“Well,” said Dill Hammer to Odile. “Have some brown rice. It’s grounding. Strengthening. And have some of this lovely seaweed salad, too.”

He passed the bowls to Odile, who served the children before she served herself. As well as brown rice and seaweed salad Dill had made a darkroot casserole with satay sauce and a massive chocolate cake with rose petals scattered on it.

“Thank you for doing all this cooking, Dill,” said Odile. “I don’t know where I would have been without you this weekend.”

“I made you some more rose hip syrup as well,” said Dill. “Can’t be too careful with all these Midwinter colds about. And some cloudberry jam. You can have it on your toast in the morning.”

Maximilian was watching his mother and Dill closely. He was glad they were getting on so well. He’d been cultivating Dill Hammer quite carefully recently. And it had been working. Maybe they’d get married. . . . And then Maximilian would have a father again. A kind one, too, who made things. Maximilian would have to make sure to reinforce the idea very strongly in Dill’s head—although Dill was very skilled in blocking mages. He ate a lot of quinoa—a well-known antimagic agent—to make sure.

“Shall we take our chocolate cake into my room?” suggested Maximilian once the main course was over. “Leave the grown-ups to talk about more adult things if they want.”

Odile gave him a suspicious look.

“Well, I suppose we can catch up on all the new gossip about the Gothmen,” she said. Then she frowned. “No one’s approached you from a group called the Gothmen, have they?” she asked Maximilian.

“Of course not,” he lied. “Nothing exciting ever happens to me anymore. Why?”

“They’re an underground resistance movement working against the Diberi,” said Dill. “And this new incarnation of the Guild. Very admirable of course, but highly unlikely to succeed. And they do extremely dangerous things. You must promise us that you’ll stay away from them. I think one of their leading figures might even teach at your school.”

Neither Wolf nor Raven were very good at lying. Maximilian, however, was a master of deceit.

“Our teachers only ever speak to us to tell us facts, sadly,” he said. “It would be quite exciting if they ever invited us to join a clandestine group. But I can’t see it ever actually happening.”

Raven and Wolf exchanged a half smile, picked up plates with large slices of chocolate cake and followed Maximilian into his room.

“Right,” said Maximilian, once the door was closed. “Let’s look up ‘cleric’ in the book.”

“I don’t know how you lie like that,” said Raven with admiration. “I go red and blotchy if I try to say anything that isn’t true.”