The two women gaolers took her in, making jokes with the two soldiers. These were, Mara knew, clever, surviving women, and she wanted to trust them. She decided she would: after all, she had no alternative.

She asked them if they knew any medicine for aborting a baby. She was whispering, so even the walls could not have heard. They were not surprised. Whispering, one said that if they were found out it would be the death sentence for both of them, and the other that they must be well paid.

Mara put her hands up under her robe, to untie a gold coin, then saw she was ridiculous: with one movement they could fling up her robe and see the cord of coins. She untied the cord and brought it forth. Twenty-two. She offered them one. First one, then the other tested it. Then they asked for another. She gave them another. All three knowing that they could have taken everything, there was a moment when Mara despaired and she believed that they were being tempted. But they said, "All right, put it back." And she tied the cord again, where it had been.

It was lucky, they said, that she was the only woman in the gaol, because otherwise it would have been too much of a risk. Then they joked that it was more usual for them to be asked for drugs to increase fertility, and this was their reputation, which made it easier for them to help Mara.

They gave her bitter drinks, which she had to get down her as hot as she could bear. This was for three days. Then, on the fourth, very late at night, they put her on a pallet on the floor, and got to work on manipulating her stomach. She felt those long knowledgeable fingers probe deep, through her flesh, seeking out her womb, looking for the child — finding it. The pain was intense and she fainted, and came to, and the fingers still probed and pushed. Both women kept their gaze on her face, and when they saw that she really could not bear any more, gave her another potion.

Towards morning she felt the warm rush between her legs.

"Do you want to see it?" one asked, and Mara caught a glimpse of a tiny creature in its bloody mess. She felt the most terrible pang in her heart — a knife would have been kinder — and shook her head for them to take it away. She was sorry she had said she would look.

"Three months," said one, and the other, "Could be even a few days more?"

So Meryx's child was alive when Mara saw it. When it was dead one of the women crept out into the savannah — for the prison was on the edge of the town — and when she returned she said briskly, "That's done."

Mara was thinking, I've chosen between Meryx's baby and Dann. And then, No, that's foolish. No baby could survive a boat journey in this heat. That was no choice.

The two women made her sleep, and woke her to say that Dann had arrived at the magistrate's court in good time to claim her. But there was a problem. He seemed ill. Mara knew he was not ill; it was his terror that made him ill. She knew what it had cost him to go and confront the soldiers that stood guarding the court. She could feel little Dann's fear in her own nerves, see his face, for that moment little Dann's face.

"He has been told that you have miscarried," said the soldier who brought the message.

Before Mara was released she again drew the two women into the very centre of a large room, and whispered that she needed to change a gold coin, or if they could, two. And they said, "Two. One each. But we shall not be giving you the full value. It's dangerous for us." She gave them two coins, leaving nineteen in the cord, and she got back a mass of the light, trashy-looking coins in exchange. About half the value, she judged, but did not blame them. This change she put into her sack, and thanked them both, and said she would always remember them, which was true. And they embraced her and wished her well.

Dann was in a guest house, waiting for her. He was not ill, but he was frightened still, and haunted, and when Mara thanked him for coming to rescue her he burst into a terrible sobbing, and clung to her — almost little Dann, but not quite, for there was a hardness and obstinacy there, adult, responsible, and his voice, "Mara, if I'd lost you..." was far from little Dann's.

"Or if I'd lost you," she said.

These two were not in the habit of physical affection, but now they sat close together on the bed, arms around each other, resting and quiet.

At peace, that's what they were; and Mara felt the tension go out of his body, and her own.

A brave thing that was, what he had done. She knew that soldiers, guards, the police, turned him to water. To have made himself walk into that courtroom — what was it she could do that was anything like as brave? But then she did not fear standing in a court, to be judged: that is what tormented him. She knew it, but did he? And then, the two men, two men.

She dared, "The two men who came to arrest us back in that other town." And waited for him to say, "No, not two, one man." But he only searched and searched her face with his eyes.

"Mara, I know you don't believe me, but there is somebody after me. I've seen him."

"Who, Dann, who is it?"

He only let his head fall on her shoulder, with a groan.

She said, "If you hadn't come to claim me they would have taken me for their breeding programme."

"I know, they told me." And then he said quietly, almost humbly, and smiling, "Mara, I think it would be better if you didn't let yourself get pregnant again."

They had two days to rest in. She was still a little weak, but was herself: she had not felt anything like herself yet on this journey. He ate a lot, and they walked together around and about this most pleasant river town. They were watched by agents from the magistrate's court, and when they caught the upriver boat the agents went with them. This was to make sure, even now, that they were neither of them ill. Mara had been told by the women gaolers, and Dann had been told, for everyone talked of it, how much epidemics were feared. Terrible diseases arrived in the River Towns, for no reason, made people ill or killed them and then disappeared, for no reason. The river sickness everyone understood, and they did not fear it. Its symptoms were always the same: the sufferers shook and shivered and ran high fevers, and then a lull, and then another attack: lulls and fevers, and sometimes people died, and sometimes not. In every house were medicines for the river sickness, but there was none for these new diseases, if they were new. There was talk among the old people that this was not the first time illnesses had swept along the river, and disappeared.

When two days later the boat went in to the shore for the night, where this river joined the main one, which was called Cong, it was already dusk and so they did not see until morning that if the river they were leaving had made the first one they embarked on seem like a creek, so now that river, which had been so large and powerful, seemed a mere preparation for what they gazed at. They walked down from the inn, still watched by Goidel agents, since this was where Goidel sovereignty ended, to yet another boat, a much larger one, waiting at a pier where boats of all sizes were tied. The river was so wide that the birds in the trees on the other bank were white dots and the trees were a little, low fringe. From this bank it could be seen that on this river were still many kinds of palm, but there were big, green trees, and some like green hands pointing up, covered with thorns. Along the sides of the boat were oars, but they were at rest, lodged in their supports, because this boat was propelled by a device that used sunlight, concentrated and focused on to a slanting square of material that had a dull shine. The secret of this use of the sun had been lost long ago, and so precious was the device — very few were left now — that guards protected it, day and night. Dann, to find a way of travelling free, offered himself as a guard. The owner of this boat, and the navigator, was Han, an elderly woman as lean and dry and brown as a tree trunk, and as wrinkled. She looked long at him, and finally nodded. Dann inspired confidence. He did not have that ease and openness that people have who have never experienced treachery, so it must be, thought Mara, that his many skills and aptitudes were evident in his expectation that he would be accepted. He also offered to cook the midday meal, or to serve it. And he would travel free. The voyage would take a month. They were going on this stage farther than all their travelling from the Rock Village. Mara paid out three of her gold coins, from the nineteen she had left. Now she had sixteen. There were about a hundred people on this boat, some of them from as far as Chelops, some from the first River Towns they had passed. She felt she must know these faces, that they were familiar, and saw how Dann's eyes went from one face to another, slow, concentrated, memorising each one.