It was a relief when the class was finally over, and they were dismissed. Though many of the students were slow to leave, chatting to one another, Clariel went straight for the door. Denima half raised her hand as if to call her back, but Clariel didn’t even notice. She needed to get out under the sun again, away from the weight of stone and the smothering attention of other people.

In her urge to escape the confines of the house, she also forgot that Belatiel had asked for her to wait.

Roban, Heyren and Linel were standing around outside the front door. There were even more guards there now, two score at least, showing many different Guild badges. Though they straggled along the wall of the house, most leaning against the stonework or sitting on some upturned barrels, Clariel noted that even in this apparently relaxed attitude they still watched the street, and all passers-by. At the moment this included workmen pushing barrows of sand to a building site; women returning from a market with their large baskets full of foodstuffs, mostly a kind of purple root vegetable Clariel didn’t recognise; and a peddler and his family engaged in propelling a handcart laden with small puppets, traditional figures from the various festivals, like the Midsummer Bird of Dawning and the Autumn Festival’s Moon-Moth.

‘Let’s go,’ said Clariel to Roban. ‘Magister Kargrin’s house. I want to get the next lesson over and done with as well.’

‘Ah, milady, your maid … Valannie,’ said Roban. ‘She probably wasn’t expecting you to come out so quickly. She’s not –’

‘Here I am!’ pronounced the penetrating voice of Valannie, almost as if she had been summoned by Roban speaking her name. She followed this with her annoying laugh, and added, ‘You sped past so quickly, Lady Clariel! I had thought you might lunch with some of the other pupils …’

‘I would like to go to my Charter Magic class,’ said Clariel.

Valannie visibly blenched as Clariel said the words ‘Charter Magic’ and made a frantic shushing gesture, waving two fingers across her mouth as if fanning something too hot to eat.

‘Lady Clariel, please let us speak quietly of this,’ she whispered. ‘As I have told you, it is not the done thing to be, to do, to study magic!’

‘Well, whether it is or not, can we get going to my next lesson?’ asked Clariel. ‘Street of the Cormorant, house with the sign of the hedgepig, I think.’

‘I know the house, milady,’ said Roban. He turned to Heyren and Linel and indicated for them to fall in behind Clariel. ‘Follow me, please.’

‘But luncheon, the other pupils, I’m sure we should –’ protested Valannie.

‘I’ll have a late lunch,’ said Clariel firmly. ‘Lead on, Roban.’