The Skraelings hovered, partway between full reality and their dream state.

Their meeting with Inardle had confused and upset them. They had almost agreed among themselves that they would become River Angels, that they did have the courage to step into the water and drown, but Inardle’s news . . . that she had killed . . . had deeply upset the Skraelings.

At some point in both their physical and mental journey from who they had been toward who they might be, the Skraelings had developed a deep antipathy to killing. They had spent their entire lives killing; their culture and very sense of self worth had been largely based on slaughter, yet now . . . now the idea that they might lay hand to another and tear them apart, caused the Skraelings to feel deep abhorrence.

As they sat, considering, they were unaware that their talons were receding, and their over-sized jaws finally shrinking to normal size, and their teeth turning from fangs to grinding molars.

Isaiah the Water God had set them on a course that, whether or not it ended in their becoming River Angels, would change their lives forever.

Knowledge of their beginnings and contemplation of their own nature had done within a few short weeks what no army had ever been able to do in decades of trying: destroyed forever the threat of the Skraeling.

“What do we want to do?” Ozll asked into this grey sea of contemplation. “Who do we want to be?”

“Not a River Angel if the first thing Inardle did in her new form was to embark on murder,” said Mallx.

“But the life of the River Angel is so compelling,” the female Graq said. “It calls to me. It runs in my blood.”

Ozll nodded, and there was a murmur of assent among the great herd.

“But —” Mallx said.

“I know,” Ozll interrupted. “We all sway toward the life of the River Angel, but we wonder if it might be viler than our current incarnation.”

He paused. “I have an idea, strange as it may be to you.”

“I think I know what it might be,” Graq murmured, and Ozll looked at her, and nodded.