After the hall, Clariel prowled through the kitchen, where a great many sendings all came to attention, stopping in the middle of cooking a dinner for at least a dozen people, which made Clariel worried there would be company after all. Feeling very much in the way, she quickly glanced in the buttery and larder and hurried out again.

She went to the tower next. The ground floor was a library, with floor-to-ceiling shelves all the way around, a table and what looked to be a very comfortable padded armchair for settling down to serious reading. A cowled sending came out of one of the bookshelves as Clariel entered, bowed low and gestured at the books all around.

‘Um, do you have a copy of The Fury Within?’ asked Clariel. She wondered what had happened to the copy Gullaine had given her, left somewhere in the Belisaere house. Doubtless it would have been seized by Kilp’s people, with all her other things, her mother’s gold and silver works, the strongbox with the family gold, the paper records …

All gone now. Gone forever.

‘I forget the subtitle …’

The librarian sending bowed, whisked across the room and shinnied up the bookshelves almost to the ceiling, more like an insect than a person. It didn’t seem to have any feet under its robe. As with the other sendings only its hands were fully visible, and its shadowed face when seen from directly in front. It took a book from the shelf and came back down again.

It was a slightly different edition of The Fury Within: A Study of the Berserk Rage and Related Matters. This book was larger and printed on thicker paper with slightly bigger type. Clariel took the volume and she and the sending bowed to each other as she backed out. As she did so, something made a hissing noise behind and below her, the unexpected sound startling Clariel so much she dropped the book, whirled around and reached for her knife.

A small white cat was sitting in the doorway, twitching his tail, his bright green eyes fixed on Clariel with an unnerving directness. There was a red collar around his neck that gleamed with Charter marks, and a tiny bell that Clariel knew instinctively she never wanted to hear ring.

‘And who might you be?’ asked the cat.

chapter twenty-four

a most knowledgeable cat

‘I think you should be answering that question,’ said Clariel, edging back into the library. She glanced at the librarian, but it did not appear perturbed by this cat-thing, which was clearly not a cat at all. It had to be a Free Magic creature, though the Charter Magic collar was curious …