‘Yes. It was right here. Now it’s not.’ She turned away and started to pick her way back to the seaward slope.

He was following her, but only when she was out of the surf and up on dry land did she face him again. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘Why? Because I had to. Such knowledge is precious, and we each guard our own carefully. I told you as much.’ He reached out for his cloak, his long fingers snagging the hem and pulling it towards him. She resisted.

‘You could have copied my map, and I wouldn’t have minded.’

The thought seemed to confuse him.

‘You watched me do it. All you had to do was ask. I even owed you: you saved me from the wolfman, you took me to your castle, you fed me and taught me about magic.’ She was cold to the bone, and still she shivered at the realisation. ‘You did all that just to get me to tell you where the portal was, didn’t you?’

‘No. Not all. My motives were … confused.’

‘The fuck they were, Crows. I thought we were, I don’t know, friends.’

He looked away. ‘People like us do not have friends. We are kings and queens, Mary, and we are naturally rivals. We raise castles, we must rule alone: it is for others to obey us willingly or otherwise.’

‘Fuck you, Crows. Fuck you.’

‘You want it,’ he said. ‘You want to be your Red Queen. It is always what you want to be.’

‘Not like that.’

‘However else? There is only one way: seize power and keep tight hold of it. I have let mine slip away, so now I must take my leave and try my luck elsewhere: this portal has gone, and without it the castle will fall.’

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t my fault.’

‘Sorry?’ He blinked. ‘Sorry? Do not be sorry. This is momentous. This will shake Down to the roots of its mountains. I can sell this knowledge, and it will make me rich. Do not be sorry, Mary.’ He pulled harder at his cloak, and gathered a handful in his fist. ‘Now, I have to go.’

‘You can’t,’ she said. She wasn’t going to tell him, but it just came out. ‘The wolfman is on the shore, looking for you.’

‘Is he? You managed to slip past him, didn’t you?’

‘I didn’t … It wasn’t like that.’

‘The wolfman can howl at the moon until his throat is raw. He will not catch me. I doubt he will even see me.’ His expression softened slightly. ‘A geomancer – like her, like me, like you – does not suffer rivals. Stay away from the wolfman, yes?’

He walked towards the shore, and the cloak inexorably slipped from her shoulders. She was cold again.

‘Crows?’

‘Do you remember how you got here?’

‘I, I flew.’