Roban led them up the broad avenue of Summer Street, which Clariel was slightly heartened to see was lined with trees, though they were thin, bare and grey compared to those in the forests she knew. The trees were some kind of ash, she thought, but neither Roban nor Valannie could identify them to Clariel.

They left Summer Street before it began to climb through the somewhat elevated valley between Beshill and Coiner’s Hill, turning east instead into a narrower way. A hanging sign at the intersection there showed a faded picture of something unidentifiable, which Valannie assured Clariel had once depicted three needles and some thread.

‘Three Needles Street,’ she explained. ‘Merchant Tailors’ Guild territory. We’ll go down to where it crosses Shearer’s Lane, which is Clothworker’s, that’s where Parillin’s shop is. The best shops for cloth and the best tailors are all around the cross.’

The street was busy, though not nearly so busy as the fish market. Most of the traffic was on foot, for horses were forbidden in the city for all but a few special purposes. But there were palanquins being carried by sweating porters, and many of the ubiquitous handcarts, though here they were loaded with bundles of clothes, rolls of uncut cloth and barrels of buttons and giant spools of thread, and did not reek of fish and the sea.

The street broadened again as it continued west, and the houses grew larger, and began to have signs indicating the businesses within, most of them tailors. Unlike at the fish market, Clariel also started to see other people accompanied by guards, wearing the livery of various Guilds.

‘Am I supposed to say hello?’ Clariel asked Valannie doubtfully, as she caught the eye of one imposing-looking woman coming down the street towards them, who was wearing the only other blue headscarf Clariel had seen, though many women wore scarves of other colours. This woman was also preceded by a bodyguard, resplendent in a surcoat bearing the mortar and pestle sign of the Apothecaries’ Guild.

‘No, no, you’re not dressed yet!’ replied Valannie quickly. ‘Look the other way! Don’t give her a reason to notice you.’

‘But I am dressed,’ protested Clariel.

‘Not properly!’ hissed Valannie. She moved to interpose herself between Clariel and the apothecary. ‘Just keep walking!’

Clariel kept walking, but peered at the apothecary as she passed, just to see what on earth Valannie was talking about when she said she was not properly dressed. She’d seen women wearing all sorts of clothes, some like her own. But the apothecary was wearing what looked like several tunics of differing length. The main outer one was a dark yellow silk, but with at least three others of different colours beneath, the layers showing at the knee and wrist.

Belatedly, Clariel realised that this was pretty much what her own mother had been wearing that morning, but in different colours again.