Ysbel thought of the discovery of the lost civilisations of the apes and monkeys and emus, the suite of genes inserted into the genomes of animal species before the Burn Line, the other secrets kept from the natives. Perhaps it should all come out. A fresh start. A new accord. True openness and real parity between humans and natives. She felt as if she was in a hopper at the top of its arc. Hanging way out on the edge of space in freefall, everything up in the air, waiting to see where it all came down.

‘I wanted to show that my uncle was right,’ Goodwill said. ‘That the map was proof that bears were visited by your people hundreds of years ago. That it had something to do with their fall. But now I’m not so sure. Perhaps it’s for the best if the figure on the map and Seven’s sky devils are no more than figments of bear dreams and nightmares.’

‘One thing I know,’ Ysbel said, ‘is that there’s still a lot we don’t know.’

They talked about that as they walked through the marsh. Lack of hard proof of what the map seemed to show. The missing threads that might link it with the camp, the mislaid panel and an agency so secret there was no trace of it in any records. By the time they reached the river, emerging from the swampy forest only a short distance from the beached canoe, they had thrashed out the outlines of a plan.

They agreed that there was no need to tell anyone about the map and Seven’s songs just yet. The implications were too enormous, and the facts were far from certain. Goodwill and Swift could search for the whereabouts of the map, and for similar artefacts; Ysbel could truthfully tell Iryn Moonsdaughter that Joyous Hightower claimed that the map was no longer in his possession, and refused to say who owned it now.

The camp and the articulate bears were another matter. Ysbel and Goodwill knew that they had to tell their respective authorities what they’d found. Ysbel thought she should treat it as a crime scene, ask Ilan if he and a couple of colleagues could spare a few days to survey the site and search for evidence about who had lived there, and look for graves or any other traces of bodies. She hoped that it would give Goodwill and her some measure of control, and would make sure that that neither the human nor native authorities could dismiss their claims. And she also hoped that they could respect Raia’s request to protect Seven, for now, by telling Zaquil and Iryn Moonsdaughter that they’d been taken into the forest to meet with a trapper who’d stumbled on the camp a year ago, and didn’t want any involvement with the authorities.