‘This friend of hers is most likely some crazy old bear trapper,’ Goodwill said, after they had climbed aboard. ‘There are many such these days, now that bears have been mostly cleared from the New Territories. Loners who have lost their livelihood and refuse to join the border patrol, or find a patch of land and settle down. Who have little liking for other people, and even less for civilisation. I had to deal with one such who came into town, offering to deal with a rogue bear which was, according to him, responsible for the deaths of maras on several local farms. There was no bear – the maras had been killed by a spotted cat – but he believed that he knew better. He was consumed by a fanatical obsession with his prey, half love, half hate, claimed to have killed more than fifty rogues and wore a coat made from the hide of one of them. There is a league of former bear trappers who try to help those like him, but he refused my offer to refer him to them. All I could do was give him a meal and a bed for the night, and move him on.’

‘I think Raia would know if her friend was crazy,’ Ysbel said. ‘And even if he is, it won’t cost us anything to give him a hearing.’

‘I’m also reminded of one of my uncle’s stories,’ Goodwill said, with the stubborn look Ysbel was growing to know all too well. ‘The people of the place where he was exiled, in the far south, kept up several old traditions, including setting dogs against bears that they had captured. A kind of sport. My uncle witnessed one such contest and believed that the bear might have been pleading for its life. But it was impossible to know, he said, because it may have been that he was projecting onto the bear what he wanted to hear. And even if bears could speak, and we could understand their speech, could we ever really understand their minds, and what it is like to be a bear?’

‘Do you think we really understand each other? Humans and people.’

‘I know that most of you mean well most of the time,’ Goodwill said, showing his teeth to let her know that it was meant to be a joke.

Raia left to meet her friend early the next morning, after asking Ysbel to promise that neither she nor Zaquil would attempt to track her. ‘I spotted your security bot before I came in to meet you. I don’t want it following me.’