‘How the native authorities choose to deal with him is their concern, not ours,’ Kirder Halmasdaughter said. ‘I imagine that at the very least he will be stripped of his lawkeeping powers, given that he was instrumental in bribing an official of the Library of All People and entered its stacks without obtaining the proper permissions and documentation.’

‘So you’ve figured out how to silence both of us.’

‘My people will speak to you again. Not for any accounting of your misconduct – that has already been done – but to make sure you understand what you need to do to save yourself, and that there are no other fires we need to fight,’ Kirder Halmasdaughter said, and the window shut down.

Ysbel assumed that the interrogation would resume straight away, but for a long while nothing happened. Her captors probably believed that another stretch of isolation would soften her up, give her time to realise that her best chance was to co-operate, end her investigation and deceive Mother with a bogus report, but she reckoned that there might be a way of getting out of this. As far as she was concerned, a promise to co-operate meant nothing if it was coerced, and the talk of helping Mother by lying to her didn’t feel right. There was something else going on, some other reason why Kirder Halmasdaughter and her agency, Damage Limitation, wanted to shut down the investigation. Ysbel could play along, tell the woman’s lackeys that she’d do everything they asked and answer all their questions – it seemed like they already knew most of what she could tell them anyway. And when they let her go, when she had her link back, she could put Zaquil on the case. Discover everything she could about this mysterious agency. Find out if it had the map bought by Joyous Hightower, and if he had been working for it all along. And she’d get back in touch with Goodwill Saltmire, and go take a look at that secret project in bear country. Maybe Damage Limitation had something to do with that, too. And maybe, just maybe, Mother had another agenda all along, had sent Ysbel after the map so that her search would flush out bad actors.