The steward reached out and twisted the ring, pushed at the door. It swung open. Two women in drab dress looked up from the collection of stone bottles they were refilling and froze in place. Dalip quickly scanned the room, spotted the door he needed to undo on the far side, then looked back at the women.

Were they slaves, too? Could he enlist them or at least get them not to give the game away?

‘If you make a sound, he dies. If you don’t, you get to do whatever it is you want. You can join us, or not, as you choose.’

They glanced at each other, at the steward, at Dalip, but mainly at the floor, their hands, the bottles on the table. Dalip eased the steward into the room and knocked the door closed with his heel. It didn’t look like he was going to get either co-operation or defiance from them.

‘The door over there, the one that leads to the bridge. Can one of you open it?’

Again, they looked everywhere but at each other. Then, the older one’s head came up, and she brushed a strand of grey hair away that had fallen loose from her tightly tied knot. Despite the hesitant restraining hand of her companion, she walked deliberately around the barrels and racked bottles, and lifted the first of two heavy bars blocking the door.

‘Don’t,’ managed the steward before Dalip cut him off with a tightening of his arm.

She put the bar to one side, then heaved the other from its hasps.

‘Open it, and step away. I don’t want you to get hurt.’

She rested the other bar next to the first, and put her shoulders to dragging the door open. The outside blustered in, and she walked back to Dalip.

She spat in the steward’s face, then she walked out.

Dalip felt the steward stiffen, smelt their sour smells of sweat mingle.

‘You can go too, if you want,’ he told the other woman. ‘But don’t do anything that’ll stop us.’

She nodded. She looked young and scared, not just of the steward, but of him. He’d always thought of himself, on the rare occasions that he did, as a quiet boy, a good boy, dutiful and diligent. Certainly not someone to be frightened of, yet there he was, ready to drive a knife into someone’s side if they so much as spoke out of turn.

Luiza poked her head around the opened door, and waved the others on. They crept in, doubled over, then stretched out. Stanislav was last in and pushed the door firmly shut.

‘Where is she?’ asked Stanislav.

‘Up, I think,’ and he had the presence of mind to ask. ‘The geomancer’s at the top of the tower, right?’

The serving girl was watching them all with amazement, her hands clutched over her mouth. Then she nodded.