Clariel took one last very deep breath and breathed it out very slowly while she walked along the corridor to the third door. As she passed the first two, she saw they had small bronze nameplates, clean and bright. She didn’t know who ‘Enriel’ or ‘Harmanael’ were, but the third door along …

She touched her finger to the small plate that had ‘Jaciel’ engraved upon it. Unlike the previous two doors, the plate was tarnished and dull, but the name was still clear. It was also slightly different in design, the letters were more finely cut. With a slight shock Clariel recognised that this was her mother’s own work, probably made when she was just a girl and beginning her training as a metalsmith. Now, it was a slight remnant of a whole former life that Clariel knew nothing about, and would never know, because she could not talk about it with her mother.

‘She is dead,’ whispered Clariel. She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the door. ‘My mother and father are dead.’

Saying it aloud didn’t make it feel any more real, though she knew it was, that no matter what lies Kilp was spreading, there was no chance of it being otherwise. But some part of her also simply couldn’t accept it, that her parents were dead, and she was in Hillfair, and the future looked grim and complicated.

But that future had to be faced, and the first step was to get cleaned up ready to talk to the Abhorsen. Clariel straightened up, turned the handle, and went into her mother’s childhood room.

If the room, in fact a whole suite of rooms, had once held personal things to identify it as Jaciel’s there were none there now. The first chamber was completely bare apart from a single chair that didn’t look like it belonged there anyway. The inner chamber had a bed with no linen, and a chest with a padded top that was empty. Beyond this room there was a kind of antechamber entered via a doorway with a curtain rod but no curtain, which contained only a bathtub and a chamber pot.

None of the rooms had windows, but they were quite light, again thanks to Charter marks in the plastered ceiling and stone walls.

Clariel had just finished reviewing this unpromising accommodation when there was knock at the door, followed a moment later by a whirlwind of people in blue aprons coming in with loads of sheets, blankets, towels, a more comfortable chair, a writing desk, a velvet lounge, a standing mirror, several baskets of clothes accompanied by a seamstress and a whole gang of young girls and boys equipped with steaming cans of hot water, which they proceeded to pour into the bath.