That was enough to startle Jack into looking Sumi’s direction. The other girl was still picking her fingernails, but she was watching Jack out of the corner of her eye.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I never asked him.”

“He’s pretty.”

“I’ve noticed that much, yes, but by the time he became High Priest—thanks to the previous High Priest having an unfortunate accident involving an unsecured widow’s walk and a long plummet into an unwelcoming sea—and was hence free to court, I was already with Alexis, and I find monogamy unhygienic enough. Imagine needing to maintain a grooming regime for multiple partners.” Jack shuddered delicately. “He’s pretty, he’s poisonous, and he’s yours, if you want him. Leave me out of it.”

“You’re not my type,” said Sumi.

Jack laughed—a single harsh, mirthless bark—and as if that were the cue for the distance to distort, the walls of the village loomed in front of them, too close too quickly. They were locked against the gathered darkness. Spots of fire glowed from the top, marking the position of the watchmen.

“I believe this is my cue,” said Jack. She adjusted her glasses, took a deep breath, and called, in a voice gone suddenly sonorous, like the weight of the Moors lay across her shoulders, “I am Jacqueline Wolcott, apprentice to Dr. Michael Bleak, come to answer the challenge set against my house. Open your gates and let us pass. Our quarrel is not with you.”

“Does that work?” asked Christopher, from the back of the wagon. “Why would these people just let us in when we’re here to fight their big bad boss?”

“Because we have an army, and they enjoy their homes being unburnt,” said Jack. Her gaze didn’t waver from the wall. “You have to be at least a little bloody-minded to survive here. They know their Master won’t reward them for defending him. That isn’t how a challenge works. All they can do is die for a man who’s never viewed them as anything more than cattle. It would be senseless.”

As if to prove her point, the gates creaked open. Jack nodded to herself, gathering the reins.

“They are, however, likely to attempt to pour pitch or oil on us, so we’ll be going through as quickly as—yah!” She flicked the reins as she shouted. Pony and Bones, not bound to the physical limitations of ordinary flesh-and-blood horses, recognized this for the challenge it was and took off at a run so fast that it felt, for a moment, as if the wagon might come apart from the strain.