Clariel tried to run faster, but she wasn’t used to wooden clogs, and almost fell over. Kargrin held her up as she kicked them off and he almost carried her as they ran on. He did pick her up as they reached the Paperwing, lifting her high but lowering her very slowly and carefully in behind Belatiel. As soon as he had done so, he turned back and reached up with both hands. Glowing Charter marks fell from his fingers like a sudden, fiery rain. He gripped apparently empty air and hauled on something invisible. A moment later a cool breeze slapped Clariel in the face and sent her hair flying back.

Kargrin was calling up the wind.

‘Hang on!’ shouted Belatiel. He pursed his lips and whistled, a long, clear note, his exhaled breath full of Charter marks. Kargrin’s wind answered to it, swooping down under the Paperwing, which shivered as if in anticipation of sudden freedom from the earth.

‘Go!’ roared Kargrin. He swung both arms down and swept them at the Paperwing’s tail, a great gale bursting from his hands, picking the aircraft up so violently the craft rolled and pitched as it ascended, only kept true and level by Bel’s whistling and the lesser winds that answered him, pushing left and right and up and down as was required.

Clariel was about to ask why there was such a hurry when she saw a crossbow bolt fly past. It was flying back to front, overturned by the wind, but it supplied the reason for Kargrin’s haste. Holding on tight to the rim of the central well where she sat, Clariel cautiously looked over the side of the Paperwing. They were already several hundred feet up, and for a moment she had the horribly dizzy sensation that she had become unfixed from the world and was falling upwards and would so do forever. But it passed as she focused on the world below. There was Kargrin, running up the street, close to the houses, and there were guards in pursuit of him, and others with their crossbows pointing up, but iron springs could not propel the quarrels fast enough to compete with the spelled wind that was rushing the Paperwing away.

As Clariel watched, Kargrin turned to face his pursuers. Her heart leaped into her mouth, thinking she would see him killed. But instead there was a bright flash, and a sudden eruption of smoke or dust. A huge cloud filled the street and rose up to the rooftops before it too was caught by the wind. As it cleared, Clariel, now looking back over her shoulder, saw the pursuing guards all knocked down like bowling pins. A broad swathe of the street’s paving stones was broken to the bare earth, and there was no sign of Kargrin at all.