“I think you’re right, sir,” said Umbo. “And now will you let me give you back this fenten, not as fare, but for you to buy a few rounds of ale for my crewmates, at a time you think it won’t interfere with their duty?”

“I will let you do that indeed, and tonight is that night, and they’ll raise a mug in your honor. I take it you don’t mean to be there yourself, or you’d do the buying.”

“My journey is long, and I’ll be setting out today, there still being many hours of light. And you see why you shouldn’t have paid me—I wasn’t there for the loading, and I won’t be here for the unloading either.”

“Now I see that you are a slacker,” said the pilot. “Now be off before I call you a generous man and other such names.”

Umbo left the small wharf with a light heart and a brisk foot, though it was strange to be walking on solid ground again. He had been so long in the company of Rigg or Loaf—or Param, who had spent the whole time before she proposed marriage disparaging him—that he hadn’t really known that he knew how to talk to a good man and be taken for a good man himself. His height explained them taking him for a man now, but as for the “good,” Umbo had earned that himself. He had been so long treated like nothing that he had started half-believing it himself.

Well, no. He knew, in some rational part of his mind, that he fully believed he was nothing without anyone having to treat him very badly at all. And he knew why. If he hadn’t fallen hopelessly in love with a princess, and spent hours noticing all the ways he was beneath her, he might not have been so prickly and taken offense at everything that could possibly be construed as looking down on him. Now he understood that. But he also knew himself well enough to be pretty sure that when and if he got back with Rigg and Param, he’d still be prickly, even if he tried not to show how easily offended he was.

He did stop for a quick meal and some provender for the journey. He’d be doing no trapping. As often as he had watched Rigg set traps, Umbo still had no idea where to set them. Rigg knew the paths the animals used. Umbo would just be setting a trap in some random place, and he was sure that animals would only stumble on his traps out of pity, they’d be so ill-situated.

The travel was not as hard as he feared, but harder than he hoped. There were tracks and traces in the woods, and once a fair reach of fields that the farmers consented to let him walk through—half a day’s journey, passing through open ground without brambles and branches trying to leave scars all over his body.

He got to the base of Upsheer not far from the falls, and he was pretty sure that Kyokay had not fallen yet. The trouble was, it might happen tomorrow, and it might happen next week, and if he let his attention wander, the whole thing could happen while he was peeing or napping or eating.

Of course, if he missed it, he could always go back again. But then he’d have to deal with his own lazy self, sitting around getting in the way. Or he could just appear to himself at the right moment, telling himself to get a move on, it was about to happen.

Instead, he picked his way to a stand of trees with a good view across the river, and when a bunch of boys came to the river to swim, despite the cold water and the stiff breeze, he saw Kyokay among them.

Not so much among them as all around them, doing five stunts for every one that another boy tried. Why Kyokay didn’t die long before that fall from the cliff, Umbo couldn’t understand. He climbed everything, jumped off of everything, swam under or into or through any obstacle in the water, dove deepest and held his breath the longest. He leapt into the water backward, or deliberately splatted in a belly flop, or tried to turn multiple somersaults in the air when he jumped from the highest part of the bank. And it’s not as if he was particularly adroit. Kyokay must have hit his head half a dozen times, and one time he yelled for help when he got his arm caught in a floating log that he himself had just pushed free from its entanglement with the bank. Nothing taught him a lesson. Nothing made him more careful.

What will I be saving him for? thought Umbo. That boy is doomed to get himself killed.

But not on a day when I was charged with his safety. Especially when I now know that I probably helped to kill him. Or, to be more accurate, made it harder for Rigg to save him. Rigg had risked his life to get out to the perilous rock at the brim of the cliff, but Umbo had slowed time, and included Rigg in it, which was why the path of a long-since-fallen man turned into that very man, blocking Rigg from getting to Kyokay in time to save him. It was the first time Rigg had any notion that paths were really people or animals, and that when Umbo was slowing time for him, the past became solid, and Rigg could touch a man, and push him, or steal a knife from him . . .

And Kyokay had fallen while Umbo prevented Rigg from helping him, though he thought he was preventing Rigg from killing him. I judged too quickly, when I couldn’t really see what was happening. And not only did Kyokay die, I also came this close to getting Rigg killed by a mob in Fall Ford.

Then Umbo knew his whole plan, all at once. Bits of it had been nibbling at him during the whole voyage. Maybe Kyokay hadn’t been killed in the fall, maybe he only drowned in the turbulence of the water. So maybe Umbo could swim to him and help pull him out.

Or maybe Umbo would get drowned, too, and put an end to his miserable stupid life.

But now Umbo realized that he could do more than just swim out to drag whatever was left of his brother to safety. The very thing he had done to slow down time for Rigg, he could do to Kyokay as he fell. Slow down time so that Kyokay had time to think, to twist around in the air, to get ready for his collision with the water. It might make all the difference.

Once Umbo had learned how to shift time the way Rigg did, only without having a path to latch on to, he and everyone else had pretty much forgotten this much feebler ability that he had started with. But it might be just what he needed. And it was something Rigg couldn’t do, not even with the facemask: He couldn’t project his power to someone else that he wasn’t even touching.

If only Umbo could slow down Kyokay himself, so that he settled like a leaf to the water’s surface. But no, Kyokay would fall as fast as ever, and hit with the same momentum. The only difference was that the time of the fall would seem slower to Kyokay, giving him time to think.

Not that Kyokay was famous for thinking. But he was fearless. And maybe as he fell that fearlessness would allow him to prepare like a cat for the impact. Maybe.

Meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt for Umbo to use the time he had to practice swimming in the dangerous water at the base of the falls. Of course there was no swimming right under them—the bones would be pounded right out of his skin. But he could see just how close he might get. And he’d know how cold the water was, and where was the nearest bank, and . . .

And so off came the clothes, as soon as he was up by the base of the falls, and down into the water he went. He was no Kyokay—he didn’t just dive in. Good thing, too, because in the roiling water he could not see where there were submerged rocks. After he got to where he could open his eyes underwater, he realized: There are submerged rocks everywhere, and Kyokay is going to die.

No he isn’t. I will get him out of this water alive.

Because to Umbo’s surprise, it didn’t take him long to adapt to swimming there. The water was icy, but Umbo didn’t stay in it very long at a time, and he took care to dry off and warm up thoroughly before going back in.

What he learned was that if he slowed the perception of time for himself, he had plenty of time to orient himself under the water and sense the currents. If Kyokay was alive after he fell, then Umbo had a fair chance of getting him out of the water before he drowned.