An owl hooted, and was answered by a distant cry from deep in the fog. Rachel waited beside John Anchor, and yet in this darkness she could discern little of the giant but the whites of his eyes. He remained as still and as darkly imposing as the oaks around him. They had moved a quarter league further north, to rendezvous with Dill. The bone-and-metal angel was somewhere nearby, but Rachel could not have said where exactly. He might have been standing just ten yards away. She heard the Rotsward's elevator creaking before she saw it descend out of the murk, materializing amidst the forest canopy overhead. It was a simple basket suspended from ropes, hauled by slaves on the midships deck. The elevator's two occupants, Mina Greene and Hasp, looked like a strange pair of heavenly ambassadors in their grey cowled robes, their bloody glass-scaled hands clasped before them. The basket landed with a soft thud. Hasp leapt out, seemingly unconcerned that a single crack in that Maze-forged armour would have spilled his lifeblood and returned his soul to Hell.
