Lodge hands were heading into the canteen for supper. The soft green stars of glowbugs were adrift in the darkening air and insects batted at the bare incandescent bulbs strung along the edge of the porch’s slant roof. Pilgrim thought with a pang that Master Able would have wanted him to collect a few choice specimens. The old scholar had possessed a particular fondness for beetles, which exhibited extravagantly plentiful and various examples of selective adaptation. Pollen eaters, wood borers, placid leaf grazers, lumbering carnivores that stalked their prey through miniature forests of moss … On warm, rainless summer nights Master Able and Pilgrim had sometimes strung up a sheet on top of the burrow and set a light behind it and examined the insects that flocked there. Once, they had discovered a new species of beetle and had written a short article describing it – their second collaboration, following a brief account of one of the fossils Pilgrim had found in a disused quarry in his tribe’s territory.

Blessed refreshed their thimblecups and told Pilgrim that talking about the aunties’ plans reminded him that Thorn, Pilgrim’s mother, expected to see him the next day.

‘I look forward to it,’ Pilgrim said. ‘And also to seeing Willow, and my new nephew. And Bearbane, of course. I have to tell him about Master Able, and want to thank him for the last six years.’

‘Don’t expect too much of him,’ Blessed said. ‘He has suffered a grievous decline recently.’

‘Willow told me that he had moved to the Elders’ Lodge,’ Pilgrim said, with a little plunge of apprehension.

‘We had him here, for a fair while,’ Blessed said. ‘Looked after him as best we could. I’d take him up to the pastures while he could still ride, and after that became too difficult for him he liked to sit in the smithy, or out by the pens, watching the animals. But he took to wandering off, and the last time we were three days searching for him before he was found, suffering grievously from cold and thirst. That’s when we knew he needed better care than we could provide.’

‘How is he now?’

‘Stubborn as ever. Our family’s strength and curse. Stubborn, but frail and almost blind. And very forgetful.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Pilgrim said, thinking of the last time he had seen his grandfather. Bearbane had taken him to the station when he had left for Highwater Reach, giving him a purse of Union coins and enveloping him in a crushing embrace before he boarded the train. His grandfather had been old then, bent-backed and big bellied, but he had still been strong, had still been a significant power in the tribe.

‘It comes to us all, one way or another,’ Blessed said. ‘But I don’t doubt that he’ll enjoy seeing you again.’