On the mansion’s fourth floor she felt the councillor’s absence more keenly than ever. As though he’d imprinted himself upon the unseen air, and now the air was starving for him. Testing the doors to his apartments, she found them both unwarded and unlocked. After one last downward look over the banister, she crept in.

The outer room, his parlour, was ruthlessly neat. Cream walls. Heavy dark red velvet curtains, still drawn. A fireplace, laid with fresh fuel but unlit. Polished anfra floors adorned with one enormous green-and-bronze striped Brantish rug. A lamp table with a plain glimlamp on it, still burning. A dark brown leather couch and high-backed armchair, both comfortably battered. Beside the chair a reading table, piled with old, leatherbound books. Tiptoeing, she crossed to them and read their spines, quickly. Magework treatises, all seven, written by mages whose names she’d never heard of. But if she’d studied at the College she had no doubt she’d know them.

Throttling resentment, she looked around the parlour. Neat and unremarkable, nothing more. If she hadn’t known this was the councillor’s room she never would have guessed. Perhaps his privy chamber would be more revealing.

Clutching her polishing rag and tin of beeswax, she nudged its unlatched door ajar. Stood on the chamber’s threshold, warily listening for the sound of approaching footsteps, and peered through the narrow space between door and jamb.

A sumptuously caparisoned bed, vast and unmade, with a flurry of clothing discarded across its rumpled dark blue counterpane. On the single bedside table an unlit glimlamp, another book and a woman’s portrait. She was approaching middle age. His mother, perhaps? There was a resemblance. More dark red velvet curtains, this time flung aside from the windowpanes to spill warm yellow sunlight into the room. Polished floorboards and rich rugs. Against one wall a long, low dresser scattered with papers, ink pots, used quills, an ebony and ivory comb and its matching brush… and a man’s hair clasp, beautifully enamelled in black and gold.

Staring at it, Barl felt her fingers twitch. Mages imbued their personal possessions with an imprint of their essence, their power. If she had Morgan Danfey’s hair clasp, perhaps it could give her some insight into the man. Only… if she were caught, the consequences would be dire. They’d call it stealing. They’d label her a thief.

But I have to risk it. I need every advantage I can find.

So she darted into the councillor’s privy chamber, whisked the hair clasp into her skirt pocket, and fled.