Drusher pushed the annotated text aside and opened the geographical history.

‘In fact,’ he said, ‘it’s so obvious it’s a little embarrassing. Here… “Unkara” is derived from the Old Fent word for crossroads. Unkara Town is a crossroads… because it was founded on the best navigational transit point south of the Karanines. It is a major pass between the Karanine foothills and the southern uplands. A more significant pass than Karad, in fact. We don’t think of it that way, because there’s a town there now, but to an older local man like Fargul, that would be “the pass” and would require no further clarification.’

‘So, we’ve been looking in the wrong area?’ asked Voriet.

Drusher nodded. ‘I believe we have. Keshtre is not north of us towards Karad, it’s south of us towards Unkara Town.’

Audla Jaff sniffed.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘But if that’s what you have to share, magos, it’s comparatively minor. You have used a paltry scrap of expertise to leverage far more information from us.’

‘Well,’ said Drusher, ‘that’s what good investigators do, isn’t it, Master Nayl?’

‘I think,’ said Nayl, covering his amusement, ‘we should go back to the maps and see what’s south of us.’

‘There’s nothing south of us either,’ said Jaff, annoyed.

‘Actually, I think there is,’ said Drusher. ‘I hadn’t finished, Mamzel Jaff. I happened upon this too.’

He put the third book in front of him. It was an old volume of a larger format, its green card cover faded by the years.

‘This was in the library,’ said Drusher. ‘It’s Esic Fargul’s sketchbook. He was carrying it the day I met him.’

‘Yesterday,’ Nayl reminded him.

‘Whatever day yesterday was, Master Nayl,’ said Drusher. He opened the book. Its pages were age-spotted and frail. Many loose leaves and sheets of paper had been stuffed into it, held between the covers by the tie ribbon. Drusher turned over drawings of the deep valley, of trees, of pools and tumbled stones, overgrown.

‘He liked this country,’ said Drusher. ‘He drew it a lot. Sometimes, the same location over and over. He liked the river. He also liked the old fortresses. He made many studies of them. Especially the ruined ones. Look at this.’

He pushed one sketch onto the table so they could all see it. It showed two broken stones in a woodland clearing.

‘The note at the bottom says “Ballion Fortress”. It’s clearly nothing more than a few stones. But to Fargul, it was a fortress still. Ballion is not on any of the maps, but it is listed in the indices of several histories as a Karanine fort. So, Fargul, with his love of local lore, knew the old sites even when published history had forgotten them. Now look at this one.’