‘Yannael,’ he said, to the hard-faced woman. ‘Take your niece up behind you. See that she gets properly dressed and so forth. Bring her to me when you’re done.’

Yannael didn’t speak, but merely nodded slowly. In any case, Tyriel hadn’t waited for an answer. He chirruped to his horse, gave it a touch of his heels, and was away again.

‘Come on, girl,’ said Yannael. She took her foot out of her stirrup so Clariel could use it as a step. Like her father, she stank of stale sweat, blood and horse. ‘Get up.’

Clariel reluctantly got up behind her. She did not feel welcome, but it was worse than that. She felt like she was about to enter another prison. There might not be endless walls like Belisaere, but it would be a prison, sure enough.

chapter twenty-two

the abhorsen decides

Yannael did not speak to Clariel on the short ride up to Hillfair. The place was like a small town, except that all the outer buildings appeared to be stables, kennels and barns. It also didn’t have a perimeter wall or even a palisade, which Clariel presumed was because all the other towns she’d seen were much older, and so possessed defences that had been built long ago in more troubled times.

The road followed the ridge line, with the buildings spread out on either side, most of them on the flat, but some on the terraced hillside above the river. Clariel kept expecting to stop outside one or other of the stables, where grooms aplenty were waiting to take the horses from the returning hunters. But they kept going along the road, till it ended in a grassy courtyard surrounded by buildings. The chief of these was a great hall whose lower two storeys were stone, but with four or five levels above that of blue-painted timber. Unusually for Hillfair, at least what she’d seen so far, Clariel couldn’t see an obvious stable. But when Yannael pulled the horse up in front of the hall’s great arched doors, a groom emerged from somewhere off to the left and took the reins.

‘Get down,’ said Yannael, once again allowing Clariel her left stirrup. When the younger woman had alighted, she jumped down herself. ‘Follow me.’

Clariel opened her mouth to protest her aunt’s rudeness, but shut it again. There seemed little point, and there was always the slim possibility that Yannael was always like this, and it was not meant to be insulting.