A porter opened the front door, a tall gate of pale timber, which was adorned with hundreds of small keys of beaten silver or to Clariel’s trained eye more likely some cheaper, silverish alloy. It opened directly into a vast open space, a true great hall, though crowded with four lines of long tables already loaded with food, and servers scuttling about with even more, platters of meats and fish and bread, with the meat in preponderance. Though the benches next to the tables were empty for the moment, it looked like several hundred people would be served a meal there soon. There was a dais at the far end, with a high table draped in blue velvet, a thronelike chair of gilded wood in the centre and several smaller and somewhat less ornate chairs on either side.

There were tall windows behind the dais, but a great deal more light came from the thousands of Charter marks embedded in the hammerbeam roof high above, something that must have taken hundreds of Mages years to place, and would require constant effort to keep the spells at full strength. Just getting up there would be no small feat.

Yannael led Clariel along one side of the hall, the servers ducking out of her way, bobbing their heads as she passed. At the far end, near the dais, the older woman opened a door and they went through into a corridor that ran at right angles to the hall. There were numerous doors leading off the corridor, all painted blue with silver keys.

‘Private quarters for the main line of the family,’ said Yannael. Her face showed no friendliness or, indeed, any emotion. She might have been a superior kind of servant giving directions to a not particularly notable guest. ‘You will have your mother’s old room. Third along. Have a bath. I’ll send someone with clothes. Get dressed and wait for me.’

‘My mother’s old room,’ said Clariel. She felt the anger stir within her. ‘You know she’s just been killed, don’t you? Your sister?’

‘She’s been dead to us for a long time,’ said Yannael. Her eyes flickered with brief emotion, quickly quelled. ‘Just as my brother Teriel – who she slew – has been dead a long time. Third door along.’

She turned on her heel and strode away, the single spur she wore on her right boot-heel clinking. Clariel stared after her, feeling the rage deep inside her kindle and burn higher. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, and thought of her calm, willow-bordered refuge in the forest. The fury could not help her now. She had to keep it suppressed. Breathing in, breathing out … Slowly she felt the anger subside, till it slept again.

But it was not gone. It was always there, no matter how deep she pushed the feeling. Always there, a fiercely hot spark waiting for the slightest fuel.