They rode through the straggling outskirts of the town, past the shacks and shafts of prospectors’ claims, past an excavation where labourers were loading carts with spoil that would be rendered in slag furnaces, past a huge circular lake that had flooded one of the strange craters, its placid water reflecting the blue sky, its shore fringed with palms and palmettos.

A cluster of square white buildings gleamed on a flat-topped hill beyond the lake: the enclave of the Sweetwater Collective, where ogre artefacts were reconstructed, analysed and reverse engineered, producing a steady stream of techne that was changing society at an ever-accelerating rate. Wire recorders and street lamps, windmill generators and electric trains and trams, tapwires and cameras, bicycles and clockwork calculators, carborundum and cellophane film and several kinds of plastic, stamping presses, automatic lathes, and half a hundred other miracles.

The Collective’s purchase of Master Able’s papers from his family, and their hiring of another scholar to discover the truth about the visitors, still stung Pilgrim. A rude dismissal of his talents. A callous betrayal. He wondered if there was any truth to Jasmine Deeproot’s rumour that the Collective had lent their support to Foeless Landwalker, and what it might mean. Did they think that there might be some truth to Landwalker’s claims about meeting the visitors, that his gathering was a prelude to their arrival? If so, it was possible that the Collective had something to do with the resignation of Master Mindwell’s assistant, Earnest Smallhill, cutting off the scholar as ruthlessly as it had cut off Pilgrim and commandeering his assistant in an attempt to infiltrate Foeless Landwalker’s inner circle. And if that were the case, Pilgrim thought, it might well make the mission to win an audience with Landwalker even harder.

The road climbed in switchbacks towards the high pass, and joined another that ran across desert flats of cactus and greasewood. There was an irregular procession of people heading south, walking alone or in small groups, riding maras and camels. They were mostly male and mostly young, and many wore orange scarfs around their necks – a sign of true belief in the visitors, Poppy told Pilgrim.

‘How do you know?’

‘It was in the one of Jasmine’s reports,’ Poppy said.

She and Pilgrim were riding a little distance behind Fragrant and Gentle. She was barelegged in an oversized blue shirt belted at her waist and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this adventure, telling Pilgrim that Jasmine had been in the audience when Foeless Landwalker had given a speech after being released by the lawkeepers who had briefly detained him in Ogres Grave, and had interviewed several of his followers.

‘She tried to talk to him, too, but she couldn’t get past his cadre of attendants.’

‘Do you have copies of those reports, and her interviews?’ Pilgrim said. ‘I’d love to read them.’

He was wondering what else these women hadn’t told him.