The Patchwork Man "The Dreamless are another tribe of Qar, claimed by some to be related to the Cold Fairies. All that is known of them for certain is that in the days of the Theomachy or just after they left the other Qar and went to make a home for themselves called the City of Sleep." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" THE MANY RIVULETS that Barrick had seen or even crossed as he made his way down from the heights around the Cursed Hill now began to join together, streaks of dull silver snaking through the gray-green moorlands in the perpetual twilight, one emptying into the next and then the next until they had swollen into a single cataract too wide to cross, whose thunder was always in his ears.
"This must be the river Fade." Barrick paused to rest a moment on a high, rocky part of the bank as the water foamed past beneath him. A cloud of mist wet his clothes but for once he did not mind being damp. "Does it stay like this all the way into Sleep?"
"Not so much," said Skurn as he fluttered from side to side, unwilling to land on the wet rocks. "At bottom of hills it goes a bit more calm, like, and a good bit wider-you'll see it. But it follows all the way to that bad place, yes. Are you different minded now?" he asked hopefully.
Barrick shook his head. "No, bird. I must go there." The whole venture was foolish, of course, and almost certainly doomed to fail, but a curious, unfamiliar sort of bubbling in his blood was leading him on. He felt inexplicably certain he would find solutions to his problems when he needed them.
Is this what it feels like to be well, he wondered, worrying about no one save myself, and not much about me?
Part of it was having a healthy body: his arm, which for most of his life had felt like it was not part of him except for the pain it caused, no longer bothered him. More than that, it felt as strong as his other arm, although he could tell by some small experiments that it wasn't. The muscles were shrunken from long disuse and he could not squeeze a stick as hard as he could with his healthy hand; still, the transformation was remarkable.
"I am changed," he said to the twilight sky. "I am saved."
"Pardon?" Skurn, who had been exploring ahead, flapped down to land on Barrick's shoulder. His odor was worse than usual, if such a thing were possible.
"Nothing. What have you been eating?"
"Fish. Found it on the rocks down there. Leaped out, it did, missed the water coming down. Been softening in the air for days. Very beaksome indeed."
"Get away from me. You stink."
"Be no posy thyself," said the bird in a hurt tone as he flapped away.
The moorlands were covered with green but desolate meadows, empty lands that showed every sign of once being inhabited, although by whom Barrick could not have guessed: stone ruins overgrown by grass and brambles dotted the lonely fields, cottages of almost every size, from stony lean-tos built into the sides of the hills, some of which looked big enough to house fabled Brambinag and all his family, to delicate miniature villages whose tallest buildings barely reached Barrick's waist, constructed of bark and grass and river-smoothed stones. Had he not already met the Tine Fay he would have thought these structures were like his sister's doll house, built only to amuse children. But why would the little people leave a civilized existence to move into dangerous Silky Wood and live like savages such a short distance away? What had driven them out of this green place, along with all the others who had lived here, leaving behind only these quiet, sad remains?
"How far?" he asked Skurn yet again. It was his third day in the meadow and his new sense of confidence was beginning to fade into the unrelenting sameness of following the river down from the moors and into these empty meadows. The wind blew almost continuously here, making Barrick feel as if he was trudging uphill even on the most level ground, and his tattered clothes did little to keep him warm.
"To the Night Man city? The bad place?" Skurn shook his shiny head in weary disapproval. "Fearsome far, still. Days and days walking."
Barrick frowned. What had the blind king said in the dream the Sleepers had given him? "Come quickly, child. We are rushing toward darkness." Time was growing short, that was clear… but what was the darkness the fairy-king feared?
Not everything about the river meadows was bleak. Unlike the tangling forest, these lands were at least open to the gray sky of the shadowlands, so that for the first time in a while Barrick could watch it through the course of the day. It remained in perpetual twilight, but it was not as unchanging as he had thought: the clouds moved as the wind rose and fell, and the sky itself darkened and lightened from a pearly, pale fog-color to the harsh, bruised hues of thunderstorms. Flights of birds winged overhead, too far away to see clearly, but apparently as natural as those he remembered from more wholesome lands. And the river, although slower here than in the heights behind him, was still lively enough that for nearly the first time since crossing the Shadowline Barrick could actually see himself moving forward, making progress.
