He left her standing in the wood, feeling – she couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Everything was churning around. Yesterday, she’d known how everything worked. She’d always been at the edges of society, looking in at it through a double-glazed window, banging on it, demanding attention. She’d eventually got that attention, and while it wasn’t the good sort, at least it was something. In London, she’d had professional people chasing around her, finding her somewhere to live, getting her a job, keeping her out of prison.

None of that applied today. It might never apply again.

If Dalip was struggling with the idea of a world where nothing quite worked the way it ought, she was struggling with the idea that it was going to work exactly the way she’d always wanted it to. There were no rules. No one to tell her what to do. No one to make her do anything.

What she was feeling was fear.

She put her hands over her mouth, pressing down hard as she realised that she was free, bottling up what would either be a yell of triumph or a cry of defeat. In the end, after a long while, she did neither.

She started to laugh. If she couldn’t be queen of the old world, she could at least be the queen of her own life. She didn’t need to go home. She didn’t need to miss home. There was nothing and no one she was waiting for there.

She hoped that the others would fail – not that they would drown, because they didn’t deserve that – and they would set off together to see the geomancer. And not because she might show them how to get home, but because she’d lived here longer, and could tell them everything she knew.

Mary checked herself again. Definitely not dead. She was still afraid, but accompanying that was a thrill of anticipation, like the moment between receiving a present and opening it. She wasn’t going to be disappointed when the wrapper came off. Not this time. Not ever again. This would be the gift that she’d never tire of, that would never break, that would be new every morning and not old by evening.

‘Wait,’ she called, and even her voice had changed. ‘Wait.’

He was almost at the fire, but she still picked up the end that had been dragged through the leaf mould.

‘Go on, then,’ she said, and gave the end of the branch a shove.

He stood there for a moment, uncertain as to what to do, before readjusting his grip and carrying the wood the short distance to the growing pile of broken timber.

‘This will do,’ he said, and they dropped it more or less at the same time.