Pilgrim thanked her, asked if she remembered what he had told her about Master Able’s work in his letters to her. What his master had been working on when he died.

It was still hard, saying that. When he died. Openly acknowledging his death. Confirming its reality.

‘Something to do with ghosts or visions, I believe,’ Thorn said. ‘One of those silly popular manias.’

‘Master Able was trying to find out if there was something more to it than that,’ Pilgrim said.

He explained that in the course of his usual work Master Able’s interest in sightings of so-called visitors had been sparked by a letter sent by a trapper who worked in the forests of the west coast of the New Territories, describing a brief glimpse, at night, of tall figures that moved in the darkness under the trees and shone like the Daughter Moon. Master Able had recently done some work on the bones of a dwarf species of ogre which had lived on one of the Spice Islands for tens of thousands of years beyond the Burn Line, and wondered if the trapper might have encountered members of a similar species which had survived until the present day. He had written to his contacts, seeking evidence of similar encounters, and had tasked Pilgrim with sifting through local wallsheets, and they had compiled a short list of reliable sightings and had interviewed the witnesses by mail or in person. The sightings had been scattered across the Union and the New Territories and none of the witnesses appeared to have any connection with each other, yet their accounts shared a number of striking similarities. All of the encounters had been in remote areas and mostly in the last light of dusk, or at night: distant glimpses of two or three slim, tall figures clad in white, disappearing amongst trees or behind rocks or ridges, dissolving into darkness. Two witnesses had said that the figures had been blank-faced. Another had claimed that they had worn helmets with visors of black glass.

‘In several cases ridged footprints were found. In others, markings scratched in the dirt or on a rock,’ Pilgrim said, and showed Thorn his drawing of the flowersipper sigil, explained that rumours about the sightings had inspired all kinds of outlandish theories, from claims that they were avatars of the Mother to Foeless Landwalker’s assertion that they hailed from Morningstar, the second planet of the sun, where they had built a paradise of peace and universal enlightenment. Critics and naysayers had questioned Master Able’s motives and attacked his reputation, but he had persisted in his quest for the truth, painstakingly analysing the veracity of new sightings, including descriptions of what might have been flying machines and a report of strange lights in the ruins of a bear city.