A flock of small grey birds flared up from the concrete tank at the foot of the windpump and circled away. The tank brimmed with clear water. Ysbel drank a couple of palmfuls, savouring the cool mineral taste, splashed her face and neck, and turned to study the patchwork of pasture and strip fields. The sun hung a handspan or so above the trees to the west and the sky was darkening and the first stars were pricking through. She felt no anger or disappointment, only a kind of calm resignation. As if it was inevitable that this lead would peter out in an empty clearing in the middle of a wild forest.

‘I wonder how long has this place been abandoned,’ she said.

‘Not very long, I think,’ Goodwill said. ‘A year at most, which tallies with the cessation of supply shipments.’ He seemed resigned, too.

‘It looks like one of the work camps where lawbreakers repay their debt to society,’ Ysbel said.

‘Apart from the burrows, I think it was built by your people,’ Goodwill said. ‘The slabs which drink sunlight and turn it into electricity are your techne, not ours. And we would not have put a fence around it.’

‘Perhaps the fence was built to keep things out, rather than keep people in,’ Ysbel said. ‘We’re in bear country, after all.’

‘By the breadth of a whisker.’

‘Even so, and even though I know Zaquil is watching over us, it gives me a queasy feeling.’

Goodwill turned in a full circle, surveying the desolate fields. ‘If your people built this place, what role did Joyous Hightower’s syndicate play?’

‘They could have acted as middlemen, paid to purchase native construction materials and transport them to the railhead,’ Ysbel said. ‘Those payments may be recorded in our accounting system as something else, a grant to expand a manufactory, a fee for services rendered, but I can ask Zaquil to take a look.’

She thought it likely that the money had come from one of the general funds, or had been transferred through some kind of cut-out that rendered its origin untraceable, but they had little else to go on at this point.

‘It has clearly outlived its purpose, whatever that was,’ Goodwill said. ‘Perhaps this is a sign that I should go home. I miss my family. My partner and my pups.’

‘How many do you have?’

‘Three. Two sons and a daughter. One of my sons is still in the communal Hearth. The other two are old enough to live with us.’

‘So you and your partner live together all year round?’

‘Like many in the New Territories, we are disgustingly modern. Do you have any pups?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You are the right age, I think. If you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Perhaps I haven’t found the right person yet.’