My world and Peto’s had shrunk to the distant glacial peaks, an icy green sky, the red ridges of the Plains as we progressed along the side cut of the canal. The only glimpse I’d had of Rubirosa in the last few hours had been a glint of eyes in the shadows of the hold. She was whittling something with a haunt-knife that whistled and whispered as the shavings fell away. I thought it might be a bone. I didn’t really want to know. So I sat on deck with Peto instead and took turns at steering and boiling tea on the little deck kettle. It was growing colder now, the comparative mildness of the Plains beyond Caud dropping away as we rose in a series of stages towards the Noumenon. When I looked back, I could still see the long straight stretch of the Grand Channel and some of the masts travelling down it. Along the bank, the grass grew sparser, replaced with a dense plant with shiny dark-green leaves, and the small birds of the lower Plains disappeared. Red-eyed predators appeared in their place, sailing high on fringed wings, catching the thin thermals.
