‘And you believe that?’ Swift said.

‘It would make things easier if I did. If I was wrong to think that the map meant anything.’

‘But suppose it does,’ Ardent said. ‘Suppose the visitors have been here longer than they claim. Suppose they met the bears, and were somehow involved in their fall …’

‘That is what Foeless Landwalker now believes,’ Pilgrim said. ‘He also believes that the visitors are not the visitors who elected him to be their prophet. He says that his visitors want to help us, and those who made themselves known to us are their enemies. That there is an eternal struggle, and we have been caught up in it, and have chosen the wrong side.’

‘Who is going to believe a crazy person who killed someone in front of hundreds of witnesses?’ Swift said.

‘Some of his followers are still loyal,’ Pilgrim said. ‘They have published his prison letters, and he claims to be writing a book that will reveal the truth about the visitors. There are plenty of people who will read it. People who hate the visitors because of what they are. Who they are descended from. People who hate and fear change. New techne, women scholars, everything that is different from the old ways. What if someone like that finds the map, and reckons that it supports Foeless’s baseless claims?’

Swift aimed the winkle pin at him. ‘So you still think it’s important.’

‘Someone bought it, not knowing what it was. Perhaps they thought it was a curio,’ Pilgrim said, remembering Mistress Ash’s words. ‘An interesting decoration. Or perhaps they collect old maps, or artefacts related to bear culture. It’s inside a display case, or hanging on a wall. Harmless, for now. But if the wrong person sees it, sees it for what it is or what it might be …’

‘So you haven’t given up the search,’ Ardent said.

‘Finding it would make writing my monograph much easier, too.’

‘I can ask my friends in the trade to look out for it,’ Swift said. ‘And all it will cost you is another cup of periwinkles.’

Pilgrim returned to his tribe’s territory to recuperate from the operation to lengthen the bone and strengthen the muscles of his leg, and he lived there the rest of his life. He handled the accounts for his sister’s tea business and helped with experiments in breeding plants, excavated and sold fossils and used some of the profits to purchase the original papers concerning Master Able’s work on sightings of the visitors, and to complete and publish the monograph Able had been working on when he died.