It had been two weeks since he’d met her, and he still didn’t know what to make of her: elfin, with a frame like a boy, and a high forehead that made the curve of her brow seem huge, and very young, younger than him. She was smart, he knew that. Big eyes, like new coins, a tiny pinched mouth. He understood she was some kind of expert retained by the visitor. With the visitor absent, she was in charge.

He stood for a moment, feeling awkward, rain dripping off the leather-jack of his deputy’s uniform.

‘I’ve done a sweep,’ he said.

‘Are your colleagues on station?’ she asked. She didn’t look up. She turned a page.

‘Yes, mam,’ he said. He thought of Cronyl, sheltering from the rain in the gatehouse, and Edde, walking the west wall with her riotgun under her slicker.

‘Any… any word from him?’ he asked.

She closed the book and picked up another from a pile beside her.

‘No,’ she said.

‘You don’t think… something might have…’

‘No,’ she said. She was intent on the book. ‘It’s possible that something has, of course, but I doubt it. He knows what he’s doing. Is there any sign of the others?’

He shook his head.

‘Did you check the cold store?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She raised her head and looked at him. The slightest hint of a question.

‘You’re reading, mam,’ he said, changing the subject.

‘I am,’ she said, looking right at him.

‘A book.’

Jaff looked down at the book in her hands and reacted as if surprised to see it there. Garofar had noticed her sense of humour before. It was at odds with her serene, cerebral manner. It seemed older than she was.

‘I am,’ she said.

‘Anything in particular?’ he asked.

‘This?’ she asked, gesturing with the book, a slim volume. ‘Folk Verse of the Karanine Passes by Nettial Farell, second edition, published by the Red Grange Press in Delci seventy-eight years ago, some water-marking, foxing and shelfwear, inscribed on the flyleaf “To my dear nephew Esic, your beloved aunt”.’

She rolled off the details rapidly without even consulting the book.

‘Good, is it?’ he asked.

Jaff rose to her feet, unfolding her legs from under her. She was significantly shorter than him.

‘You have a tell, Deputy Garofar.’

‘A tell?’