“Go and eat,” said his father. “You looked peaked. Would you have me worrying over your health now?”

Taking up the breakfast tray, Morgan left his father to doze over a favourite book and made his way downstairs. On the second floor landing he glanced through the window and stopped, surprised, to see Barl traipsing toward the poultry coop with an empty pail in her hand. Her halting walk spoke with harsh eloquence of a body still haunted by pain.

For too long he watched her, his father’s breakfast tray heavy in his grasp. And watching, found himself hoping that she’d sense his regard and turn. He wanted to see her eyes again. He wanted to feast his gaze on her face. She was a miracle of magic. Though she was bound, he could feel her power in his blood… and the empty place beneath his tunic, where for so many years a locket had warmed his cold skin, yearned and burned for her touch.

She didn’t feel him, watching her. Instead she let the poultry coop swallow her, and he continued down the stairs.

“My lord, she insisted,” said Rumm, after listening to a trenchant upbraiding. “And, if you’ll permit me to speak bluntly, I see no good coming from cosseting the girl. She is disruptive enough without we give the other servants reason to resent her.”

Morgan shoved the cluttered tray at him. “You presume to instruct me?”

“No, sir,” said Rumm, very clipped. “I merely seek to maintain this mansion’s orderly atmosphere. Ructions will serve only to distress his lordship.”

And above all else, his lordship must not be distressed.

As if I need a servant to remind me of that.

“I have business in Elvado, Rumm,” he said, equally clipped. “I’ll not be absent much above an hour. I trust I can leave you in charge here for such a small space of time?”

Rumm’s lips tightened. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

After changing into a tunic of indigo silk, subtly shot with bronze thread, Morgan incanted himself into the city’s eastern quarter. Sallis Arkley was a man of luxurious habit. Every morning, almost without fail, his desiccated lordship indulged himself in the bone-warming heat of a private hot room, part of an exclusive establishment that kept all but the most prestigiously ranked mages at bay.

“Councillor Danfey,” the establishment’s gatekeeper murmured. “Welcome. Your robe… your towels… would you care for refreshment?”

He took what was proffered. “Water.”

A wax-sealed bottle joined robe and towels. “And should you require anything else,” the gatekeeper said, gravely deferential, “you have but to ask.”