"Well," continued Flenser, "I would like custody of what remains, I -"

"Never! That one was almost as smart as you, even if crazy enough to defeat. You're not going to build him back."

Flenser came together, all eyes staring at the Queen. His "voice" was soft: "Please, Woodcarver. This is a small matter, but I will throw over everything," he jabbed at the maps, "rather than be denied in it."

"[Oh, oh.]" The crossbow packs were suddenly at the ready. Woodcarver came partly around the maps, close enough to Flenser that their mind noise must collide. She brought all her heads together in a concerted glare. "If it is so unimportant, why risk everything for it?"

Flenser bumped around for an instant, his members actually staring at one another. It was a gesture Ravna had not seen till now. "That is my affair! I mean… Steel was my greatest creation. In a way, I am proud of him. But… I am also responsible for him. Don't you feel the same about Vendacious?"

"I've got my plans for Vendacious," the response was grudging. "[In fact, Vendacious is still whole; I fear the Queen made too many promises to do much with him now.]"

"I want to make up to Steel the harm I made him. You understand."

"I understand. I've seen Steel and I understand your methods: the knives, the fear, the pain. You're not going to get another chance at it!"

It sounded to Ravna like faint music, something from far beyond the valley, an alien blending of chords. But it was Flenser answering back. Pilgrim's translating voice held no hint of sarcasm: "No knives, no cutting. I keep my name because it is for others to rename me when they finally accept that… in her way, Tyrathect won. Give me this chance, Woodcarver. I am begging."

The two packs stared at each other for more than ten seconds. Ravna looked from one to the other, trying to divine their expressions. No one said anything. There was not even Pilgrim's voice in her ear to speculate on whether this was a lie or the baring of a new soul.

It was Woodcarver who decided: "Very well. You may have him."

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years — and not one of them could come near to this! He would have burst into song except that it would pain his passengers. They were already unhappy enough with his rough piloting, even though they thought it was simply his inexperience.

Peregrine stepped across clouds, flew among and through them, danced with an occasional thunderstorm. How many hours of his life had he stared up at the clouds, gauging their depths — and now he was in them, exploring the caves within caves within caves, the cathedrals of light.

Between scattered clouds, the Great Western Ocean stretched forever. By the sun and the flier's instruments, he knew that they had nearly reached the equator, and were already some eight thousand kilometers southwest of Woodcarver's Domain. There were islands out here, the OOB's pictures from space said so, and so did the Pilgrim's own memories. But it had been long since he ventured here, and he had not expected to see the island kingdoms in the lifetime of his current members.

Now suddenly he was going back. Flying back!

The OOB's landing boat was a wonderful thing, and not nearly as strange as it had seemed in the midst of battle. True, they had not yet figured out how to program it for automatic flight. Perhaps they never would. In the meantime, this little flier worked with electronics that were barely more than glorified moving parts. The agrav itself required constant adjustment, and the controls were scattered across the bow periphery — conveniently placed for the fronds of a Skroderider, or the members of a pack. With the Spacers' help and OOB's documentation, it had taken Pilgrim only a few days to get the hang of flying the thing. It was all a matter of spreading one's mind across all the various tasks. The learning had been happy hours, a little bit scary, floating nearly out of control, once in a screwball configuration that accelerated endlessly upward. But in the end, the machine was like an extension of his jaws and paws.

Since they descended from the purpling heights and began playing in the cloud tops, Ravna had been looking more and more uncomfortable. After a particularly stomachs-lurching bump and drop, she said, "Will you be able to land okay? Maybe we should have postponed this till — " unh! "— you can fly better."

"Oh yes, oh yes. We'll be past this, um, weather front real soon." He dived beneath the clouds and swerved a few tens of kilometers eastwards. The weather was clear here, and it was actually more on a line with their destination. Secretly chastened, he resolved to do no more joy-riding… on the inbound leg, anyway.

His second passenger spoke up then, only the second time in the two-hour flight. "I liked it," said Greenstalk. Her voder voice charmed Pilgrim: mostly narrow-band, but with little frets high up, from the squarewaves. "It was… it was like riding just beneath the surf, feeling your fronds moving with the sea."

Peregrine had tried hard to know the Skroderider. The creature was the only nonhuman alien in the world, and harder to know than the Two-Legs. She seemed to dream most of the time, and forgot all but things that happened again and again to her. It was her primitive skrode that accounted for part of that, Ravna told him. Remembering the run that Greenstalk's mate had made through the flames, Pilgrim believed. Out among the stars, there were things even stranger than Two-Legs — it made Pilgrim's imagination ache.

Near the horizon he saw a dark ring — and another, beyond. "We'll have you in real surf very soon."

Ravna: "These are the islands?"

Peregrine looked over the map displays as he took a shot on the sun. "Yes, indeed," though it didn't really matter. The Western Ocean was over twelve thousand kilometers across, and all through the tropics it was dotted with atolls and island chains. This group was just a bit more isolated than others; the nearest Islander settlement was almost two thousand kilometers away.

They were over the nearest island. Pilgrim took a swing around it, admiring the tropic ferns that clung to the coral. At this tide, their bony roots were exposed. Not any flat land here at all; he flew on to the next, a larger one with a pretty glade just within the ringwall. He floated the boat down in a smooth glide that touched the ground without even the tiniest bump.

Ravna Bergsndot looked at him with something like suspicion. Oh oh. "Hei, I'm getting better, don't you think?" he said weakly.

An uninhabited little island, surrounded by endless sea. The original memories were blurred now; it had been his Rum member who had been a native of the island kingdoms. Yet what he remembered all fit: the high sun, the intoxicating humidity of the air, the heat soaking through his paws. Paradise. The Rum aspect that still lived within him was most joyous of all. The years seemed to melt away; part of him had come home.

They helped Greenstalk down to the ground. Ravna said her skrode was an inferior imitation, its new wheels an ad hoc addition. Still, Pilgrim was impressed: the four balloon tires each had a separate axle. The Rider was able to make it almost to the crest of the coral without any help from Ravna or himself. But near the top, where the tropic ferns were thickest and their roots grew across every path, there he and Ravna had to help a bit, lifting and pulling.

Then they were on the other side, and they could see the ocean.

Now part of Pilgrim ran ahead, partly to find the easiest descent, partly to get close to the water and smell the salt and the rotting floatweed. The tide was nearly out now, and a million little pools — some no more than stony-walled puddles — lay exposed to the sun. Three of him ran from pool to pool, eyeing the creatures that lay within. The strangest things in the world they had seemed to him when he first came to the islands. Creatures with shells, slugs of all dimensions and colors, animal-plants that would become tropic ferns if they ever got trapped far enough inland.