I cannot forget how I hated the bars on the windows of my manse.

The whorl to him and to all the inhumi is the airless starlit plain we saw when poor Mamelta led us to the belly of the Whorl. Small wonder then that the inhumi are so wretched, so cruel, and so hungry for warmth.

“A siren?” I was bewildered, and in no condition to think. “Do you mean Seawrack?”

but I cannot sleep. Somewhere very far away, Seawrack is singing to her waves.

Throughout my life I have done my best to imitate Silk (as I am doing here in Gaon),

But love is the last need a group has, not the first. If it were the first, there could be no such groups. Justice is the first need, the mortar that binds together a village or a town, or even a city. Or the crew of a boat. No one would take part in any such thing if he did not believe that he would be treated fairly.

Silk (I mean the real Silk)

and if I were not killed a second time,

This Short Sun is well named; it speaks daily of the transitory nature of all it sees, drawing for us the pattern of human life, fair at first and growing ever stronger so that we cannot help believing it will continue as it began; but losing strength from the moment it is strongest.