Free Goldenhand by Garth Nix

golden hand, opening and closing her fist. “And I don’t think it will work very far south of here. Sam really is a most useful nephew . . .”
    Lirael looked directly at Nick this time. He was still holding up his hands. She knew if she reached out to them, she would be beginning something, making herself vulnerable, open to more hurt. If she took his hands, and he came to the Old Kingdom, what would happen? Or not happen, which might be even worse . . .
    She wished the Disreputable Dog was there, to help her understand her own feelings, and to offer comfort if once again she found herself alone among all the other people who seemed to instinctively just know how to make friends and find lovers—
    Focus, Lirael told herself. One step at a time.
    â€œDo you think you can walk?”
    â€œIf you help me,” said Nick.
    Lirael leaned forward, and their hands joined, just as the Ancelstierrans arrived and Lirael’s guards closed in, Captain Anlow gesturing so they spread out in a wide crescent about the Abhorsen-in-Waiting they were there to protect.
    With a distant boom another star-shell blossomed high above, casting its harsh light across the barren landscape as it slowly drifted down on its silken parachute.
    The sudden illumination was accompanied by more shouting. It came from a tall, remarkably slender, and very pallid Ancelstierran general. He was so pale that for a moment Lirael almost reached for a bell, thinking he must actually be a Dead creature, even though she had not felt the presence of such a thing.
    But he was alive. Alive and protesting.
    The general wasn’t wearing a helmet or hat, his completely bald head white under the flare. Nor was he wearing khaki and mail like the others; he had on a swallow-tailed coat of scarlet with many miniature medals on his breast, though a keen observer would note none of them were for valor or wartime service. His black trousers had a broad red stripe down the sides, and his dress shoes were very much the worse for crossing the mud and debris of no-man’s-land. He looked extremely out of place compared with the other Perimeter troops.
    â€œThat’s him!” cried the pale general, pointing at Nick. “Arrest him at once! And get these other people out of here!”

Chapter Seven
FISH ARE MORE IMPORTANT
    At Sea, near the Mouth of the Greenwash
    T he raft of reeds slowed as the river lost its frantic pace, the spinning and rocking giving way to a gentler movement as the makeshift vessel moved out into the mouth of the Greenwash and began to simply ride up and down with the long ocean swell. It was relatively calm, the sky clear with the promise of a fine spring day ahead, once the sun deigned to lift itself above the horizon. Though still very cold, it had stopped snowing hours before as the clouds departed.
    The unnatural fire in the small pot continued to burn, and the black smoke continued to climb and drift. It would be visible from some distance now, a dark wavering line drawn vertically against the pale predawn sky.
    Ferin slept on. Worn out from her journey, pursued and hunted most of the way, she would have been hard to wake even before she was wounded as well. With the shock from that on top of her general exhaustion, her body had retreated into a very deep sleep indeed, almost a coma. The transition from swirling river currents to the slow rise and fall of the sea had not impinged in the slightest upon her, though in the mountains she prided herself on being alert at all times, and it was true she would usually wake at the slightest noise or a change of light or sensation.
    But now she didn’t even wake when a fishing boat came up carefully alongside, and two pairs of strong arms hauled her up and over the gunwale, while others pushed the raft away with oars, in orderto part company as quickly as possible with the unnatural burning pot, its all-too-visible trail of black smoke and the faint but persistent reek of Free