Sometimes it was almost like being back in the lands of sunlight. Despite the lack of full darkness or bright light, both banks of the Fade were full of life. In low spots the river spread out into the meadows, creating marshes full of pale nodding reeds like thin bones; in other places drooping willows dangled branches in the water like women washing their hair. Swollen black frogs full of high-pitched, questioning noises fell silent as he went by, then resumed their piping when he had passed. Occasionally something larger rattled invisibly in the reeds, and once he saw a huge stag look up from where it had been drinking at the river's edge, dark but with a magnificent rack of silvery antlers, its silence and calm gaze making it hard for Barrick to believe it was only an animal, so impressive that despite his almost constant hunger it didn't occur to him until the beast was long gone that he could have tried to kill it.
There was also life in the river itself, from little shoals of glittering fishes that filled the backwaters to larger things he could not quite see, visible only as spiny backs breaking the surface or as long shadows slipping through the water.
Still, all of this life did him little good as far as filling his stomach. He discovered after a cold, wet hour or two wading in the river that the shiny fish were too swift to catch, and the closest he came to any of the birds haunting the marsh was uncovering an occasional nest of small, oddly colored eggs. Those and the edible roots and reeds Skurn suggested were Barrick's only fare. Although he now had fire, being able to cook food meant little when he had no food to cook. And after what must have been a week or so following the river through the apparently unending grass-lands, even Barrick's healed arm began to seem unremarkable. It was hard to rejoice over being able to move an arm freely when his stomach always ached from hunger, and though the fingers that had once been crimped like a bird's claw now miraculously moved, they were still red and raw from the endless cold wind.
When the trees growing beside the river began to spread out into the surrounding land, first in small copses, then into larger stands of birch and beech interspersed with clumps of evergreens and other trees he did not recognize, Barrick at first found it a relief. It seemed a little warmer under the canopy of leaves, and it certainly held back the worst of the wind. But it also made it harder for him to make his way forward while staying next to the river, and it brought back uncomfortable memories of the silkins as well. Did the pale, hideously wet-eyed creatures live in this new forest as well? Or might something even worse make its home here-snakes or wolves or creatures no mortal had ever survived to give a name to?
Skurn was even less help than usual. As the woods began to grow thicker he was often distracted by the prospect of new and interesting meals, and although some of these benefited Barrick as well, especially the greater abundance of bird's nests, others-such as some spotted gray slugs the raven declared "sweetish and softly slurpsome"-were of no use to him at all. He was hungry enough to try one bite of the quivering thing, but nothing on earth could have induced him to take a second.
So it was that after days of walking through the empty lands toward Sleep, it was a wet, weary, unhappy, and very hungry Barrick Eddon who met the patchwork man.
Rain was pattering heavily on the leaves above his head, loud enough to be heard even over the rushing of the river. Barrick had struggled with damp kindling for a long time before finally getting it to light, and had just got the fire burning well enough to continue on its own when he heard a sound and saw an upright shape moving through the reeds near the river's edge some distance away. The intruder was not making much attempt to conceal itself-in fact, it was making a rather considerable amount of noise-but the hairs lifted on the back of Barrick's neck and he rose to a crouch, pulling the broken spear from his belt.
He stayed in this position, silent and alert, as the thing stumbled nearer. It seemed oblivious to Barrick's presence-unless, he reminded himself, it was trying to trick him. He held his breath and did not move as it emerged from the reeds and turned its grotesque head toward him. For a moment it seemed his worst fears had been made flesh-the thing was some sort of monster, a shambling heap of strange colors and waving fronds.
Barrick had already scrambled onto his feet, uncertain whether to attack it or run away, when he realized that what he had supposed was its head was only the hood of a cloak pulled low against the rain. The fronds were its tattered clothes, the colors surprisingly gaudy and bright, so that the strange figure seemed more like something out of a religious procession than any forest wild man.
Skurn dropped down onto his shoulder, startling Barrick badly. "Not right," the bird said in a quiet, anxious rasp. "Seen naught like that before. Don't go near. Us doesn't like it."
The thing had spotted their fire and hurried toward them, arms waving, shouting meaningless words in a scratchy voice: "Gawai hu-ao! Gawai!"
Barrick sprang back a step, brandishing his spearhead. "Stop!" he shouted. "Skurn, tell it some fairy-talk! Tell it to stay back!"
