The boat gently touched the multi-tiered stone dock.

  The boat’s aquian owner, Anid, simply rolled over the side of the boat, hardly rocking it at all, and disappeared briefly before surfacing to shove the back of the boat against the dock. The boat’s human owner, Phalein, leaned out of the front of the boat, farther than I’d have considered safe, to seize one of the corner poles.

  It might have been more of a surprise if we hadn’t seen them do it repeatedly on the way here, every time we stopped at another isnd that was short on something essential. The bottom of the long narrow boat had started off filled with baskets of mixed staple foods and medicines, each belled for a specific location; it was empty now. We’d done what we could to be useful, but that really wasn’t much, and I was fairly sure that the few exceptions were the pair being kind to us.

  Heket had asked them to bring us along on one of their runs and make a short detour to an isnd that would let us reach our goal.

  “The Quincunx gates are that way,” Phalein said, gesturing with one deep brown hand. “Just keep going past the shop. Is that enough for you to get yourselves oriented?”

  “Perfectly,” Serru assured her, standing up with care and moving towards the dock.

  “We’ve heard rumours of more zombie and mossling activity tely,” Anid said. “Please take care. I doubt they’ll be active out here in the Shallows again in the near future, but they might towards the mainnd.” I couldn’t associate aquians at all with a gender as I understood it, which might actually be an answer for why they had their own exclusive pronoun. The combination of a ft bare chest and a kind of wrapped knee-length sarong pinned with a spiral-shell-shaped gold brooch, hip-length hair with several random locks in thin braids ending in beads, and visible muscle on a lean slender build, just didn’t add up to anything I could even begin to categorize beyond ‘gorgeous.’ Anid’s skin was a deep purple-blue, and ens hair a medium-dark grey with a blue tint; green and yellow and orange feathers that looked like tattoos were scattered across biceps and upper chest and back.

  “We know,” I assured them, following Serru onto the dock. “Thank you. We really appreciate this.”

  “It hasn’t taken us much out of our way,” Anid said cheerfully. “You’ve helped out on the whole trip, and we’ve liked the company. We can take our time and enjoy the ride home now we’re finished, after a productive day and knowing that our neighbours can all eat. You’re very welcome.”

  “You have everything?” Phalein said, taking a st quick gnce at the bottom of the boat.

  We did: we’d gone to some lengths to sort through everything we owned, making sure that we had all the things that were likely to be useful in our two regur bags and leaving everything else at the house. Everyone needed the occasional inventory clean-up, right? I wasn’t going to be making any potions or wearing my clothes from home, and we’d reduced camping supplies to a minimum. Terenei had my medical monitor, which I’d showed him how to use on anyone, and at least as many medical supplies as I did, and they had most of the food.

  When I’d switched to human form, my new white waist-bag had changed to a satchel, simir to Serru’s in basic style. It was still white with a cream pattern, although that was now of asterisk-like stars with six ft-ended arms. It retained the gold hardware and the rings and snaps, with the same gold chain. The charm hanging from it was a gold-framed six-armed star in deep blue enamel with a simple but identifiable white enamel snake-and-staff in the centre, a symbol no one here would recognize but I’d given up on wondering how it could exist. The satchel had the same short rainbow fringe along the edge of the fp, and a double row of it along the comfortably-wide shoulder strap.

  And it had the same capacity, and my belongings were still safe and sound inside.

  We’d tested it. When I changed to centaur, it became saddlebags instead, with rger rings to fasten it to a harness but also a chest-band to help it stay in pce alone, and it had all the same touches: fringe along the chest-band and the fps over both bags, small rings, a gold chain on each side holding a pendant of a red metal heart set with a glittery red stone in the middle.

  To say it removed an inconvenience didn’t really cover it.

  “Good. Good luck.”

  The aquian ducked under, came up pushing the boat away from the dock, and used one of the steps as a boost to slither back up over the edge into the boat. En sat up and picked up the other paddle, giving us a wave just before the two of them dug into the water and departed.

  “Well,” Serru said. “We still have a walk ahead of us to reach the Quincunx. It’s back to just you and I on foot, hm?”

