‘So if he knows more than he tells, he might make a game of it,’ Ysbel said, ‘and reveal more than he means to.’

‘Exactly so,’ Goodwill Saltmire said, widening his eyes and showing his front teeth a little, the way his people smiled.

They passed a row of small burrows where the guests were quartered, each covered by a grassy mound in the traditional style, and the house was revealed beyond a row of cypresses. It was another architectural borrowing: flat-roofed decks built of raw concrete jutting at at different levels and angles, narrow strips of glass gleaming in the morning light, the whole cantilevered above the creamy surge of waves rolling over a rocky foreshore. The servant led them through a garden of rocks and moss and raked gravel to a big square room with windows running the length of three sides and closed by shutters. Lights in the ceiling picked out items in display cases standing along the walls: artefacts from the lost bear civilisation, oversized and crudely worked. Broken helmets and pottery jigsawed from fragments; carved panels of stone and wood; a fan of bone daggers and a tall pole axe with a stone head; boiled-leather armour mounted on a translucent plastic torso; a startlingly ugly sculpture hacked from a tree stump and studded with crude iron nails and broken knife blades.

Solomon Firststar was waiting at the far end of the room. He was much younger than Ysbel had expected, plump and sleek as a harbour seal, barefoot in a yellow silk robe, rings on every finger and several of his toes. He pressed his palms together and bowed, looking up at Ysbel from beneath his brow, greeting her by name, saying that it was an unusual privilege to meet someone born on the Daughter Moon.

‘We’re no different from anyone else,’ Ysbel said, thinking that it would be rude to correct him about the circumstances of her birth. ‘I am sure you know that I came here to talk to Trina Mersdaughter, so I am surprised to find that she is not with you.’

‘She is still upset, as you might expect, and has been given medication.’

‘I’ll take her medication into account when I talk to her.’

‘I believe that the telephone in her head,’ Solomon Firststar said, meaning the woman’s link, ‘diagnosed shock and exhaustion. It may be better to wait until she is in the right frame of mind and able to give a full and lucid account of the accident. In the meantime I can offer you breakfast, and a place to rest. The journey from Ogres Grave is not a short one, even by air.’

‘I appreciate your concern for your guest, but I want to talk to her while her memory is still fresh.’

Solomon Firststar showed his front teeth. ‘And I do not want to stand in the way of your duty, as you see it.’