The tatterdemalion figure stopped and pushed back its hood, revealing a pale, mud-streaked face that Barrick could not help thinking looked rather ordinary, not to mention as human as his own. "What… what did you say?" the newcomer asked. "Is that sunland speech?"
It was a moment before Barrick remembered that was what the shadowland folk called the other side of the Shadowline. "Yes," he said, but kept his weapon leveled toward the newcomer. "Yes-that's where I'm from. You speak my tongue?"
"I do! I remember it!" The stranger took a few more staggering steps toward him. "Oh, by the Black Hearth, and you have a fire-all blessings on you, sir!"
Barrick waved him back with the spearhead. "Stop there. What do you want? And who are you?" He examined the odd figure. "You don't look like a fairy. You look like a man."
This startled the stranger, who wrinkled his face into a comical squint as he considered. He certainly had none of the exaggerated boniness of the Qar. His face was straw-thin and dirty, with grime in every wrinkle, and his hair was a wet tangle festooned with twigs and leaves. Still, though he had more than the usual number of missing teeth, he didn't look much older than the prince himself.
"Man? A man?" The fellow nodded slowly, his multicolored rags swaying. "That's a word. Yes, that's a word."
"Where are you from?" Barrick looked around in case the grimy creature might have confederates standing by to jump out and rob him, but there was no sign of anyone else nearby.
"From… yes, from the sunlands," said the stranger at last-slowly drawing it out, as if he had come up with the answer to a nearly impossible puzzle. "But I don't remember it well," he added sadly. "It was so long ago."
"What is your name?"
The patchwork man showed a sickly smile. "Master calls me 'Pick.' "
Barrick stepped back and let him approach the fire. Pick scuttled past him and squatted, holding his hands up to the low flames, his entire body wracked with shivers.
"What do you want?" Barrick asked at last. "Are you lost? Or do you mean to try and rob me?"
The one named Pick cowered as though he'd been slapped. "No! Please, do not hurt me, I beg you. I have been looking so long for someone who can help me. It is my master, my poor master!"
Every nerve and muscle urged Barrick to walk away from this ragged madman-Skurn had already flapped into the air, as though the man's folly might be infectious. "What are you talking about?"
"One of the blemmies fell out of the boat. I tried to help, but I fell too. I nearly drowned! I have been trying to find help for hours. But my poor, sick master…"
"Blemmies?"
"Just come." Although he was still dripping wet, the patchwork man now leaped up from the fire and began trotting back toward the river, turning every few steps like an eager dog to see if Barrick was following. "Come and you will see!"
Skurn hovered over Barrick's head making dire predictions as he made his way down to the wide bank of swaying reeds and the path Pick had already trampled through the weeds and mud. "Enough, bird," Barrick said at last. "Do something useful. Fly ahead and see if the fellow's waiting for me with a club or something."
The raven appeared a few moments later. "He's standing looking out at the water, waiting, like. There's a boat out there, but us don't like it-there be somewhat fierce wrong with it."
When Barrick reached Pick's side he saw that the smaller man was, as Skurn had said, standing on a patch of trampled weeds staring out at a place where the river widened into a calm backwater. At the center of it, a long stone's throw away from the bank, a black boat was being rowed in slow circles by a strange, hunched figure.
It took Barrick a moment to make sense of size and distance. "The one rowing is a big, big man. Is that your master?"
Pick looked at him as though Barrick had said something utterly mad. "That's the other blemmy. He's only got one oar."
"Still, he could pole his way back to shore," Barrick suggested, wondering what kind of half-wit rowers Pick's master had hired. "Tell him that."
"He's…" The patchwork man wiggled his hand beside his head. "Can't hear," he said at last.
"Oh, for the love of…" Barrick looked out at the hunched figure and the long, circling black boat. "Then just swim out and show him."
Pick was pulling strands of river-weed out of his hair. "Can't swim. Almost died when I fell in, but I found a place where the bottom was shallow, praise the Betweens."
Barrick looked at him, then turned back to the river. "Anything in that water I should know about? Anything with big teeth, for instance?"
"I got out," Pick said. "But I thrashed around a long while first."
Barrick cursed silently under his breath and waded in. Halfway out the muddy bottom fell away beneath his feet and he had to begin swimming. As he neared the slow-moving boat he expected the rower would turn toward him, but instead the man only stayed in his odd, bent-over position like someone who had gone dizzy, but meanwhile his wide back flexed and the thick arm plied the single oar in its lock, over and over.
