‘This is an internal matter now. Iryn cut him loose, and he’s gone back to Concord.’

‘I thought he lived on the west coast.’

‘He does, but he still wants to find the map.’

‘But you’ve moved on from that.’

‘The camp and the articulate bears are more important,’ Ysbel said carefully. Best not to tell her boss about Seven’s sky devils, the possibility that there had been a first contact with bears long before First Contact with the natives.

Mitkos settled back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. ‘Well, you’d better explain what you need from me. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’

‘Also, because I feel I owe you an explanation. But before we get into what I have to do and what I need, you have to swear you won’t tell anyone else about any of this.’

Mitkos put his hand over his heart, trying not to smile and not quite succeeding, and said, ‘I swear. And now I’ve sworn, tell me what you want from me, and why.’

Ysbel had barely started when Bekt, Mitkos’s partner, appeared in the doorway and announced that the boys were settled.

‘We’ll finish up when I’ve kissed them goodnight,’ Mitkos told Ysbel. ‘Don’t go away.’

Bekt asked her if she would like some tea, disappeared inside the house and returned with two bowls. He was a tall, calm man, with a neatly trimmed beard and long blond hair parted down the centre, barefoot in a loose robe. An engineer, currently attached to a native project to construct a solar-powered desalination plant that would augment the city’s freshwater supply. Ysbel thanked him for the tea and asked him how his work was going.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Although we have had our first case of sabotage.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Nothing serious. Some smashed panels. Paint thrown.’ Bekt took a sip of tea and looked at Ysbel over the rim of the bowl and said, ‘I’m not going to ask why you’re here or what you’re doing, but whatever it is, I hope it won’t get Mitkos in trouble.’

‘If there’s any trouble, I’m the lightning rod.’

That appeared to satisfy Bekt. He told her about the concert by the mixed choir of humans and natives that Dalsy Diwasdaughter led, the one that Ysbel had missed while she was away, and wandered back into the house, and presently Mitkos came out and sat down and said, ‘You were just telling me how, after you and your native friend had your fairy-tale meeting and returned to this abandoned camp, you found that Iryn Moonsdaughter was waiting for you.’

‘The helper assigned to me had been spying on the meeting, against my orders. He told Iryn what we’d found. The camp. Raia. Seven. And she scrambled a team, and came out with them.’

‘She’s taking this seriously.’