Mogget was silent as they took the stairs to the third floor, the two-handed sword sending now accompanying them along with the cowled attendant. Clariel barely glanced in on the third-floor rooms. The music room had a clavichord, zithern and other instruments; the Abhorsen’s bedroom was much fancier than Clariel’s; and the bare chamber for weapons practice was only made distinctive by virtue of its floor being three inches deep in pure white sand that was so clean it squeaked when Clariel stood on it.

The tower room on this level was again completely lined with books, but there was also a narrow stair cutting through the shelves, going up higher. Clariel looked up and was about to ascend when she heard the sharp note of a gong being struck below. Mogget immediately whipped around and lit out for the main stairs, crying out, ‘Dinner!’

‘What’s up there?’ Clariel asked her attendant sending. It bowed, then bent to imitate sitting down, and made scribbling motions with its hand across an imaginary page.

‘An office … a study?’

The sending bowed, straightened up, and gestured urgently towards the main stairs as the gong rang again.

‘I’m expected for dinner?’ asked Clariel. The sending bowed and gestured again. Though there was no indication it would try to force her to go downstairs, Clariel still felt it was like a prison warder laying down the law. It was dinner time, and she must follow the routine of her prison.

A comfortable, perhaps even fascinating prison, but a prison nonetheless.

For now, thought Clariel, and went down to dinner.

She was rather surprised to see that Mogget was seated with her at the table in the hall, the cat-creature sitting on a stool opposite her own place, a quarter of the way down from the thronelike chair at the head of the table, in what appeared to be a measure of Clariel’s standing in the family. Not one of the titled Abhorsens, but a close connection.

There was a great deal of food, all of it very good, but after assuaging her initial hunger, she paid it little attention. Unlike Mogget, who ate as if he really was a starved cat and not something else that probably didn’t need to eat at all. He certainly didn’t need duck in a wine sauce and poached salmon, the latter dish being greeted with yowls of almost unseemly enthusiasm, though Mogget then went on to eat it daintily. The cat-shape was clearly not just a mere outward shell, but extended to behaviour as well.