"I was doing some dishes. One moment I was standing there, and the next I was standing here." He shook his head, still bewildered. "The only thing I can think of it like it is... coming to Darrow in the first place."

And of course there had been the darkness and the ash. But he wasn't going to think about that. Not now.

No one was looking at them with any particular interest, but as a woman passed, her long brown hair pulled back into a golden net, he raised a hand and she stopped, looking at them curiously.

"Excuse me," he said. "I'm sorry to stop you, but... what is this place?"

The woman's expression turned from curious to puzzled. "I don't understand. How can you have come to the city and not know its name?"