  “That’s fine by me,” I said. “I like having Aryennos and Terenei around, and I have to admit the wagon is easier in ways and Peace and Cheer are adorable. But it was a lot simpler before.”

  She smiled at me, and gestured. It looked like this was, literally, a transfer point, a pce to shift goods and maybe people from water to nd or vice versa. The dock was longer than we’d mostly seen elsewhere. There was enough open ground to allow for setting up, by my estimate, at least half a dozen tents, which presumably could also be used to pile baskets or barrels or whatever was being shipped.

  This yout was familiar. Three different pnts that could be used for tea formed a low hedge punctuated by red berry bushes. It surrounded several stone benches and a stone table and a rather pretty fountain with a white stone basin, gss tubes of several colours carrying the water up and spilling it down.

  There were three structures. The smallest one’s side-by-side doors bore signs decring that they were bank and post office. That must be the one the Zombie King had meant. I wouldn’t be following instructions, now or ever.

  Something I couldn’t quite call a building, the size of the shelter, had a roof and a raised stone floor with a wide ramp on each side but only a trio of wooden railings around it between the uprights.

  “You’ll want to go into the shelter to get the full effect,” Serru said.

  The shelter itself, made of white stone that glittered in the sunlight, was raised on stone pilings, like anything else in the Shallows. It had three arches on each side, each rge enough to let my centaur self stroll through comfortably and fairly wide, with a short length of solid wall at the ends, although only the one on the left was open and had a ramp up. Gss filled two arches on each of the sides I could see. The pyramid-shaped roof was the coloured tile that the Shallows liked, a cheerful random mingling of green, blue, yellow, and white, sloping down on all four sides from a peak.

  I ventured inside. The floor was made of square tiles that could be stone or ceramic, I couldn’t tell, in subtly varied tan shades.

  Every shelter had the same basics: a walled-off room with a toilet and sink, at least a couple of rings or a wooden bar set into the wall near a trough, several built-in bunks. In the very centre there was a ring of cut white stone fitted tightly together with a mesh of bck metal over it.

  That absolutely did not do it justice.

  The arches were doubled yers of gss, and between them, someone had been creative, to say the least.

  On one side, the two arches showed what I recognized as the Grassnds. Multiple yers of painted gss in the lower half gave a clear impression of rolling hills extending off into the distance, with a single tree-lush green meander along one and a ke encircled by lower vegetation on the other. Above that, a transparent colour wash of sky blue with a few white clouds changed the light coming through. It had clearly been intended to create the illusion that you were looking through that arch onto a different province. Astonishingly, there was even movement. Near the arch a bright-coloured lizard y in the sun on a stone, but it kept changing the position of its tail and head; butterflies fluttered, the colours I thought I’d seen in the Grassnds but not since, and they really did flutter, though they stayed at their respective wildflowers. Far off, the herds of quadrupeds moved and rippled, like individuals changing their spot within the group, without the entire herd actually going anywhere else.

  “How are they moving?”

  “Keep looking. See if you can figure it out.”

  The next wall around was obviously the Forest. The view through both arches was framed by trees on both sides, and some of the leaves trembled gently. The yers beyond were mostly more trees, turning the light greenish, with flowers and fruit scattered through. The central arch showed a pond in the middle distance. I saw a few birds in the undergrowth, some butterflies of different colours and patterns seeking the flowers, those tall wading birds at the pond, and all moved or fluttered, just a little, the wading birds dipping their heads towards the surface of the water.

  The Gss Shallows window was considerably wilder: it showed the world underwater. Well, why just show the actual scene outside? The whole thing was tinted with rippled watery tones, and somewhere, something was making the light shift around. Unfamiliar pnts reached upwards, and bright fish swam between them—and moved, their metallic bodies fshing and glinting as they did. Not actually going anywhere, but the rge school of small fish, neon aqua on the bottom and red on top with a silver head and tail and a wide silver stripe between, was rather breathtaking.

