‘Why stop here?’ she had asked him, as he began to lower the Windlass earthwards, in the face of that appalling wall of stone.

‘Morning crossing’s easier,’ he explained. ‘There’re tides in the air, girl. Just after dawn and they’ll be with us, draw us up nice and soft, without breaking us on the Ridge or chucking us ten miles in any direction you please.’ When her enquiring expression had remained unsatisfied, he added, ‘Also news is to be had here, and I want you to think about whether you really want to do this, ’cos I reckon you think it’s all light and flowers up that way but, let me tell you, it’s no easy place to make a living if you’re not born to it.’

Making a living’s the last thing on my mind, she had considered, but for his benefit she had shrugged. ‘The Hitch it is,’ she had replied.

Now the Windlass was anchored, and resting its keel lightly on the ground, the airbag half-deflated to make it less of a toy for the wind. She and Allanbridge had descended to find the local people clinging to the Barrier Ridge like lichen. Viewed from the forest’s edge, the Hitch would barely have been visible. The collection of huts – little assemblages of flimsy wood that looked toylike in their simplicity – lay in the shadow of the cliffs. And behind them, what seemed like deeper shadow became a regular arch cut into the rock itself. Glancing upward Tynisa saw a few holes higher up, too: entrances and exits for winged kinden perhaps, scouts’ seats or murder holes. She looked away hurriedly once her gaze strayed too high, though. Mere human perspective could not live with that vast expanse of vertical stone, and it seemed to her that any moment it must tumble forward, obliterating the Hitch and the Windlass and all of them.

Allanbridge had been checking the airship’s mooring, and now he returned to her side. His expression was challenging; he knew enough, had been through enough with her, that he could guess at part of her mind. He did not approve, and did not believe that her resolve would last, and yet he understood. He had brought her this far, after all.