‘It isn’t what you are,’ Grace Wren Saltmire said, with a sharp look, ‘but what you did. Library’s in the east tower. I won’t be troubling you there. It’s your business to see to it. And I’ll thank you for not troubling me unless you have exhausted every other course. I have enough work already.’

‘And what am I expected to do,’ Gentle said to Pilgrim after the old woman had left, ‘while you are rummaging through old books?’

‘Our little stock of food won’t last long. How are your hunting skills?’

‘No one would ever have me on a boat, but I know how to fish from the shore. Spare some of that money you were given, I’ll buy hooks and line for fishing, and the makings of snares and traps. Maybe some birdlime, if they have it.’

‘First we need to find some wood and get a fire going,’ Pilgrim said. ‘These rooms haven’t seen a guest in a long time.’

He was cleaning dust and mouse droppings from the kitchen cupboards and Gentle was poking a stick up a blocked flue when Noble Seatree arrived, barging up the stairs without warning or invitation. A swag-bellied broad-shouldered person dressed in a raggedy fur coat and leather trews, accompanied by a brindled cur on a chain leash, he told them that he was the town constable and had been tasked with making sure that the terms of exile were followed to the letter. He turned to Gentle and asked which tribe had grown such a big fellow. The cur looked at Gentle too, its eyes yellow as lamps.

‘My people were fisherfolk,’ Gentle said. ‘Like yours.’

‘You’re in the south now, lad. Our roaring seas are nothing like the gentle waters of where you come from. And don’t think that because you have a couple of spans on me that I can’t improve you should you need improving,’ Noble Seatree said, pulling his fur coat aside to show the sap hung from his belt. ‘This here is made of cured seatree stipe. Hard but flexible, just like me. Am I understood?’

‘I have had some experience of people like you,’ Gentle said, with a sleepy look.

‘I’m not one of your soft northern lawkeepers,’ Noble Seatree said. ‘So don’t try to backtalk me. If you want smooth sailing it’s yessir and nosir. Simple and straightforward.’

‘Yessir,’ Gentle said.

‘Don’t forget it,’ Noble Seatree said, and turned to Pilgrim. His eyes were set close together under a heavy brow; his gaze was cold and contemptuous. ‘You look like you’d have to stand up twice to make a shadow, but I know why you’re here and I’ll be keeping a sharp watch. I’m told you’ve been tasked with cleaning up the old library. That right?’

‘I look forward to putting it in good order,’ Pilgrim said.