‘I know you have principles, because you’ve told me often enough. You want to meet Foeless Landwalker, and believe you know something about the visitors that he doesn’t. You were thinking of using that to test him, but wouldn’t it be better to sell it to him instead? All you have to do is set aside those principles of yours this one time, and you’ll be free of your obligations to these women. Have enough money to finish your work on your own terms.’

‘And you’d want a share, of course,’ Pilgrim said.

‘I wouldn’t take more than half, even though it’s my idea, and I’d have to make the deal for you,’ Gentle said.

‘There’ll be no deal to make, because I didn’t come here to bargain with Foeless Landwalker. And I won’t break the promise I made to the Invisible College.’

‘Yet you’re the one taking all the risk in this enterprise.’

‘They rescued us and brought us here. And this is how you want to repay them?’

‘I’m a rover,’ Gentle said. ‘When I see an opportunity, I do as I must.’

It was too dark to make out his face, but Pilgrim was certain that it was set in that familiar inscrutable expression, and realised that although he’d spent a long winter with the rover, he still didn’t really know or understand him. In all that time, they’d been no more than kitchen companions, Pilgrim sequestered with his books, paying little attention to anything else, Gentle making forays into the forest with his hunter friends, gossiping with Grace Wren Saltmire, bargaining with the chandler, becoming part of the little town’s social network. Two very different worlds and minds, barely intersecting.

‘It’s not certain that I can get an audience with Foeless Landwalker,’ he said. ‘And if I managed it, I would be in no position to bargain.’

‘That’s why you need my help to make the deal,’ Gentle said imperturbably.

‘No, I don’t. Because it isn’t going to happen.’

‘You could sleep on it. See how you feel in the morning.’

‘It won’t make any difference. I’m going to do what I have promised to do, and share anything I find out with Poppy and Fragrant and the rest of the Invisible College. And if you don’t like that,’ Pilgrim said, leaning on his stick and looking up at the shadowy sketch of Gentle’s face, ‘you’re free to leave.’

‘It was just an idea,’ Gentle said.

‘Just an idea.’

‘I thought I’d put it out there. It’s a good deal, if you ask me. But if you don’t want to do it, that’s that.’

‘And we’ll say no more about it.’