She pulled off her knee-high, animal-skin boots, then she arranged her skirt so it fell just above her knees. Her face was damp with sweat or spray. But then her hands folded in her lap again.

"How much farther is it?"

Reed pointed ahead to a narrow opening in the dark green shoreline. "That's the Finger Bay. Hames lives about an hour up there. Later in the year you'll be right on the water-front, but now we've got a short walk once we land."

"You don't live with Hames?"

Reed smirked. "Hames is a good enough farmer to make it on his own."

"So why did you come to get me?"

"I had the time."

"You're not a farmer?"

Reed cleared his throat. She had caught him in an uncomfortable lie.

"Everyone's a farmer, this time of year."

She didn't confront him about the apparent contradiction, but he had to explain. It was odd, covering for his older brother this way.

"He's really a good farmer," he went on, talking because he had to say something. "Almost the perfect farmer."

"What is a perfect farmer like?" She still watched the coastline drift by them. "We don't have farmers in the Old World, anymore. The soil's poison, you know."

Reed cleared his throat again. He was digging himself in deeper. "The perfect farmer knows his land. He knows its chemistry, how it holds water, how it loses water, how it changes through the seasons. He knows his crops, what they will get from his land and what he will need to give them. He knows the rain and weather, and what he needs to do to deal with it."

"But what's he like as a person?"

Did she read his mind? Or was it just Hames? Hames had always loomed larger than life. Even when he was silent, he filled a room with his presence. Certainly, Reed's older brother, Chloe's fiance, had filled the boat to overflowing.

Reed really owed his land to Hames, not their parents. The land of their parents had been difficult land. Part of it was steep and rocky, the other was drowned in the briny floods of Famine. Father and Mother planted bread and other salt-marsh plants during Pestilence, but bread wouldn't keep well through the oppressive heat of Drought, and it sold poorly in markets. Most people had more of the salt-marsh than they could stand. When the chance to grow returned in the season of Death, hayfair would endure the dry, salty land. It would keep through Famine, but it was tough and unpalatable, poor food for a poor family.

After his second year, Hames decided to improve the land. The valuable foods that could be grown on Nocturne needed flat fertile land out of the reach of the salty waters. Through the whole of Famine, while Father and Mother fished the seas, Hames dug into the high hillsides. He indentured himself to a neighbor, promising to labor in their fields come Pestilence, for help in the dark season. Reed was only a child then, only a little over a year old. He was sent to mind the traps in the shallows and dig for shellfish at low tide. But Reed got to watch as Hames, the tender young adolescent, terraced their slopes and transformed their salt marsh into a prime farm. That year, Father and Mother raised apple root, red oats, and fey berries. They sold the delicacies and ate the grains through Drought. When Famine came once again, Hames had a new plan.

"This land is too small for three or four adults to work together. It's a waste of time. I'm going to work Regan's farm up the bay."

"Don't be ridiculous," Father said. "We don't have the money, even for that old piece of marshland."

"I've bought it on mortgage," Hames answered. "It can be terraced the same way as our land was."

"Regan's cousins won't mortgage that land to you," Father grumbled, thinking that would end the argument.

"They did," Hames said, and left the table.

Regan's cousins, not knowing what to do with the marshy land left in their care by Regan's death earlier in the year, had had difficulty finding a buyer. They had only received offers from poor farmers of unknown repute, or from wealthy men who had made a business of renting useless land to ignorant immigrants. Next to these, the young Hames was a proven farmer, a youth who would do whatever had to be done to make his payments.

Reed labored on, tending his parent's traps in the shallows and digging in the mud, while Hames expanded the family fortunes, built his own farm and his own house.

That year, at the very beginning of Drought, Father died, leaving Reed and his mother alone on the plot of land that was too small for three or four farmers. Reed found himself standing in the midnight sun beside Hames's grain shed. If he opened the gate, the grain would spill out on the ground. The top layer would dry out and crack in the hot Drought sun. Vermin, if they found the mound of unprotected grain, would burrow into it. Perhaps they would lay eggs that would destroy the entire store, all that had been grown for the long dry season ahead.

Hames would never suspect that the villain had been his own brother.

Reed stood in the hot sun with his hand on the bolt. He dreamed of Hames's return home, his defeat in this venture of independence. With one jerk of the hand, Reed would bring back together the family that had been splintered. He thought of that moment many times when he worked alone beside his mother that year. He could see himself going back, drawing the bolt, watching the golden red grains spill through the door into a growing cone on the dusty ground. He knew exactly how it would have looked.

Mother died next Pestilence. Hames offered to share a portion of the wealth he had accumulated alone on his new farm, but Reed declined. This was his penance for his fantasies: he ate none of the grain he had plotted to ruin. From that day on, he and Hames were equal. Reed worked alone the land that was too small for three or four.

"You don't like him, do you?" Chloe twisted around to look at Reed.

He laughed uneasily. "You have no mercy."