‘Something more than a shared liking for dusty tomes and obscure knowledge kindled our friendship,’ Swift was saying. ‘I recognised at once that he was, like me, a pure. Do you know what that is?’

‘I have met one or two,’ Ysbel said carefully.

‘Which was more than poor Pilgrim had, before he found me. He was from some dreadfully remote and unenlightened territory, the only pure in his family and tribe, which was why he had been packed off to the city. I introduced him to our community, and watched him blossom. He was lame in one leg but clever and lively, and deeply loyal to his employer, Master Able, a famous scholar in his time, which was such a long time ago it gives me vertigo to even think about it,’ Swift said. ‘So do not feel bad if you have not heard of him. He’s mostly been forgotten by his own people, such is the new world we find ourselves living in.’

‘I wasn’t much more than a pup when my uncle died, and remember him as a kindly but somewhat remote presence,’ Goodwill said. ‘He let me search for fossils in his quarry, showed me how you could collect insects at night using only a lantern and a sheet. And he told stories about his adventures, too. I remember he once said that they turned out to be a smaller part of his life than he expected. I think he was unhappy that he was not taken more seriously.’

‘The map might change that,’ Ysbel said, wanting to move things forward. ‘Especially now that our Mother has taken an interest.’

‘She has brought one of her Mother’s servants with her,’ Goodwill told Swift. ‘A kind of spirit that lives in machines.’

‘I thought those were no more than tall tales,’ Swift said.

‘I have seen it,’ Goodwill said. ‘It helped me escape after some of Ysbel’s people invited me to stay with them, claiming it was for my protection.’

‘Deploy a couple of your smallest bots, so they can hear me,’ Zaquil told Ysbel, and after she had asked Goodwill and Swift to allow the little machines to cling to their ears, a diminished version of his avatar brightened on the table, perching on the rim of one of the bowls, and bowed to each of them in turn.

‘This sliver of myself is making use of Ysbel’s bot network,’ Zaquil said. ‘Its low bandwidth means that I can’t make this projection any larger without losing resolution. But here I am.’

Swift screwed a lens into his right eye and peered at the avatar, then let the lens drop into his leathery palm and looked at Ysbel. ‘Is your Mother using this spirit to watch us? Forgive me if I find it somewhat alarming.’