The rower finally noticed him when Barrick's fingers closed on the wooden gunwale of the boat and he began to pull himself on board. He had only a moment to note that both the boat and the rower were even larger than he had guessed from the shore, and that a long, pale figure lay underneath a small tent on the deck, then the massive rower turned to look at him, still without raising his head.
That was because he had no head, Barrick saw-only two wide, wet eyes on his chest. With a shriek, Barrick jumped back into the water, almost hitting his head on another oar which was floating there. He dipped under the surface and then came up again. In his sudden fright he swallowed more than a little of the green water.
"Gods in heaven, what kind of demon is that?" he spluttered.
"No demon!" Pick called from the reedy bank. "Just a blemmy! It will not harm you!"
If he had been on dry land it would have taken Barrick a much longer time to work up the courage to approach the boat again, but he could not tread water forever. The creature turned to him as he crawled onto the boat once more, but otherwise did not react. Its broad arms continued plying the single oar, steady as the paddles of a millwheel, and the boat continued to circle the backwater in wide, lazy loops.
When they passed close enough to the other oar, Barrick scooped it out of the water and offered it to the blemmy, trying not to look too hard at the dull, unblinking eyes in its chest or the empty place between its shoulders where a neck and head should be. The creature did not seem to see it, but when Barrick slid the oar back into the lock the blemmy clutched it without hesitation and began plying both oars together. The boat headed out toward the downstream current.
"How do I make it head for land?" he shouted. "Does the cursed thing have ears?"
"Put your hand on it and say, 's'yar'!" Pick shouted back. "Loud, so it can feel you!"
Barrick put his hand on the blemmy's shoulder, which was overlarge but otherwise natural to the touch, and said the word. The monster shipped one oar until the little boat had swung around to face the bank, then began rowing with both oars again. Within moments the boat's thin black keel ran up onto the muddy reed forest and Barrick leaped out. When the boat would go no farther the blemmy merely stopped rowing, its eyes staring from its chest at Barrick and Pick with no more curiosity than a cow in a field.
The patchwork man scrambled up onto the boat and folded back the tent, then kneeled beside the unmoving figure. His excitement gave way within moments to quiet weeping. "He is worse! He will never live to reach Sleep!"
Barrick tried not to look startled. "Your master is… from the city of Sleep?"
"Qu'arus is a great man," Pick said as if Barrick had suggested otherwise. "All of the Dreamless will mourn him."
"Kyow-roos." Barrick tried it on his tongue. "And he is one of them? One of the Dreamless?"
Pick wiped his eyes but it was useless: the tears kept flowing. "Yes-he saved me! I would be dead were it not for his kindness. And he almost never beat me…" He collapsed onto the silent figure's chest, his body heaving, as Barrick climbed back into the boat, stepping gingerly around the silent blemmy to get a look at Pick's master.
Although he had been half expecting it, it was still a shock to see the silky gray skin and gaunt features so similar to the demigod Jikuyin's murderous pet wizard, Ueni'ssoh. Pick's master was in the grip of some delusional fever but too weak to move much. His staring eyes, which rolled from side to side, fixing on nothing, had the same weird hue as Ueni'ssoh's-bluish-green as Xandian jade, with no trace of white. Faced with this monstrous reminder of Greatdeeps, it was all Barrick could do not to plunge his blade into the creature's heart, but the tattered servant clearly felt differently: when Pick looked up at Barrick his eyes were red and his face wet with tears.
"The other servants ran away when Master was struck down. I could not tend to him and control the blemmies. Come with me. Help me! Together we can get him back to Sleep."
"Us don't want that!" squawked Skurn from the high stern of the boat, flapping his wings in agitation.
"Quiet, bird." Barrick looked from scrawny servant to dying master. There had been a moment when he was fighting against the silkins and everything seemed clear: he was meant to do this. Like Hiliometes or Caylor he would find solutions to every difficulty. Here was one such solution-a boat to take him into Sleep and an adviser who would help him to pass unnoticed in that alien place. Perhaps the Sleepers had overestimated the dangers-perhaps these days there were many mortals like this Pick living among the Dreamless.
