Clariel turned back and settled down, noticing for the first time she was sitting in a kind of hammock or netting chair set into the central hole. Bel, still whistling steadily, was sitting in a similar one just ahead of her, and her knees were almost touching his back.

There was a rolled-up cloak and a leather water bottle near Clariel’s left foot and what looked to be a loaf of bread or perhaps bread and meat wrapped in a muslin cloth by her right foot.

She looked over the side again and was shocked to see how much higher they had flown in such a short time. She could see all of Belisaere below, the whole city sprawled on the tip of the peninsula, with the Sea of Saere all a-silver around it. They were so high she could only make out the larger buildings, the smaller houses blending into large masses of red-tiled roofs.

Looking down on Belisaere, she felt a slight lift to her heavy heart. It was not the way she wanted it, but she had at last escaped the city. The walls no longer held her in, the masses of people no longer thronged around, the air was sweet, the sun unshadowed.

But she knew she hadn’t really escaped. Not completely. There were unseen shackles of grief and duty that still tied her to Belisaere.

The Paperwing, which had been sharply angled up towards the sky, started to level out, and a minute or two later Bel stopped whistling and slumped back in his hammock, colliding with Clariel’s knees. She drew them back as he lurched forward again and twisted around, gasping in pain and holding his left shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t be,’ said Clariel. ‘Thank you for flying to my rescue.’

‘I was … happy to be able to do so …’ said Bel. He twisted back to the front. ‘Please forgive my rudeness … but I can’t really turn around at the moment.’

‘Are you all right?’ asked Clariel, struck by the sudden anxiety that he might pass out from the pain of his past wounding, or that it might reopen. Then they would both be in dire peril, so high in the sky with Clariel having no idea how to control the Paperwing.

‘Yes,’ grunted Bel. ‘Stupid wound isn’t healed and the wind-working takes it out of me even when I’m fit. Not made any easier by that great gust Kargrin called up. Mind you, we wouldn’t have got away so quickly without it. Did you see what happened to him? I saw some guards –’

‘I think he got away,’ said Clariel. ‘He made the street rise up. All the guards chasing him were knocked down, and when the dust cleared I couldn’t see him.’

‘Trust Kargrin,’ laughed Bel. ‘I wonder what that spell was? Must ask him next time I see him.’