‘No … I think … They should be used to Paperwings,’ said Bel. ‘Besides, I really have to get us down. I’m feeling very … very tired …’

His head slipped forward as the words drawled out of his mouth. Clariel felt her heart leap into her throat as she gripped his good shoulder and shook him, only to let go as a dry chuckle emerged and he sat up again.

‘Don’t worry, only jesting,’ he said. ‘I am tired. But I can stay awake long enough to set us down.’

He pursed his lips and blew a series of rising and then falling notes, pure and strong. Charter marks flew out with the music, and mingled with marks that shone from the Paperwing’s nose and wings, wreathing the aircraft in light. It slanted down towards the lawn, side-slipping a little across the wind as it descended.

They landed smoothly enough, but Bel was just plain wrong about the horses and dogs. As the Paperwing’s shadow passed low over the rear of the line, the dogs that had been loping next to the road in a semi-organised pack all began to bark and jump up, before falling down and over one another, and racing around all over the place, including in front of the horses. Many mounts spooked and shied, several riders falling off or being suddenly bolted with along the road, causing more problems. The orderly procession of a minute before became a riot of horses, dogs, fallen riders, hunters and dog handlers, with whistles and shouts and bellowed orders and screams of pain and whinnying horses and barking dogs.

The Paperwing came to a stop about a hundred yards ahead of the front of the returning hunt. Clariel looked back at the shambles their arrival had caused, noting that half a dozen riders from the vanguard of the hunt were now galloping down the lawn towards them, and not in a way that suggested a sudden happy desire to welcome the newcomers.

Bel didn’t even try to look around. He hunched down in the Paperwing and put his head in his hands. Clariel thought she heard him say something that might have been ‘oops’, but she was already climbing out. She presumed from the quality of the horses and richness of their attire that the silver-haired man who was charging down towards her on a surprisingly small chestnut horse was her grandfather, the Abhorsen Tyriel; and the tough-looking woman with the black hair who closely resembled her mother was almost certainly her aunt Yannael.

Clariel didn’t want to meet them sitting down. She didn’t want to meet them at all, and she wished Bel had not made what was already a difficult situation for her even worse.