If she hadn’t felt so faint, so ill, Barl would have laughed at her erstwhile guard’s stunned face. A moment, as the mage pulled back inside the carriage to confer with her fellow guard. Another moment as a hasty, whispered conversation ensued. Then the mage leaned out again.

“Very well. She’s your problem now.”

As the carriage door slammed shut, and the driver stirred up his horses, Master Servant Rumm turned on his heel. “With me, Mage Lindin.”

For the first time since setting foot on the gravel, Barl paid attention to where she’d been abandoned exactly like an unwanted parcel. She stood in the forecourt of an imposing, mellow brick mansion. Ruby ivy climbed its walls and flirted with the sun-sparkled windows. There were neatly tended garden beds, colourful with flowers. The air smelled sweet with them, and with the wilder scent of woodland. A breeze flirted with her hair, limp and unravelling now, and tugged at her woefully rumpled linen tunic. The breeze dropped and suddenly she could smell herself, unwashed, the stink of sweat tainted by the binding incant. A brassy kind of smell, it was, leaving a metallic aftertaste in the mouth.

“Mage Lindin.”

Master Servant Rumm had a whipcrack of a voice. She jumped, hearing it, and hurried after him. She didn’t want to risk the binding incant lashing her again.

The master servant led her below stairs, down to the mansion’s working heart. Since this was a grand house, that meant cellars, a kitchen, a scullery, a laundry room, a dry pantry, a meat larder and a buttery, every chamber cool and shadowy. Well, save for the kitchen when the ovens were going. And the laundry, of course. On washing days that would be clouded with steam. Would she be put to work in there, to wrinkle and scald her skin with soap and hot water? How Arndel would love that. Ibbitha and lying, cowardly Baret Ventin, too. How they’d think she’d been justly served.

“In here,” said Master Servant Rumm, pushing open a green baize door. “You’d best sit down before you fall down. But don’t think to make a habit of it. You’ll be far too busy for sitting, soon enough.”