Oh, be careful," whispered Salmakia, but Lyra's mind was already racing ahead through the story she'd told the night before, shaping and cutting and improving and adding: parents dead; family treasure; shipwreck; escape ... They were both trembling, the angel and the man, but one from weakness and the other from excitement. "As many as there are," said Will. "No one would ever have time to find out." Her eyes were still heavy, and she was racked by deep yawns, but she was desperate to be awake, and he helped her up, putting her arm over his shoulder and taking much of her weight. Ama watched timidly, for now that the strange girl was awake, she was nervous of her. Will breathed in the scent of Lyra's sleepy body with a happy satisfaction: she was here, she was real. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. The pale, dark-eyed alethiometrist, with his nightingale daemon on his shoulder, came in and bowed slightly. A moment later the orderly arrived with a tray of bread, cheese, and coffee, and Mrs. Coulter said: Mrs. Coulter said to Lord Roke,My lord, are your spies always sent out in pairs? The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone through into their poor starved eyes. "Yeah, if we do that, it said that we might never come back, Will. We might not survive." She was sitting at her ease in the little canvas chair, with a book on her lap, watching him calmly. She was wearing traveler's clothes of khaki, but so well were they cut and so graceful was her figure that they looked like the highest of high fashion, and the little spray of red blossom she'd pinned to her shirtfront looked like the most elegant of jewels. Her hair shone and her dark eyes glittered, and her bare legs gleamed golden in the sunlight. Where were they? "So on that occasion, the woman Coulter will not have heard the name?" "Any moment now he'll lose patience," she whispered. I told him to make himself small. But he's only an angel, after all, even if he was once a man. And we can wrestle with him and bring him to the edge of the gulf, and we'll both go down with him.She smiled. Will very nearly smiled in response, because he was so unused to the sweetness and gentleness a woman could put into a smile, and it unsettled him. TWENTY-EIGHT - MIDNIGHT In the confusion Lord Roke leapt at the big man's leg as it swung past him, seized the camouflage cotton of the trousers, heavy and sodden with rain already, and kicked a spur into the flesh just above the boot. "The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?" You don't like night pictures, Atal said. they will come, they will.It doesn't matter where it's detonated, does it?" Gradually the ferocity left the gaze of the little brown bird, and Serafina could look at her again. She saw a desolate sadness in its place. It had taken her longer than she thought it would to walk here. It was getting on toward midday, for the shafts of light coming down through the canopy were almost vertical. Drowsily Mary wondered why the grazing creatures didn't move under the shade of the trees during this hottest part of the day. "Now, Fra Pavel," said the Inquirer of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, "I want you to recall exactly, if you can, the words you heard the witch speak on the ship." He was looking through the watchtower telescope at something in the western sky. It had the appearance of a mountain hanging in the sky a hand's breadth above the horizon, and covered in cloud. It was a very long way off, so far, in fact, that it was no bigger than a thumbnail held out at arm's length. But it had not been there for long, and it hung there absolutely still. He reached the foot of the slope, where the trees began, and laid the rifle down silently. Every eye turned to him, and those deaths lying on the floor sat up to turn their blank, mild faces to his tiny, passionate one. He was standing close by Salmakia, his hand on her shoulder. Lyra could see what he was thinking: he was going to say that this had gone too far, they must turn back, they were taking this foolishness to irresponsible lengths. "There is a ship coming," Serafina said. "I left it to fly here and find you. I came with the gyptians, all the way from our world. They will be here in another day or so." Mary felt the burden of it keenly. It felt like age. She felt eighty years old, worn out and weary and longing to die. "No, but if Lyra returns to her own world, then I will be her sister as long as she lives. What will you do?" The air was full of dust, and of the cordite smell of smashed rock. It was hard to breathe, and impossible to see: the dragonfly was dead. A figure stepped out of a patched-up doorway and said, "Wait, wait." "Yes. I'll explain if you like, but you don't seem very interested.