It took some time for the Hauph-woa to weave through a crowd of boats and tie up at a cramped wharf.

The jammed harbor helped explain the lack of upstream traffic.

Soon as the moorings were tied, Hauph-woa’s contingent of noor squalled and blocked the gangways, demanding their pay. Rumbling a well-pleased umble song of gratitude, the ship’s cook went down the row of black-furred creatures, handing out chunks of hard candy. Each noor tucked one sourball in its mouth and the rest into a waterproof pouch, then leaped over the rail to cavort away between bumping, swaying hulls, risking death by narrow margins.

As usual, the Stranger watched with a complex mixture of surprise, delight, and sadness in his eyes. He spurned a stretcher, and went down the ramp leaning on a cane, while Pzora puffed with pride, having delivered a patient from death’s door to the expert healers of Tarek Town. While Prity went to hail a rickshaw, they observed the hoonish crew strain with block and tackle, lifting crates from the hold, many of them bound from Nelo’s paper works for various printers, scribes, and scholars. In their place, stevedores gently lowered ribboned packages, all bound from Tarek for the same destination.

—Pottery shards and slag from urrish forges.

—Used-up ceramic saws from qheuenish woodcarving shops.

—Worn-out printers’ type and broken violin strings.

—Whatever parts of the deceased that could not be counted on to rot away, such as the bones of cremated humans and urs, hoonish vertebrae, g’Kek axles, and traeki wax crystals. The glittering dust of ground-up qheuen carapaces.

—And always lots of ancient Buyur junk — it all wound up on dross boats, sent to the great Midden, to be cleansed by water, fire, and time.

An urrish rickshaw driver helped them usher the injured man onto her low four-wheeled cart, while Pzora stood behind, holding the Stranger’s shoulders with two tendril-hands. “You’re sure you don’t need me to come along?” Sara asked, having second thoughts.

Pzora waved her gently away. “It is a short distance to the clinic, is it not? Have you not urgent matters to attend? Have i not our own tasks to perform? All-of-you shall meet all-of-us again, tonight. And our lucky patient will your fine selves perceive on the morrow.”

The Stranger’s dark eyes caught hers, and he smiled, patting her hand. There was no sign of his former terror of the traeki.

I guess I was wrong about his injury. He does acquire memories.

Maybe in Tarek we can find out who he is. If family or friends can be brought, they’ll help him more than I ever could. That evoked a pang, but Sara reminded herself that she was no longer a child, tending a wounded chipwing. What matters is that he’s well cared for. Now Pzora’s right. I’ve got other matters to attend.

The anarchic style of Tarek Town meant there was no one “official” at the dock to greet them. But merchants hurried to the quay, eager for their cargoes. Others came in search of news. There were rumors of horrible events up north and east. Of landings by frost-covered Zang ships, or whole towns leveled by titanic rays. Gossip told of a populace herded toward mass trials, conducted by insectoid judges from the Galactic Institute of Migration. One credulous human even argued with Jop, insisting the farmer was mistaken, since everyone knew Dolo Village was destroyed.

That explains why no boats came upstream, Sara thought. From Tarek, the intruder ship must have seemed to lay a streak of fire right over Sara’s hometown.

Rumors were a chief stock in trade of all harbors, but surely cooler heads prevailed elsewhere?

Prity signaled that all of Nelo’s crates were signed for, save the one she pulled on a wheeled dolly to be hand carried to Engril the Copier. Sara bade farewell to the other Dolo emissaries, agreeing to meet them again tonight and compare notes.

“Come, Jomah,” she told Henrik’s son, who was staring at the bustle and tumult of city life. “We’ll take you to your uncle first.”

Voices seemed subdued in the harborside market; the haggling was sullen, perfunctory. Most buyers and sellers did not even wear rewq while dickering with members of other races — a sure sign they were only going through the motions.

One shopkeeper, an elegant gray qheuen with intricate, gold-fleck shell decorations, held up two claw-hands and counted nine jagged toe-pads, indicating by a slant of her cupola that it was her final offer. The trader, a rustic-looking red, hissed in dismay, gesturing at the fine salt crystals she had brought all the way from the distant sea. While passing, Sara overheard the city qheuen’s reply.

“Quality or amount, what difference does it make? The price, why should you or I care?”

The answer shocked Sara. An urbane gray, indifferent over a commercial transaction? The locals must be in a state, all right.

As if we in Dolo were any better?

Townsfolk mostly gathered in small groups, gossiping in dialects of their own kind. Many of the hoons carried iron-shod canes — usually a perquisite of captains — while urrish tinkers, herders, and traders kept close to their precious pack beasts. Each urs carried an ax or machete sheathed at her withers, useful tools in the dry woods and plains where they dwelled.

So why did the sight make Sara feel edgy?

Come to think of it, many humans were behaving much the same, walking in close company, armed with tools suitable for chopping, digging, hunting — or uses Sara did not want to think about. The g’Kek populace kept to their apartments and studios.

I’d better find out what’s going on, and soon, Sara thought.

It was a relief when the tense market zone ended at the glaring brightness of the Jumble.

Till now, they had walked in shade, but here an opening gaped under the shelter-canopy. Once towering structures lay in heaps, their neat geometries snapped, splintered and shoved together, giving the place its name. Scummy fluid shimmered between the shattered stones, where oily bubbles formed and popped, relics of a time when this place was caustic, poisonous, and ultimately restoring.

Jomah shaded his eyes. “I don’t see it,” he complained.

Sara resisted an impulse to pull him back out of the light. “See what?”

“The spider. Isn’t it s’pozed to be here, in the middle?”

“This spider’s dead, Jomah. It died before it could do much more than get started. That’s why Tarek Town isn’t just another swamp full of chewed-up boulders, like we have east of Dolo.”

“I know that. But my father says it’s still here.”

“It is,” she agreed. “We’ve been passing beneath it ever since the boat docked. See all those cables overhead? Even the ramps and ladders are woven from old mulc-spider cords, many of them still living, after a fashion.”

“But where’s the spider?”

“It was in the cables, Jomah.” She motioned toward the crisscrossing web, twining among the towers. “United, they made a life form whose job was to demolish this old Buyur place. But then one day, before even the g’Kek came to Jijo, this particular spider got sick. The vines forgot to work together. When they went wild, the spider was no more.”

“Oh.” The boy pondered this awhile, then he turned around. “Okay, well there’s another thing I know is around here—”

“Jomah,” Sara began, not wanting to squelch the child, who seemed so much like Dwer at that age. “We have to get—”

“I heard it’s here near the Jumble. I want to see the horse.”

“The ho—” Sara blinked, then exhaled a sigh. “Oh! Well, why not. If you promise we’ll go straight to your uncle’s, right after. Yes?”

The boy nodded vigorously, slinging his duffel again.

Sara picked up her own bag, heavy with notes from her research. Prity wheeled the dolly behind.