‘That would not be the most efficient use of my resources.’

‘I can’t go looking for food. The locals will wonder what I’m doing here. Word might spread and reach the embassy or someone else looking to get a piece of this. So while you are organising delivery of that letter, you can work out a way of getting my lunch to me, too. Or is that beneath the dignity of a helper from the second tier of the central cluster?’

‘If you doubt my dedication to this undertaking, Ysbel, I can assure you that I will help you to the best of my considerable ability in every way I can.’

It was unnerving to think that she was so transparent to a machine mind, but she wasn’t going to apologise.

‘I’m stuck here with a handful of cold rice balls is all it is, and no idea when Goodwill and Swift are coming back. I don’t suppose,’ Ysbel said, ‘you know where they’ve gone? What they’re doing?’

‘You did not ask me to follow them. And besides, it would have been rude. But if you allow me to make use of your bots, it should not take me long to find out where they are and what they are doing.’

‘Better not. As you said, it would be rude. Goodwill trusted me with his findings. I should trust him.’

‘Trust is the key to success in matters like this,’ Zaquil said, and his little avatar blew out like a candleflame.

While she waited for the letter and her lunch, Ysbel read the transcript of the interview with the witness of the so-called ghost lights in Pilgrim Saltmire’s monograph, puzzling her way through the formal text, pleased she didn’t have to resort to her link’s translator more than a couple of times. It was some way past noon when there was a scratch at the door. When Ysbel cautiously opened it, a young native dressed in a kind of uniform, a long black shirt over baggy trews, handed her an envelope and a neat parcel and pressed his hands over his heart and walked off without a word.

He was one of the native aides employed by the embassy, according to Zaquil. ‘I got inside the systems to print out that letter, requisition some vittles and task the youngster with a clandestine delivery.’

‘Vittles?’

‘Your lunch. Enjoy.’

The letter, written in the common tongue and signed by the ambassador’s chief of staff, explained that Ysbel Moonsdaughter was an accredited researcher who wished to examine bear artefacts held by the Library of All People, and asked its staff to give her any help she required.

‘I hope that is what you had in mind,’ Zaquil said.

‘It’ll do. You aren’t bad at making up stories.’