‘Yes, we can,’ said Bel simply. ‘You probably could too. It is also your heritage. With proper training, of course. It is very dangerous.’

‘The living world is enough for me,’ said Clariel. ‘That is, a world really alive. Not surrounded by all this stone, hemmed in and confined. Ah, I wish I was back in the Forest!’

The creak of the door announced Gullaine’s return.

‘Thank you once more, for my life,’ said Bel. ‘Travel safely. Perhaps we’ll meet again one day. As friends.’

‘Yes,’ said Clariel. ‘As friends. Take care of your wound.’

‘Your parents await you,’ said Gullaine to Clariel. ‘I believe your mother is most anxious to talk to you about the King’s gift.’

‘That’s no surprise,’ said Clariel. She left the room thinking about Bel being an orphan, and what it would mean to her parents when they found her gone. Perhaps it would be a blow to them, even to her mother, though she suspected her absence would soon be forgotten amid Jaciel’s work. Besides, she told herself, she had little choice. The city was drawing her in like a whirlpool, a devourer of ships, with so many different tangles and plots and dangers.

If she stayed in Belisaere, she was sure it would kill her. One way or another.

chapter sixteen

the governor’s dinner

It was growing dark by the time they tore Jaciel away from the Dropstone work and returned to the palanquins. A light rain had begun to fall by then. It was not much more than a mist, but it made the evening unpleasantly clammy. Yet even this did not weigh on Jaciel’s mood. She was happy, possibly as happy as Clariel had ever seen her, and certainly the most visibly happy she had been with her daughter for a very long time. This was entirely due to the rosewood box she had just shut back in the Palace, which contained the Dropstone salt cellar in the shape of a ship, to be transported to her workshop the next day. There Jaciel’s apprentices would draw it from every angle, and she would study it till she discovered all the secrets of its making.

‘You will ride with me,’ Jaciel told Clariel as Gullaine bowed farewell at the end of the bridge. ‘Harven, you take the other palanquin. Valannie, you may walk with the guards.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Harven.

‘But I need to repaint Lady Clariel’s face, milady!’ protested Valannie. Probably because she didn’t want to walk or get damp, Clariel thought.