  The fourth showed a mountainous ndscape with little vegetation, only ft ground in the immediate foreground that dropped off to shadow not far away. The cloud formations were interesting. So were the birds, some of them in the air and some on the ground, and of course in motion.

  “Okay, I’m stuck. How?”

  “Very fine threads support them. There’s a metal framework at the top, delicately banced, with small arms that extend outside at the corners and widen at the top. The wind makes the framework shiver, and that motion is carried down through the threads. It’s a different kind of beautiful at night, with moonlight backlighting it instead of the sun.”

  “It’s absolutely amazing. I’ll probably never get over how much art goes into shelters that get used irregurly by a few people, not a high-traffic structure in an urban centre.”

  “Why should art only exist in cities? Someone sheltering here, perhaps during a storm, needs beauty too.”

  “I’m absolutely with you there.” There was nothing backwards about this world, I was seeing that yet again. They just had completely different priorities. The mingling of artistic skill, the awareness of perspective and light and yering to create such an effective sense of distance, and the technical skill that added motion and life to it, made this a masterwork—one that would brighten some days but not get the artists any fame. “I could probably stay here quite happily for a while just trying to see all the little details, but I think Terenei and Aryennos might be annoyed if they catch up and we’re still here.”

  She chuckled. “Quite likely. We can bring them back here so Terenei can appreciate it properly. I’m certain he’ll want to.”

  “Is that part of why you want to encourage him to get out of Coppersands? So he can see more kinds of art others are doing and maybe stretch outside his book?” I followed her outside.

  “What he chooses to do, or feels inspired to do, is up to him. Mm, but perhaps I do think that he would find new sources and varieties of inspiration useful to him, artistically. At his own pace, of course.”

  On the far side of that isnd, a road led to a long broad causeway bordered with dense greenery and intermittent trees, which might have helped protect it from storm damage.

  An otter swam by, ducking under and reappearing on the other side so there must have been a culvert there. I winced; Serru id a hand briefly on my arm in sympathy.

  “I’m sure it’s home by now and going on with its life.”

  “I hope so.” Saving lives might have less impact in this world, but preventing suffering and long-term lingering effects, those still mattered every bit as much.

  The causeway ended at another isnd. This one held a fairly rge general store and a house that was built with one end extended out over or possibly into the water, both sturdy raised stone structures, along with the usual dock.

  The proprietor was an aquian. Like Anid, and for more or less the same reasons, I hadn’t the first clue about gender. En greeted us with a smile and a nod, long fingers never faltering in working on a delicate neckce of small colourful beads. Ens skin was a warm golden-yellow with a hint of orange, and bore a design across one shoulder and bicep in white and brown of a cy pattern with bright beads of other hues; long hair was a violet a bit lighter and a bit more blue than Terenei’s, braided with strings of beads.

  Recognizing individual aquians was certainly easy!

  We prowled around the shop, and found several useful kinds of foodstuffs that were new to me, which Serru said were based heavily on the aquatic pnts farmed in the fertile Shallows, so we bought two varieties of travel bars and a kind of tea Serru liked and a few ingredients she could use for making meals.

  There was a whole cabinet full of jewellery and simir small objects made of shell and unusual stones and other materials I didn’t recognize. We chose a neckce of pastel shells and pearls and gold links with matching dangly earrings that all rattled gently against each other and had a smooth surface texture and interesting contours, useful for my felid form but pretty in any.

  Along with the more unusual goods, which were presumably coming out of the Gss Shallows and here so they were accessible to mainnders, there were more conventional goods that I figured might be of interest to the residents of the Shallows. They seemed to be in an excellent position to be accessible to both potential customer bases.

  “We’re waiting for friends to join us,” Serru said, as we piled purchases on the counter. “Under the circumstances, it will probably take several days. Is there anywhere nearby we could camp that would be a bit quieter than the shelter?”

  The shopkeeper’s smile was sympathetic. “Traffic is fairly steady through here and the shelter is in use most nights. You wouldn’t be the first to want an alternative. If you keep going away from the shelter but stop before the bridge and follow the shore to the left, you’ll find the pce my cousins and I made to py in when we were here to visit our grandparents when we were small. It’s used by travellers often enough that some have done little improvements over time. You’re welcome to camp there, and we can tell your friends where you are if they stop here.”

