The male hogs seemed in no haste to go south, so the tribe wasn't either. The women sung songs and wove cloth from gully silk. The children danced and shouted. The men courted the women, and hunted, and told tales, and laughed.

Four days later, Roake returned, a scrap of black in the pale blue dawn. He landed on her shoulder like a thunderbolt, shivering in the cold morning air. She pulled some meat out, and he gulped down the gobbets of flesh.

He carried a simple message: investigate the fire. She could taste the Crowmouth who had imprinted it, a friend called Linda. Abigail could imagine her gentle lips pursed as she whispered the words into Roake, and then released him from the crow tower into the sky.

Viss was sad to see her go, but not surprised. Nothing surprised Viss, who smiled like he always did, and mocked her, gently. This was why she liked travelling with him and his tribe. She had brought a gift to thank him, and she produced it: a pretty silver knife that glittered in the morning sun, which he laughed at and then tucked into his boot. In return he gave her a set of ironwood climbing hooks, made by his tribe in their fashion.

'Better than that townie rubbish that you carry,' he said.

She bowed, and accepted them, gratefully.

The clear sky had turned to cloud, and it was raining hard when she set off. It rattled on the roofs, and made the stone slick and shiny. She travelled at ground level, because in the wet it would be easy to slip and fall, and she did not want to die in some empty courtyard with only Roake and the tappers to watch her. So, with her hood up, and the water gushing down the gutters and dripping from the balconies, she made her way along a road that ran roughly north, towards the most recent fire that she had seen last night.

The tribe had explored some way around the hog hall, and the scouts had sketched out the ways for her on a great flat stone table in a long, low antechamber. Like all of the people of the endless city, she had ways of remembering directions, and she sang the song she had composed to remind herself as she walked.

'...skip four on the left, two on the right; if you see the pale arch you are doing it right...'

Roake fluttered from tower to tree to windowsill, and was quiet, even for him. She understood why; with the tribe, even when hunting, there had been the whisper and bustle of humans. Here, though, it was silent, with nothing but the lessening rain and the gentle wind for company. It felt like being in a prayer hall, or at a wake, and breaking the silence felt sacrilegious. As a Crowmouth, she was used to being alone, because this was her task; but the weight of the distance from home hung over her like a thunder cloud, and she felt tiny and reverent under it.

She was aiming for a tower that had seemed close to the smoke. Travelling in the city was slow, but having walked most of the day she managed to reach it without too many backtracks down blind alleys.

The rain had stopped, and the setting sun stained everything gold and spilled shadows across the lanes. It was cooling, and the night animals started calling to each other, gentle creaks and clicks in the dusk.

Carefully and quietly, she found an entrance to the tower and pushed the door open. There were steps, coiling upwards, lit only by narrow windows which darkened as she crept up. She passed three empty floors, each nothing more than a single bare room; and then a forth with a stone table and chairs; then two more, and then the stairs ended at the highest floor and it too was deserted.

She had been taught: always sleep as high as you can; animals don't like stairs. You can see for a long way. You can hear people stumble as they come up. But never sleep at the highest point of the highest tower because that is where people will go, keep below the window line so you can't be seen, and do not make fire because then you are a beacon in the darkness. And last and most important: never sleep near a plinth.

So, she went back down one floor to the great round room below. She sat for a while, looking out across the city, chewing on a sour fruit, but saw nothing; so she wrapped her cloak around herself and fell asleep on the hard stone floor.