They sat around the fire, Mercy pouring a pale tea made from pine sap into bark cups, searing skewers of meat over the flames, saying that he hoped they were partial to rock rat, it was all he’d been able to catch that morning. Pilgrim dutifully sipped astringent tea and nibbled stringy meat, and pulled out the little wire recorder he had purloined from Master Able’s study. The sleek battery-operated machine was one of the gifts from the Sweetwater Collective, the curves of its bamboo casing fitting snugly into his hand, plastic reels spinning smoothly as he demonstrated how it could catch and play back Mercy’s voice.

‘We live in an age of miracles,’ the scout said.

‘When you’re ready, tell me what you saw, and where you saw it.’

‘Best if I start from the beginning,’ Mercy said, leaning close to the recorder’s soundcatcher. ‘It was three moonspans ago, not far from where we’re sitting. I’d come up here because young Righteous had a customer in need of a catamount hide.’

‘And you were in need of the bounty,’ Righteous said.

Mercy ignored him, telling Pilgrim and the wire recorder, ‘I was three days on the trail of a young male, and he knew I was tracking him and had quit the forest proper, reckoning it would make it harder for me to follow. What he didn’t know was that I can mark and follow a single raindrop through a thunderstorm, and even though fog was covering the ridge I tracked him all the way to the old bear city at the northern end. And that’s where I saw what I saw.’

‘The ghost lights, as you called them,’ Pilgrim said.

‘Ay-ya. The fog was thick, but I could see the shadows of the pyramids, and the ghost lights flickering around them. Little patches of green lines, sharp and bright. Never less than ten or twelve of them, sometimes double that number. Flickering off in one place, flickering on in another. That went on for no small while, with the cold and damp settling in my bones while I sat as still as I could, not wanting to draw the attention of whoever or whatever was making them. Scavengers visit those ruins sometimes, looking for carvings. The kind bears made before they went mad and started to killing each other and tearing down their cities. I hear rich folk buy ’em to decorate their houses. Not something I’d recommend. Those stones may be old, but they are still cursed. Steeped in the suffering of our ancestors, as the saying goes. Point being, people who trespass in those ruins aren’t the kind you want to cross.’

‘And did you see anyone?’