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in a fog like a blanket, remember? Those peaks up there are all full of holes andcaverns, so I’ve heard. And you never see any young ones at the Talons, so they say. Certain the big ones gather up there, though. Other things, too, from what I hear tell.’
    ‘What other things?’ Thrasne drew nearer, drawn by something mysterious in his tone.
    ‘There’s Talkers and Writers up there.’
    ‘Now, owner Blint! Are you joshing me?’
    ‘Well now …’ The old man squinted against the sun, moving along the side to assist a boatman who was thrusting against a toothy rock. When he came back panting, holding his chest, he sighed. ‘I’m trying to remember what it was I heard about that. My old owner told me. He was a flier watcher, he was, and he said there was two kinds of fliers.’
    ‘Sure.’ Thrasne laughed. ‘Big ones and little ones.’
    ‘No, no. Two kinds of big ones. He said the kind that nested up there on the Talons could talk. And write.’
    Thrasne could not help himself. He sniggered. ‘Like in the stories about when men came to Northshore, owner Blint? Talking fliers?’
    Blint shook his head reproachfully. ‘I didn’t say I believed it, Thrasne. I just said that’s what he told me. According to him, there’s some people up there, too. They live there, to talk to the fliers.’
    ‘Where did he hear that?’
    ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’ Blint seemed vague, clutching his arm as though it hurt him, disinclined to discuss it further.
    They came through the straits without incident and tied up at Shfortown. Blint started to move a bale of pamet, gave a startled exclamation, and fell down. He breathed hard for a moment, cast a frightened look at Thrasne, and lost consciousness.
    ‘Plank aboard,’ called Thrasne in a calm voice.
    ‘We just got here,’ grumbled a boatman.
    Thrasne whispered to him imperatively, nodding at the pier where several Awakeners walked, and the man moved to pull the plank aboard. Two other boatmen carried Blint below as Blint-wife lamented. They moved quickly out onto the tide.
    ‘Sorry, Thrasne,’ mumbled the boatman. ‘Wasn’t thinking. You think he’s too bad?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Thrasne murmured. ‘Just I’ve been watching him. He keeps clutching his heart as though it hurts him …’
    Blint regained consciousness only for a few moments, learned they were well out in the River, gripped Thrasne’s hand gratefully, and died. They put him into a small net with ballast stones and dropped him in the deepest part of the current while Blint-wife sobbed.
    When she had had time to steady down, Thrasne went to the owner-house with Blint’s document.
    ‘Blint asked me to look after you,’ he said, seeing the fear leave her face a little as he said this. He and Suspirra had thought it out, this approach, after Suspirra told him Blint-wife was afraid.
    ‘I agreed to do it, Blint-wife. He wanted me to take over as owner.’
    ‘You!’ she screamed. ‘You, boy! You nothing boy we picked up from the rocks! Why not me, who was his wife these thirty years? Hah? Tell me that?’
    He let her rage, saying nothing, until his silence weighted her down and she quieted, lips trembling.
    ‘Because the men won’t obey you, Blint-wife, and you’ll not be able to find others who will. If you take the
Gift,
soon she’ll be against a rock in quick-River with none to fend her off. And if you sell her, you’ll not get enough to keep you for your life. But if I’m owner, I promised Blint I’d set you safe ashore and bring payment to you each time the
Gift
comes round. Enough to live on and be well cared for. So, that’s what Blint planned, and I promised. Unless you have some better plan.’
    Which she didn’t. The only thing she cried about then was the possibility of falling into the hands of the Awakeners, but Blint had thought even of that.
    He had written: ‘There’s secret groups in most towns call themselves Rivermen – not boatmen, they’ve had nothing to