‘No one paints their faces back –’ Clariel started to say, but she bit back the words, and sat down as instructed, tilting her head so that the over-bright sun could fall full upon her. She shut her eyes and thought of home, of the Great Forest. There had to be a way she could bring her parents around, or failing that, escape from them …

Almost forty minutes later, her eyes wider than they had been, her lips much more red, and her forehead Charter mark almost invisible under something skin-coloured that Valannie had painted on very thickly so it felt unpleasantly like a scab, Clariel was walking up the broad steps that led to what she was told was a ‘viewing garden’ atop Beshill. From there they would go down the other side via another series of steps to Silver Street, where the Academy occupied a very large house that had once belonged to a past Guildmaster of the Dyers, who had fallen on hard times.

The viewing garden had no living plants, Clariel saw with distaste as they reached it. There were marble sculptures of trees instead, arranged in a ring, with wooden benches between them, and in the middle there was a Charter Stone, a monolith of dark basalt, its surface only somewhat relieved by the slight luminosity of the Charter marks that swarmed and swum all over it, their light faint in the morning sunshine.

Clariel noted the stone, but not with any particular interest. She’d seen other Charter Stones dotted here and there about the city, but just as in Estwael, where there were three within the town, they were such a common sight that they seemed a natural background. She could feel the power within this stone, but was not particularly drawn to it. Despite her birth as an Abhorsen, her baptismal Charter mark and early education, Clariel had no real interest in the Charter, or Charter Magic. Whenever she had a few hours spare she had always taken to the Forest, rather than spending time in the laborious process of learning marks and then practising recognising and drawing them out of the constant flow of the Charter, and its seemingly endless variety of marks.

‘In the evening, young couples come here to watch the sun set,’ said Valannie archly, almost winking at Clariel, who looked away in distaste. It was true the top of Beshill did have a tremendous view to the west, and only a slightly lesser prospect to the east. To the north, the higher Coiner’s Hill blocked the sightline, so that only the western edge of Palace Hill beyond it was visible.

There were trees below the Palace, Clariel noted with something very like hunger. A band of green between the great swathe of white stone, red-tile-roofed buildings that seemingly filled up everything for miles, and the high, bright walls of the Palace on the hilltop.