Harris went aft. Gaby started to follow him, but Caster intercepted her. “Goodlady?”

“What is it?”

“You are one of them, aren’t you?” Up close, he tried to take in every detail of her, saw the subtle signs of wrongness about her. “A grimworlder.”

“Well . . . yes.”

“I’d like to speak with you. At length. About your world. Your history.”

She looked away, staring after the vanished Harris. After a long moment she met his gaze again. “I think I’d better not.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“You think I might misuse what I learned.”

“I think you might use what you learned. That’s just as bad.”

“A telling shot. We’ll talk later.” He watched her hurry after Harris.

Gaby paused outside Harris’ bunk and called his name.

There was no answer. She heard slow, regular breathing from beyond his curtains.

Asleep already. He usually wasn’t able to sleep so fast. He must have been exhausted by what he’d gone through. She cursed Caster Roundcap for delaying her. She went forward to her own bunk.

Harris heard her call his name. He waited, his eyes closed. Just go, he silently begged.

She did.

Now he knew, he finally understood, why she’d told him she didn’t want him anymore.

Because he was a man of good intentions.

But good intentions didn’t win fights. They didn’t get things done. They didn’t point toward the future. They didn’t save Jean-Pierre’s life. He’d let her down in ­every conceivable way.

He applauded her decision. Maybe she wouldn’t take too long to find someone else. Someone who didn’t screw up and get people killed. Someone like Alastair. Someone like Doc. It surprised him that he didn’t want to smash the face of whomever she chose. He wished her well.

He heard Joseph set up a chair a few steps aft. Wood creaked, even over the roar of the engines, as the giant settled.

It was the last thing Harris heard before sleep claimed him.

He awoke feeling no different.

He climbed out of his bunk. Joseph, still sitting, looked at him. There was no censure in his expression.

But then, Joseph didn’t have a whole lot of cause to be judgmental. Harris ignored him and went forward.

There was no one in the lounge. It was dark outside. He continued through the forward sleeping compartment and to the door into Jean-Pierre’s cabin. He walked in and closed the door behind him, shutting the world away.

He found the sofa by touch and settled into it. Ahead, through the bubble of a window, there were stars above, gray nothingness beneath. The stars looked far too opti­mistic; he decided that the nothingness was right.

Someone settled onto the couch beside him. He jumped about a foot.

“It is I.” Noriko’s voice.

“Oh, Jesus. You scared me.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m sorry, Noriko. I didn’t know you were in here.”

“I was not asleep. You have not disturbed me.”

“I came in here . . . I don’t know. I kind of half ­expected him to be here. Maybe his ghost. Pouring whiskey for everybody and smart-assing as usual.” He looked into the void of the sea. “Noriko, I killed him.”

“Angus Powrie killed him.”

“Yeah, but I could have stopped him. I just couldn’t figure out how in time.”

She leaned against him, resting her head against his shoulder. He was surprised by the closeness. He put his arm around her.

Her voice, when it came, was quiet, barely audible over the engines. “Jean-Pierre hunted Angus Powrie since he was a youth. He spent a fortune on investigators, on newsmen. They hounded Powrie all over the world. Powrie had to stay in hiding because of Jean-Pierre. When they found each other, one of them had to die. Harris, Jean-Pierre killed himself. He broke cover, he leaped upon his enemy instead of shooting him. He forgot in his ­anger that Powrie always incapacitates his victim with a blow to the groin. Powrie is expert at that attack; it is his favor­ite. Nothing you did could have saved Jean-Pierre. Nothing.

“But I will not lie to you. You did fail, in a way. You failed to make the best of Jean-Pierre’s death by avenging him. Perhaps he will not be too angry with you.”

“I hope not. I’d hate to have him chewing me out through eternity.”

She chuckled.

“How well did you know him?”

“He was my husband.”

“What?”

“We were married three years ago.” He heard her sigh. “It was not a good idea. He had lost the fiancée his ­father had picked for him. She was frail and prone to fits of despondency as pureblood princesses tend to be, and she leaped from a high cliff, though Jean-Pierre tried to catch her. He and I had been friends, sometimes lovers, and he turned to me in his grief . . . and stayed with me in his passion.

“But afterward, nothing changed. He chose not to make plans for the future. Not of life, nor home, nor children. After a year we decided to look different ways. But he would not let me divorce him yet.”

“Why not?”

“His father did not favor me as a match for the prince. Jean-Pierre took offense. He told me that one day they would pay me an immense bribe to cast him aside. He insisted that I accept. That way, he said, the insult would be avenged, and yet everyone would have what he wanted.”

“That sounds like Jean-Pierre.”

They rode on in silence for a while.

He asked, “Do you know if he liked me?”

“You did not know? Yes. He did. He liked the way you could talk to everyone. Ignoring rank. Ignoring concerns of light and dark and dusky. He liked it that you taught me.”

“I wish I could go back and just tell him, JayPee, I’m glad you’re my friend. And good-bye.”

“I, too. Harris?”

“Yes?”

“You should worry less about whether people like you.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe. Yes.” She sighed. “Promise me you will remember what I have asked.”

“Okay.”

Doc heard three clangs, the notes of a hammer on an anvil. They trailed off into the distance. He opened his eyes.

Joseph sat a few feet away, studying him. His face was as grave as ever, but there was some deeper sorrow in his eyes.

“Tell me,” Doc said.

Joseph told him. When he was done, Doc was silent a long moment. “Joseph, when you said that death followed in my wake, you were right.”

“I am sorry I ever said that.”

“Why?”

“Because it was wrong. Death does not follow you. It is ahead of you, Doc, like a line of enemies. Ahead of you because you aim yourself at it. You and your allies hurl yourselves at it to keep it at bay. You pass through it. Inevitably, one of you is caught. But I hate to think what things would be like if no one hurled himself at that line.”

Gaby woke feeling rested but, for once, not grateful for it. She’d prefer to sleep until the heaviness inside her went away.

She dressed in her new jeans—a little baggy, in the fashion of fair world men’s clothes, but a reasonable fit—and went back to the lounge. No one else was there. The sky outside the windows was just lightening with dawn; the eastern faces of high clouds were striped with ­orange sunlight.

She sat in her usual place and stared at the talk-box.

Time to stop relying on other people for everything. She closed her eyes. She tried to reach out for that fami­liar loneliness she’d felt twice before.

Slowly, the engines’ roar dwindled to nothingness. She felt a pressure grow behind her eyes and heard a static in her ears.

The static became voices. They blended and blurred into a mass of words. “Can’t authorize the when it sets sail not before the equinox operator help so there we were married your sister instead and came out soaking wet set aside some forest lands cost you eighty libs mi espada se rompio forty is the best you can when will you come . . . ” The pressure in her head grew greater but did not quite hurt.