I won’t accept my imprisonment here, Clariel thought. I would have escaped the bottle cell in Belisaere even without Kargrin’s help, and that really was a prison. Surely I can get out of here as well. And once out, then I can decide what to do myself. Whatever I want to do. Whatever I think must be done.

From the open doorway of the room opposite, evidently another armoury or a store of some kind, Mogget gestured with one paw. Clariel frowned, but bent down on one knee. Mogget gestured again, so she leaned forward, close enough for the cat to butt his head against her chin.

‘You’re thinking of escaping, aren’t you?’ whispered Mogget.

‘No …’ said Clariel unconvincingly.

‘Yes you are,’ said Mogget.

‘If I was I wouldn’t tell you!’

‘But you should,’ purred Mogget. ‘I’m the only one here who might be able to help you.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Clariel whispered back. ‘Besides, aren’t you a slave who has to do what he’s told? The Abhorsen told the sending to tell everyone not to let me out.’

‘I don’t take orders from the sendings, and the Abhorsen said nothing to me,’ said Mogget, very quietly. ‘In fact, no Abhorsen has told me to do anything for a long time, the consequence being that I have … ahem … managed to get out of the habit of obeying some of the more general commands of yesteryear.’

‘What do you get out of it?’ asked Clariel again, who had dealt with many tricky merchants over the years in her father’s counting house. She had never known someone to offer something for nothing, even if it was something intangible or some future favour that was being stored up just in case and might never be used.

‘Amusement,’ breathed Mogget, his eyes wicked. ‘I told you it was dull here. Maybe more than that.’

Clariel stood up abruptly. Her heel-following sending had drifted closer, she saw, as if it had wanted to hear what Mogget said, and some others had literally come out of the woodwork. One of them was the guard sending from the gate, she noticed, unless there was another one exactly the same with a two-handed sword.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said to Mogget. ‘What’s upstairs?’

‘Music room, practice room, Abhorsen’s bedroom, and in the tower the upper reading room, study and observatory,’ rattled off Mogget. ‘Roof gardens on either side of the tower. Downstairs is much more interesting. The lower levels. What?’

The last word was addressed to the guard sending with the two-handed sword, who had silently moved closer to the cat and was looking down at him, his face stern.

‘Go on then,’ said Mogget to the guard sending. ‘Report me. But who to, that’s the question, isn’t it?’

‘Report what?’ asked Clariel suspiciously.

‘Nothing,’ said Mogget. ‘Like I said. You going up?’