The cabin vanished. Ysbel and Goodwill were hanging above the vast dark curve of the planet’s nightside. The bailiff shouted out and buried his face in the crook of his elbow.

‘Just a window will do,’ Ysbel told Zaquil, as calmly as she could.

The cabin came back and its lights dimmed and a window opened in the air: the dark map of the world stretching away under a pitch-black sky filled with stars, moonlight gleaming silver on the ocean to the east, the cock-eyed sliver of the Moon slowly but noticeably sinking towards the curved horizon.

‘You must feel like spirits,’ Goodwill said.

‘We feel privileged,’ Ysbel said, and asked Zaquil to show them where they were going.

The view of the landscape beneath the hopper shrank to show the entire globe, which rotated to show the west coast of the New Territories, a red dot appearing high in the north. While Goodwill studied their destination, Ysbel told him about her incarceration and interrogation. He liked her idea that Joyous Hightower might be helping Damage Limitation, acting as an agent or go-between in the acquisition of the map, and told her that Zaquil had hidden one of her little machines in his clothing when they had been caught in the Library’s stacks.

‘After I gave a statement to the Library’s gatekeepers and was taken to its strangers’ lodge, he used it to tell me what he had arranged. I walked out of the lodge, one of your carts was waiting for me and here I am.’

‘Were you charged with anything?’

‘I am supposed to meet with the gatekeepers for further questioning in the morning. No doubt they will add that to my misdemeanours. I regret breaking my compact with them, but think it was for a greater good.’ Goodwill paused, then added, ‘My uncle was involved in an incident in which another party was injured, and he was sentenced to exile in my tribe’s original territory, in the far south. He found the map there, believed that what it might mean was important and broke the terms of his sentence. And now I have done something similar.’

Ysbel knew that natives accused or convicted of crimes were expected, as a matter of personal honour and social convention, to appear before councils and tribunals and accept their punishments without need for enforcement or coercion. But she couldn’t help wondering if the bailiff had been able to escape so easily because he had been working for the authorities all along, or if he had agreed to work for them after his arrest. She needed to discuss that with Zaquil. The helper was clever and powerful, but when it came of matters of trust she felt that he was somewhat naive.

She asked Goodwill if he knew who had betrayed them, and he told her that it was his fault.