‘What were we going to do?’ Dalip found enough strength to scrub his face with his fingers. ‘Find the geomancer and ask her to tell us more about the world. You can’t say we haven’t learnt more, more than we wanted to. We’ve lost Grace, we’ve … lost Stanislav.’ Lost was the appropriate word to use: they’d lost her because she’d gone on alone, without them, and they’d lost him because he’d lost himself, given himself up to his base instincts. ‘We know that the door we came through has gone, possibly destroyed by the fire that pushed us here in the first place. But there are other doors, which still work, and there are people this side trying to open them. We need to find out where they are, and maybe try something different. We know we can’t really trust anyone else, so we have to trust each other.’

He lost steam. He’d done enough for today: they were no longer slaves, the castle had fallen, their gaolers had been killed or they’d run away, the threat of the dragon had been neutralised. He was wearing a sort of patka, he’d used his kirpan to protect his friends. His bangles and his comb – that would have to wait, but he felt that the gurus would be pleased with his efforts: he’d lived up to their ideal of the warrior-priest. All he wanted to do now was sleep, and see what the next day brought. Hopefully, it’d be quieter. Bell was still out there, and he hadn’t forgotten about the wolfman. But if they all stuck together, it wasn’t beyond them to cope with Down.

‘We cannot stay here.’ Elena gestured at the darkened room. ‘This is not ours. Nothing here is.’

‘We can go to the White City,’ said Mary.

‘Do you even know where that is?’

‘I know a man who does. And that’s what we’re going to do: find him, and we’ll get not just my map, but his maps and Bell’s maps too. That’ll make us rich, at least here in Down.’

‘And just how are we going to find this Crows?’ Mama raised her gaze to the ceiling. ‘He’ll be long gone, Mary, and even if you can fly now, which is all kinds of preposterous, you’re not going to see him again.’

‘The clue’s in the name,’ said Mary, and Dalip, tired even of this slight bickering, told her plainly.