The sheds were long and low, with unkempt turf roofs. Rubbish was caught in clumps of weeds and trampled into the mud, piebald shoats and several crows – the biggest Ysbel had ever seen – were rooting about a string of horizontal poles draped with flattened fillets of fish drying in the air, and a motley group of natives, all but one of them male, were sitting around a smouldering bonfire, smoking pungent redweed and drinking small beer from birchbark cups they dipped in a communal pot. A grizzled old female, obviously the arbiter, perched on a small heap of straw-stuffed sacks, her tooled-leather boots not quite touching the ground. She was draped in a cape or cloak made from the blond pelt of a bear cub, its sightless head flopped over one shoulder, and as Ysbel approached she lifted a staff with a cluster of rattle bells hung from the top by strips of leather, jingled it to get the attention of her crew and said loudly, ‘What kind of ogre has come to trouble us now?’

Ysbel stepped around the circle of beer drinkers, trying to ignore their frank, bellicose stares, and introduced herself to the arbiter and said that she was following up on the investigation by Special Operations.

‘We remember them, and not fondly,’ the arbiter said. Her voice was a low growl; a necklace of bear claws hung on her chest and a large tooth-edged knife fashioned from yellow bone was strapped to her thigh.

Ysbel, hoping that a display of contrition would ease the arbiter’s distrust, said that she was sorry to hear that, explained that she represented an agency whose purpose was to ensure that relationships between humans and the people were as harmonious as possible.

‘Your friends weren’t too concerned about harmony when they came here, asking a lot of questions and refusing to acknowledge any of ours,’ the arbiter said. ‘Acting as if their laws bound us, contrary to all fact. So if you’ve come here to ask more questions, think again. It would be better, for the sake of this harmony you speak of, if you gave us some answers instead.’

‘I’ll do the best I can, although I can’t promise that I have answers to everything,’ Ysbel said.

The arbiter regarded her with a gleam of interest. ‘That’s quite tricky of you.’

‘I don’t mean it to be. It’s just that I wouldn’t have disturbed you if I knew everything I need to know.’

‘She thinks she’s cleverer than us, lads,’ the arbiter told her crew. ‘As all of her kind do.’

‘I think you may have been a bear trapper, once upon a time,’ Ysbel said.

‘I am and always will be a trapper, and make no secret of it.’

‘So you must know more about bears than I ever will.’