‘Apparently it’s not the fashion these days, or something,’ muttered Harven. ‘The best people don’t practise Charter Magic, they hire people to do it for them, if absolutely necessary.’

‘These “best people” sound rather lazy and stupid,’ observed Clariel. ‘Do they get awfully fat from not doing anything for themselves?’

She herself was slim and, up until relatively recently, could easily pass for a boy. She still could, with a bit of preparation and the right clothes. It was quite useful, and had made it easier to follow the truffle-hunting pigs, tickle trout in the Wael River, hunt the small puzzle deer, or do any of the things that she liked but weren’t proper for a well-brought-up child of the merchant elite. She thought this potential for deception might come in handy in Belisaere as well. Particularly for leaving the city.

‘No, don’t be silly,’ said Harven. ‘In any case, your mother wants you to further your Charter Magic studies –’

‘Why?’ asked Clariel. ‘She never wanted me to before. Is it something to do with Grandfather?’

Her mother was a Charter Mage, and certainly used her magic in her goldsmithing, but she made no display of it outside her workshop. This was presumably because she was estranged from her family, the Abhorsens, and the Abhorsens were very much a living embodiment of some aspects of the Charter and tended to be powerful Charter Mages. In fact, Jaciel’s father was the current Abhorsen, but Clariel had never met him, because of a never-spoken-about rift that had occurred when Jaciel was young.

‘Possibly, possibly,’ muttered Harven, which suggested to his knowing daughter that it probably didn’t have anything to do with the Abhorsens. But he seized upon it as a possible explanation to her, adding, ‘The Abhorsen or the Abhorsen-in-Waiting do come to Belisaere upon occasion, there are ceremonies and so on, so we might well have to meet either your grandfather or your aunt –’

‘My aunt is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting?’ asked Clariel. ‘I didn’t even know mother had a sister!’

Her parents never talked about Jaciel’s family, so this was all interesting information. She hardly knew anything about the Abhorsens really, apart from the childhood rhyme everyone learned about the Charter:

Five Great Charters knit the land

Together linked, hand in hand

One in the people who wear the crown

Two in the folk who keep the Dead down

Three and Five became stone and mortar

Four sees all in frozen water.

The Abhorsens were the ‘the folk who keep the Dead down’, which as far as Clariel knew meant they hunted down necromancers, and banished Dead spirits that had somehow returned from Death to Life. The Abhorsens could walk in Death themselves and like necromancers used Free Magic bells to command and compel the Dead, though the Abhorsens’ bells were somehow not Free Magic as such but bound to the Charter.