They climbed the slope to the sandy paddocks where maras were tethered. They didn’t know where saddles and harnesses were kept, but Pilgrim found a coil of rope and began to tie halters, a skill Blessed had taught him long ago. His hands were shaking. The moment when Gentle had been shot was still at the front and centre of his mind. Foeless Landwalker’s theatrical pose. His outstretched arm jerking up from the pistol’s recoil and Gentle sagging in his bonds, a scarlet bib streaking the snowy pelt of his chest.

He had to fashion a sling strap for Fragrant’s camera and tripod, too. After it was secured, Fragrant and Poppy helped him climb onto the back of one of the maras and he jammed his stick through the sash of his trews and followed the two women as they rode up the track.

It was a moonless night, but the starry sky was bright enough to cast blue shadows. They skirted the bluff where they had been intercepted, passed the place where they had stopped to survey the camp and the flowersipper, rode up the canyon into the desert beyond. When they passed a small camp of followers who had either quit the gathering or were heading towards it, Poppy asked if anyone had seen a man in an orange shirt go past, possibly riding alone, but either no one had or no one was willing to say.

‘He could have gone in the other direction,’ she said as they rode on.

‘We have to get back to Ogres Grave,’ Fragrant said. ‘So this is the right way as far as I am concerned.’

At last Pilgrim saw a few small lights shimmering off in the distance, and soon afterwards they reached the excavation site. The mounds of the burrows were starkly lit by electric pole lamps. No one came out to meet the riders; no one answered when Pilgrim limped up to the door of one of the burrows and rapped on it with the gnarled head of his stick.

‘Are you certain he came here?’ Fragrant said.

‘Let’s take a look at the diggings,’ Pilgrim said. ‘Someone was working there when we went by earlier.’

They found and followed a stony track cut through desert scrub and scattered boulders. Riding under the immense dome of cold indifferent stars, Pilgrim wondered if anyone or anything might be hovering up there, watching their trivial and most likely hopeless quest with unsympathetic amusement.

The trenches of the diggings, when they reached them, were as deserted as the burrows. Stretching away into the night, terraced sides stepped down to fathomless pools of inky shadow.

‘Now what?’ Fragrant said.

Pilgrim pointed to the far end of the trenches, where the steam shovel’s angular silhouette was etched against a fingernail crescent of faint light.

‘Let’s find out what’s there,’ he said.

‘The place is abandoned,’ Fragrant said.