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whisper.
    “Time to move,” he says.
    Ronan helps me up. My leg feels bloated, as if the gash is a weight hanging from my shin.
    “Leg okay?” Ronan asks.
    I grunt and limp forward, left hand on his shoulder as Farra’s is on mine. The tunnel’s blanket of darkness presses down on us, our footfalls my only points of reference.
    Ronan’s voice, pitched no louder than a breath, barely reaches me. “Stay with the line?”
    Farra grunts assent. The question puzzles me, but my brain is busy trying to hold its own muzziness at bay. A thought flutters into my consciousness and alights. “Where’s the jigger?”
    “In Vidya if we’re lucky,” Farra says. “Hush now. We’re nearly out of the tunnel.”
    It seems to get more rather than less confusing. “But it’s still dark.” 
    “It’s night.”
    The smell of brine reaches me and the sound of the sea is suddenly loud in my ears, its salt breath waking riffling tides in my memory. Wind flicks a strand of hair across my face. I’ve somewhere lost half a day.
    I’m still puzzling over it when Farra stops. The sound comes again: a voice. Another answers. Then nothing.
    Farra’s hand disappears from my shoulder. I hear a tiny rasp, steel against leather. My heart beats loud in my ears.
    As the minutes creep by, I begin to feel marooned in the night, an ocean of emptiness around me. What if there really was nothing? If we were the last people left, like Ronan and his family on Ister? How would it feel to discover that everyone you knew had abandoned you, left you for dead? How would it — my body jerks at the sudden sharp rattle of stones.
    Nothing moves. No one speaks. I’m not sure whether the darkness is enemy or ally. Either way, night will sooner or later tip over into day.
    When a hand closes on my shoulder, I flinch.
    “Easy, now,” Farra whispers. Figures loom towards us. Above the hill, the sky is beginning to sift into grey. My hands are shaking. I tuck them into my armpits. “It’s Brenon’s reinforcements,” Farra says.
    “Did they find anything?” Ronan asks.
    “Their campsite,” a new voice answers. “Is she all right? She looks ill.”
    With the words, my guts rebel. I bend double and heave. 
    “Concussion,” Farra mutters. When my retching is done he swings me onto his back, my injured leg braced by his forearm, locked beneath my knee. “Let’s get you home, lass.”

CHAPTER 6
    I recoil in the face of Marta’s announcement. “With Dunnett? But why?”
    Around the table, the governors’ faces are turned towards me expectantly. “There’s an old saying about not putting your eggs in one basket lest they’re all broken at once,” Marta says. “We need to broaden our options. As I said, Ness, you’re the obvious person to assist in deciding our approach.”
    “For developing trade with Dunnett,” I say flatly. Marta tips her head to one side as she watches me. “What about Ebony Hill?” I demand.
    She dismisses my concern with a flap of her hand. “The proposal doesn’t change our position in relation to our farm community. Considering new options is no judgement on the old.”
    “What does Truso think?”
    The flat line of her mouth answers that. Either he isn’t in favour or she hasn’t yet told him.
    “They’ll feel like they’re being sidelined,” I tell her. “Like you no longer trust them. Truso is finding things hard enough already. He —”
    “We didn’t invite you here to question our decisions.” Her voice is sharp. I swallow, taking on board the rebuke. “It’s your input in terms of approach that interests us.” She studies me. “Ness, you must realise that as Vidya’s governors, we’re obliged to consider the well-being of our community as a whole. We can’t ignore the fact that the farms are less secure than we’d like.”
    Marta is right. Given what Hetti has told us about the Paras, the governors would be remiss if they didn’t consider alternative sources of food. Still, I doubt