‘You know, back in the past. The old tribes of Outer Udar, coveting this region because it was so bounteous compared to their sparse homelands. There were wars in these mountains for centuries. All forgotten now.’

‘I confess I don’t know much about war, sir,’ said Drusher, perching on a rock near to where the man sat. ‘Or history. I am a student of science and nature. A magos biologis.’

The man looked at him with interest.

‘Is that right? Sir, I envy you. That’s a fine calling. As a boy, I wanted to become a naturalist too. I won a place at Delci, the scholam there, to study the sciences of living worlds. But duty, you know. My family is in timber. My dear father, he needed a son with business acumen who could take over the trade, so I transferred to the universitariate at Tycho. Had that not been fate’s path, I might have been a magos biologis myself.’

‘But you still dabble?’ asked Drusher.

‘Oh yes,’ the man said. ‘When I can get out of the office, and away from invoices and shipment manifests and audits and labour disputes with the logging gangs. Any spare moment, you’ll find me out here, away from it all.’

‘You have a good hand,’ said Drusher, gesturing towards the sketch.

The man looked down at his work, and propped the sketch up in its green card cover to consider it.

‘Kind of you to say so, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’m sure I lack your skills of observation and execution. Tell me, are you staying nearby?’

‘Very close by,’ said Drusher.

‘You’re not a friend of Sark’s are you?’

‘Sark?’

‘Draven Sark.’

‘No, I don’t know him.’

The man smiled and shrugged. Drusher found it hard to tell how old he was. He looked Drusher’s age, but that meant little. So many people had juvenat treatment these days, those who could afford it. The man might have been a hundred years old and not look a day over forty. Drusher had heard that recipients of juvenat work lived to ages of a hundred and seventy sometimes.

‘Old Sark’s a friend of mine,’ the man said, returning to his sketch. ‘A neighbour. I only ask because you’re the sort of interesting fellow he has as a guest. In the summer months, they come from all over. Sometimes off-world. I’ll tell you, the people I’ve met at his dinners over the years. Scientists, scholars, merchants, artists, fleet officers…’

‘What does this Master Sark do?’ Drusher asked.

The man frowned.