The clannish people who clung to the coastal fringe had more or less abandoned the territory’s Hearth, five stone towers standing inside the circle of a wall of packed clay breached in too many places to serve as any kind of defence against the depredations of bears and wild animals. Grace Wren Saltmire, a testy, raggedy-whiskered old person who made it clear that she was greatly inconvenienced by their arrival, showed Pilgrim and Gentle to their rooms in the smallest tower, which was braced from its footings to its flat top by ancient wooden scaffolding. Pilgrim’s room had once been a chapel used by the senior auntie of the Hearth for private contemplation; Gentle’s, on the floor above, was smaller and plainer, but had a better view from its slit window, looking out at dense forest that rolled away towards the flanks of saw-toothed mountains. There was a small kitchen and a draughty drop easement, no electricity, no running water.

‘You can buy a ration of good dry wood from the store I keep in the main tower, or you can collect it yourself,’ Grace Wren Saltmire said. ‘There’s any amount of dead wood in the forest, and sea coal washes up along the shore of Windy Cove, along with an abundance of driftwood. As for food, you’ll have to fend for yourselves. There having been nothing in the letter I was sent about providing for you.’

Small and hunchbacked, dressed in a greasy brocade tunic and a skirt of leather plates, she was the caretaker of the Hearth, and also tended to the old men and women, maze-minded like Grandfather Bearbane or terminally ill, who were living out their final days in a warren of cells in the central tower.

‘You’ll need to buy candles,’ she said. ‘Likewise lamp oil. There’s a chandler in town can supply you with necessaries. Don’t let him try to cheat you because you are outsiders. Tell him I’ll be asking after what he charges.’

Pilgrim thanked her, and said that they had purchased some supplies before boarding the trading ship.

‘Not nearly enough, judging by your luggage,’ Grace Wren Saltmire said. ‘Winter’s coming, so you’d best think about getting some proper clothing too. You’re free to go anywhere you want, but I’d advise you to keep out of the mountains. Even in summer the weather up there can change in a moment, and there’s an abundance of bears, and they’re getting bolder with every passing year. And keep away from any boats. Folk see either of you so much as look cross-eyed at one, they’ll not put out to sea on it until it’s been purged and blessed, and they won’t thank you for the trouble you’ve caused.’

‘I come from fisherfolk stock,’ Gentle said. ‘I know all about ignorant prejudices and superstitions towards people who are a little different.’