  “That sounds wonderful, thank you. Two humans, one with long violet hair and one with curly blue hair, with a pair of ornithians, one mainly blue and one mainly red. There may be a near-white felid with them, usually wears goggles and has a bck and white cat.”

  “Heket?”

  “Yes. She’s giving us a hand at getting back on our route past the disruption.”

  “I’ll make sure whoever’s working knows to watch for her or your friends and point them to the campsite. Let us know if you need anything. If the shop’s closed, come knock on the door of the house.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  With our previously-minimized inventories thus enhanced, we went on.

  Just to make sure it was viable, we followed directions.

  A path led us through vegetation that ranged from knee-height to full-sized water-loving trees.

  The shoreline curved inwards, then outwards, creating a small area of nd partly separated from the rest of the isnd. One side of it, towards the tiny inlet, was short grass and rounded gravel leading down into the water. Neatly-stacked dry stone surrounded a smallish firepit, over which someone had added a metal grating; beside it was a frame made of wood, with a simple sloped roof over it, filled with dry firewood kept up off the ground. Around it in an arc on the water side, three sections of a rge tree, sawed off ft, offered elementary seats that would at least be dry. On the other side there was space for one rgish tent or a couple of closely-spaced smaller ones.

  The high tide would nibble a bit of space from along the edge, but I could see where the regur high-water mark was and it wouldn’t even quite reach the wooden seats, although at high tide one of them could probably be used for fishing. This wasn’t exactly the Bay of Fundy and as near as I’d been able to determine, the difference between low and high tides here was usually less than a meter, although that might change in an enclosed cave system or something.

  “This will do nicely,” Serru said. “If I’m not here when you finish, wait here for me.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “It’s not hard to find. It’s going to be a lot more peaceful than the shelter, for sure.”

  We returned to the bridge so we could go on towards the Quincunx.

  Strangely, the centre of the bridge was missing, leaving a gap that was probably too narrow to accommodate a truly rge sailing vessel but presumably a smaller one could pass through.

  Serru showed me a waist-high lever at the side of the bridge, set into the stone beneath us a hand’s width from the railing, and pushed it forward.

  Gears cttered, and a metal grating slid out of the bridge below us to span the opening. It was narrower than the stone parts, but looked heavy. It clunked into pce in a socket on the far side, and everything stopped moving.

  “Come on,” Serru said, continuing on across the grating.

  I looked down midway, and saw sunlight sparkling through the water, and bright fish swimming around. The metal grating didn’t tremble at all with our footsteps; presumably it was designed to take the weight of cargo wagons.

  On the far side, Serru pulled on a matching lever, and the grating began to retract.

  “It would be rude to leave it in pce, and possibly dangerous,” she said.

  “That’s a really neat invention. Should I ask how the two sides are connected?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. They always are, however. How could the whole thing work if it could be controlled from only one side?”

  Beyond that there was a four-way crossroads anchored to an isnd so small it was essentially just a small patch of rock in the sea.

  “From what Heket said,” Serru said thoughtfully, “straight ahead eventually goes to the mainnd. We go left here, then left again at the first opportunity, and the Quincunx gates should be very close.”

  Across a causeway, we reached a three-way intersection, the current road continuing ahead and a single branch to the left that passed between a pair of tall square pilrs. I knew, without being close enough to see them yet, that the white stone would have the bck five-dot quincunx symbol.

  “Well, there’s my road. Here we go again. Let’s see what it does to me this time.”

  Serru wrapped both arms around me for a very pleasant hug, and even gave me a fleeting kiss. “I promise, I’ll be at that campsite or return to it soon, even if the others beat the odds and rejoin us before you get back. Try to remember, no matter what, this brings you a step closer to finishing and, with any luck, to getting home. And no matter what, you will still be yourself.”

  “Thanks.” I let go rather reluctantly, and turned towards the pilrs.