Teal Leadwood studied him for a moment. They were sitting by the hearth in her cottage, drinking pinebark tea sweetened with shavings from a lump of raw sugar. Teal’s washcat was curled in her lap, one of its handlike paws clutching a fold of her fustian kirtle. She said, ‘If you prove that they are real, won’t that help this prophet rather than hinder him?’

‘If that figure really is a depiction of one of the visitors, if they really did make contact with bears, they may have had something to do with the collapse of bear civilisation,’ Pilgrim said. ‘Perhaps they are not peaceful and compassionate, as Foeless Landwalker claims. Perhaps they are malignant. Dangerous. If we could prove that, it would put a swift end to his utopian nonsense.’

‘It seems to me that you are leaning too hard on speculation. Telling stories and hoping that you can find facts that you can bend into some kind of proof, rather than finding facts and then trying to discover the best explanation for them.’

Pilgrim was too fevered and anxious to heed her. ‘I need to get back to Highwater Reach and do some research in the Library of All People. Gentle reckons that he can steal a boat. With luck, it will get us as far as Fortunate Valley, where I can sell books from the library to raise the train fare. But there might be a better way.’

‘If you came here looking for your fare, I am about as hard up as you,’ Teal said.

‘I didn’t come here to ask for money.’

‘What do you want from me, then?’

‘I believe that it is time for you to tell your friends in the Invisible College everything I’ve told you, and ask for their help.’

22.

Pilgrim was returning to the Hearth after buying paper and a new inkstone from the chandler’s when Noble Seatree intercepted him. Stepping out into the muddy street, catching the bridle of Pilgrim’s mara in one hand and a fistful of its coarse blond hair in the other, saying, ‘I hear you’ve been visiting the crazy woman again.’

Pilgrim didn’t answer. There was no point in denying it, and there was no point in giving the constable whatever pleasure he might garner by admitting it, either.

‘I could ask what you two have been talking about,’ Noble Seatree said. ‘But seeing as I already know, having read your letter, there’s no need.’

For a moment, Pilgrim was worried that he meant the letters sent to Teal’s colleagues in the Invisible College, but she had handed them to the purser of the coastal trader, to avoid the scrutiny of the chandler. No, this was all about Swift’s letter, and he should have known that the chandler would have told the constable about it, should have known that there would be a reckoning.