‘He can still tell a good story.’

‘The past is realer to him than the present,’ Willow said. ‘The only comfort is that he no longer remembers that he is ailing.’

They rode side by side along the road towards the walled mound of the Hearth’s bastion, passing strips of sweetroot and starchroot, beans, fat grass and thread grass. Rows of custard-apple trees, peermelon trees, grapevines. Pilgrim gave Willow a brief account of his interview with Mercy Redvine and the visit to the ruins of the bear city, and she asked him if he had told Thorn about his plans.

‘I thought it would be better to explain the details in person rather than in a letter.’

‘If you want to know the truth, this business with the visitors has always sounded crazy to me. It still does.’

‘I am going to explain why it is important to define the nature of that craziness. Blessed told me that she has not much changed.’

‘She is what she is,’ Willow said. ‘But I know that she is looking forward to seeing you.’

They rode past barns and storage tanks, past the stinking tannery and the sheds where the rugs for which the territory had some small fame were woven. Past the pups’ compound, with its red-painted cabins and neat flower and vegetable gardens, where Pilgrim had spent the first years of his life, and through the gate in the mud wall of the bastion. They left their maras in the courtyard and Willow led Pilgrim through the maze of passageways under the central mound, his cane rapping on the woodblock floor, anticipation parching his mouth.