'Good.' The First of the Magi strode from the room with Yulwei at his shoulder, his apprentice trudging at the rear. Sulfur did not move. Ferro frowned at him, and he grinned back, his head tipped against the panelled wall, his chin pointed towards the moulded ceiling.

'Are these Hundred Words not your enemies too?' Ferro demanded.

'My deepest and most bitter enemies.'

'Why do you not fight, then?'

'Oh, there are other ways to fight than struggling in the dirt out there.' There was something in those eyes, one dark, one bright, that Ferro did not like the look of. There was something hard and hungry behind his smiles. 'Though I would love to stay and chat, I must go and give the wheels another push.' He turned a finger round and round in the air. 'The wheels must keep turning, eh, Maljinn?'

'Go then,' she snapped. 'I will not stop you.'

'You could not if you wanted to. I would bid you a good day. But I'd wager you've never had one.' And he sauntered out, the door clicking to behind him.

Ferro was already across the room, shooting back the bolt on the window. She had done as Bayaz told her once before, and it had brought her nothing but a wasted year. She would make her own choices now. She jerked the hangings aside and slipped out onto the balcony. Curled-up leaves blew on the wind, whipping around the lawns below along with the spitting rain. A quick glance up and down the damp paths showed only one guard, and he was looking the wrong way, huddled in his cloak.

Sometimes it is best to seize the moment.

Ferro swung her legs over the rail, gathered herself, then sprang out into the air. She caught a slippery tree branch, swung to the trunk, slid down it to the damp earth and crept behind a neatly clipped hedge, low to the ground.

She heard footsteps, then voices. Bayaz' voice, and Yulwei's, speaking soft into the hissing wind. Damn, but these old fools of Magi loved to flap their lips.

'Sulfur?' came Yulwei's voice. 'He is still with you?'

'Why would he not be?'

'His studies ran in… dangerous directions. I told you this, brother.'

'And? Khalul is not so picky with his servants…'

They passed out of earshot and Ferro had to rush along behind the hedge to keep pace, staying bent double.

'… I do not like this habit,' Yulwei was saying, 'of taking forms, of changing skin. A cursed discipline. You know what Juvens' feelings were on it—'

'I have no time to worry on the feelings of a man centuries in his grave. There is no Third Law, Yulwei.'

'Perhaps there should be. Stealing another's face… the tricks of Glustrod and his devil-bloods. Arts borrowed from the Other Side—'