‘She isn’t exactly my boss. And she wants this to go through the usual channels, so it doesn’t attract attention. It’s within our remit, given that humans and natives were working together, and you don’t need to know what I find, if I find anything.’

Ysbel watched Mitkos consider this. There was that free-fall feeling again.

He said, ‘Special Operations won’t get any of the blowback if someone higher up decides that this crosses a line. You’ll be in the direct line of fire, with no protection. And so will I.’

‘If it blows up in any way, I promise that I’ll take all the blame.’

‘Do you think this is important enough to sacrifice your career?’

‘I really do,’ Ysbel said. That, at least, was true.

20.

It was close to midnight when a flitter dropped Ysbel off at her cabin. She half-expected to find that the place had been ransacked by Damage Limitation or Special Operations, searching for any material she might have withheld, but everything was as she had left it. She fell asleep almost immediately, woke at dawn and pulled on her running gear. The sky was cloudless, the air cool and still, and her muscles eased as she followed her usual route downhill to the road that paralleled the railway track and the patchwork fields. Two striplings leading a draft mara by a rope halter shouted her name as she went past and she waved and ran on, trying not to worry about Zaquil’s sneaky sliver-spy, or that some agent from Special Operations might be tracking her with a bot riding too high to spot. Nothing she could do about it, she told herself. If they’d been listening in on her conversation with Mitkos, if they’d worked out what she was planning to do, she’d soon find out.

After Iryn Moonsdaughter’s preliminary interview, there’d been a longer, formal debriefing the next day, covering everything that had happened after Ysbel had travelled to Concord to meet Goodwill. At the end of it, Iryn had told her that she had done well, but it was now time for Special Operations to take up the investigation. The search for Raia and Seven had already begun, and although the terrain was difficult and the presence of feral bears precluded any operations on the ground, it was not likely that the fugitives could evade capture for long. And while Kirder Halmasdaughter had yet to be identified and traced, the two Damage Limitation agents who had taken Ysbel into custody had been tracked down and questioned. They sincerely believed that they had been recruited by an agency directly under Mother’s command, but had never met Kirder Halmasdaughter in person and didn’t know why she was interested in the map, or whether she had anything to do with the camp and the articulate bears.