Marool climbed from the carriage, the Man of Business close behind her.
“Your father’s carriage was tied there,” he said, gesturing toward a copse of lacy trees at the edge of the clearing. “The trees were smaller then. Their luncheon was laid out there,” indicating a table-sized chunk of ancient, lichen-spotted lava standing some distance back from the edge with lower chunks around it that could serve as seats.
His voice was overly loud, Marool thought, and she raised a hand to her lips, shushing him and herself into the profound silence of the place. No bird song. No wind sound. No flutter of leaf. Only the breathing of the horses, the jingle and creak of their harness and the stamping of their restless feet.
She moved toward the edge of the comber. When the rock began to curve downward, she dropped to her knees to edge a bit farther. Before her, the stone was bare and wind-polished, curling into a razor edge above a litter of rock shards.
Marool crept backward, rising awkwardly beside the stone table. If Margon and Stella and Mayelany had been sitting here—which was in and of itself ridiculous—and if some creature had crept out of the dark woods that confronted her, might they have been frightened over the drop?
“Are there any people out here?” she asked Carpon.
“Wilderneers,” he said, in a tone that told her he smiled behind his veil.
“You think there are Wilderneers? Here or anywhere?” she demanded.
“Men disappear,” he replied. “All the time. Supernumes, seamen, Consorts. Even sometimes a Family Man. These lands are wide, there are innumerable places to hide, so I suppose there could be Wilderneers.”
Marool was unimpressed by disappearances. She herself knew how a good many had disappeared, and it had nothing to do with Wilderneers.
“Wait here,” she told him, lifting a finger to summon the guard and moving off among the trees as he trotted to join her. Behind her the driver and the Man of Business exchanged looks, eloquent in the cock of head and shrug of shoulder, though the one’s face was hidden. Together they sat down by the stone table to await her return.
Marool strolled in the profound shade of the trees, sniffing the air like a hound though she could smell nothing at all, staring at this thing and that though she had no idea what she was looking for, stopping short in the realization she was seeing something very strange.
On either side was a straight and rounded ridge of soil, the two ridges perhaps three meters apart, as though something huge and heavy had been dragged along here, pushing the dirt up at the sides. The ridges were overgrown with herbage and wild flowers, so whatever had made them hadn’t been here lately. She moved to the ridge at her right and walked along it, kicking at it aimlessly, stopping when an object caught her eye, near her feet. It was a piece of something, like shell.
She bent over and picked it up, turned it in her fingers, a piece as large as her two hands set together, slightly oily, knife edged, oval in shape, smooth on one edge, rough on the other, like a gigantic fingernail jerked from some enormous finger. It had gooey stains along one edge.
She held it out to the guard, who started to take it, then gasped as though it had bitten him. The warmth of her hand had brought an odor from that dry substance, a rank and feculent stink that was suddenly all around them, floating on the wind, moving the leaves of the trees.
Marool noticed nothing.
“Throw it away,” he muttered. “It stinks!”
She made a face at him, wrapped the thing in her scarf and put it in the reticule she carried at her belt, ignoring him as he turned aside, retching.
“You have a weak stomach for one in your occupation,” she said angrily, walking on only to encounter another track that had crossed the first one. On these ridges nothing grew. The soil was crumbly, newly thrust aside. Beside her, the guard stopped short, as though frozen in place.
“Chuh?” asked the world. “Chuh?”