walls. There were signs of old fires, old scorch marks that had eaten into the stone so one might think the stones were black, and new fires, the ghosts of aromatic bushes that had burned where they stood inside the walls, each a little cloud of pale twigs and stems.