Still, the idea frightened him. It seemed too simple to be safe, like a scrubbed and shiny carrot sitting in the middle of a loop of string near a rabbit den-but perhaps that was what it felt like to be touched by destiny. He took one last look at the blemmy, shuddered a little, then nodded.
"Very well," he said. "I'll come with you. For a little while anyway."
The proper number of oars now clutched in its massive fists, the headless blemmy propelled them down the river. The moderate current did much of the job, but the strange creature proved to see better than Barrick would have guessed, guiding the long boat around obstacles with a nimbleness quite different from its helpless circling in the backwater. While Pick tended to the gray man, who had fallen into a more peaceful sleep, Skurn sulked on the tall stern of the boat or flapped along behind.
"You said your master was struck down," Barrick asked the patchwork man. "What happened?"
"We were attacked by bandits in the Beggar lands." He dabbed at his master's gray skin with a wet rag. "Rope Men, they're called. Looked ordinary enough at first, but they were starveling thin-like eels with legs-and never closed their mouths. Yellow teeth long as house nails." The man in the colorful, ragged motley shivered. "One of the master's guards was killed first, then another of them Rope Men sh-shot Master with an arrow. One of the other servants and I… w-we pulled it out… but then the arrows killed the other guard and the rest of the servants went overboard to get away from them, but they never came up again. It was terrible! The blemmies were rowing fast, though, and the Rope Men were on the bank, so we got away, but the other servant had been shot in the back with an arrow painted like a snake. He died. Master… M-Master got worse and worse…" Pick had to break off. Embarrassed by the man's weepiness, Barrick turned away and watched the reedy shoreline sliding past until Pick could resume. "That was three sleeps ago by the master's hour-box. Then we hit a rock and the other blemmy fell out into the water and drowned. You saw the rest."
Barrick frowned a little. "How could one of them drown? They've got no mouths."
"They do, down low on their bellies. They even make noises when they're hurt or frightened-a sort of scratchy whistling…"
"Enough." Barrick didn't want to think about it-it was too unnatural. "And what will happen when we get to Sleep? Your master's dying-we both know that. What will happen to you… and to me, for that matter? "
"We will… be safe, I'm certain." The man called Pick said this as though he had never actually thought of it before this moment. "Master was always good to me. And there are the wimmuai-he has always taken care of them as well. He lets them die of old age!"
"Wimmy-aye? What are those? Some kind of animal?"
Pick ducked his head. "They are… they are men like you and I. Bred and raised in Sleep, offspring of folk captured over the years at the Shadowline. Master usually has a dozen of them at one time."
Slaves, in other words. Human slaves. But that was no real surprise-Barrick had never for an instant supposed that mortals would enjoy the same privileges in Sleep as the Dreamless themselves.
Qu'arus spoke in his sleep, a murmured gabble that had the sound of words in it but was no more intelligible to Barrick than the sighing of the wind.
"However did you come to serve such a creature?" Barrick asked.
Pick looked up, his face tight with suffering. "I was… I was lost. He found me. He showed me kindness and took me into his service."
"Kindness? This… thing? I cannot believe that."
The other gaped. "But he was… he is…!"
Barrick shrugged. "If you say it is so." His memories of the other Dreamless, Ueni'ssoh, were of a heartless monster. Could this creature really be so different, or might the man named Pick simply be addled by his experiences behind the Shadowline?
"Hungry," Skurn said suddenly. The raven launched himself from the stern of the boat, then flapped heavily away over the rushes lining the river and toward the forest.
What ails that bird? Barrick wondered. He has not said a word before that since I can't remember when. On most days I cannot have a moment's peace from his yammering.
It became clear as Barrick's time on the river stretched into what must have been days that Skurn was not just being quiet but actively avoiding company: he spent much of his time in the air, but even when he returned from his solitary flights he tended to perch atop the stern, a curving piece of black-stained wood taller than Barrick, and silently watch the river and bank sliding past.
Perhaps it's the blemmy that he doesn't like, Barrick thought. The gods can testify it's ugly enough to frighten anyone.
The blemmy was indeed ugly, but also very strong, accommodating sudden changes in the river current or avoiding rocks with little more than a flick of an oar. Barrick could only imagine the difference when two of the headless things were rowing together-it must be a very swift craft indeed.
In a rough part of the river, as the blemmy steered the boat between two large rocks visible only by the foam they made on the water's surface, Barrick almost lost Gyir's mirror. As he leaned with the boat's sudden change of direction the leather pouch fell out of his shirt and bounced off the bench. His left hand, his once-crippled hand, shot out and snatched it from the air like a hawk taking a sparrow.
For long moments he stared at it, amazed by what his wounded arm could now do, but also chilled by the idea of what had almost happened. He was a fool to be so careless with the mirror-it was his purpose now. He scoured the boat until he found a spare loop of the surprisingly slender anchor cord and sawed off a piece with his broken spear. He poked a hole in the pouch big enough to accommodate the cord, pushed it through and knotted it, then looped it around his neck before hiding it in his shirt again.
Other boats soon began to appear on the river, mostly small fishing skiffs manned by one or two ragged Dreamless. Barrick saw a few houses and even some small settlements begin to appear along the banks, presumably owned by these same gray-skinned folk. But some craft were a good bit bigger than their own, barges with wide, bruise-purple sails or even long galleys rowed by half a dozen blemmies or more.
"Are we close to Sleep?" he asked Pick after one such craft had surged past them, leaving them rolling in its high wake.
"A day away-no, a little more," the tattered man said distractedly. His master was still alive, but only barely, and Pick almost never left his side.
Later that long, gray afternoon Qu'arus swam up from his slumbers again, but this time once his gleaming eyes opened they stayed that way, watching everything, although his body remained limp.
"Here, Master, have some water," the patchwork man said, squeezing his cloth over Qu'arus' mouth.
"Pikkhh," the gray man rasped, using the sunlander tongue for the first time; his harsh accent made him hard to understand. "I not see you…!"
"But I'm here, Master."
"I feel… my home…"
"Yes. We are close, Master," Beck told him. "We will reach your house soon. Stay strong!"
"The end comes soon now, little Pikkhh," the Dreamless whispered, a fleck of pinkish spittle at each corner of his ashen mouth.
"Don't fear, Master, you will survive to see your home."
"Not the end… for me," Qu'arus breathed, so quietly that even Barrick bent down to hear better. "I care… little that. The end for all things. I feel it… feel it comes closer. Like cold wind." He sighed and his eyes fluttered shut, but he spoke one last time before sleep took him again. "Like wind from land of dead."
Qu'arus woke several more times as the day passed, but Pick said his words were almost all nonsense. He did not move much of anything besides his mouth and his eyes: the dying Dreamless seemed to watch them both with a kind of frightened yearning, as though waiting for them to cure or kill him. Barrick could not help thinking of the head of the Trigonate oracle Brennas, which was said to have remained alive and speaking for three years in a box after the Xandians had executed him.
After a while Barrick made his way past the giant blemmy, who was grinding away at the oars with his usual silent determination, and clambered up into the front of the boat to look for Skurn. He hung onto the high prow to keep his balance as he scoured the distance for some sign of the raven. Something dark was indeed on the horizon, but it was far bigger than Skurn.
"What is that-a storm?" he asked Pick. It seemed to hang too close to the earth, a great blob of darkness spread across the river, thick and black at the bottom but growing fainter higher up until it blended into the twilight sky like a puddle of ink leaching into a blotter.
Pick shook his head. "That's Sleep," he said.
"The city? Truly? But it's black-like thunderclouds!"
"Ah! Those are the darklights. The people of Sleep do not like the brightness of this twilight world under the Mantle. The darklights make a night for them to live in."
Barrick stared at the blotch on the horizon, which seemed to wait for him like a spider squatting grimly in its web. "They make more darkness? This gods-cursed forever twilight isn't gloomy enough for them?"
"The Dreamless love the dark," Pick told him seriously. "They can never have enough."
The raven finally returned. He landed on the railing of the small boat and stood silently, grooming his mottled pinfeathers in a disinterested way.
"Do you see that up ahead? " Barrick asked him. "Pick says it's Sleep."
"Aye, us seed it." The raven picked at something invisible. "Us flew there."
"Is it a city or just a town? How big?"
"Oh, a city, it be. Fearful big. Fearful dark." Skurn tipped his head sideways to stare at Barrick. "Didn't listen to us, did you? Now you and us both goes there." The raven let out a whistle of disgust, then hopped away down the rail toward the stern. "It be a bad place, that Night Man city," he called back. "Good thing us has got wings. Too bad some others here hasn't."