Anastacia’s teeth gleamed white. She cut a ghostly figure so far from Branghall’s foundations. The bark of the great black oak was clearly visible through a faded dress and translucent skin. Her fingers danced, shadow coiling in their wake. The oak sank silently into the soil, collapsing the arboreous tunnel that was Josiri’s only connection to the outside world.

The tree’s roots had always run deep, and far further than the estate wall. Under Anastacia’s influence, they ran farther still, weaving the passage by which Revekah had broached Branghall’s imprisoning wards. As notorious a soul as she had no hope of gaining official entrance through the main gate – the ward-brooches that allowed visitors to breach the enchantment were carefully and rarely doled out.

But there were other magics in the world than those pressed to the Council’s service, by whose grace Anastacia had woven the hallowgate from the oak’s gnarled flesh. Old magics, learned from forbidden gods. Or at least forbidden in Tressia, where Lumestra held sway. Remnants of temples to her heavenly sister, Ashana – or Lunastra, as she was named in the oldest scriptures – remained out in rural areas; shrines to Jack, the King of Thorns, in places wilder still.

Not for the first time, Josiri wondered where Anastacia had learned her magics. And where the Council had found her. “Demon”, Calenne had named her – pejoratives aside, it suited her well.

“Where’s Crovan?” he asked.

“Where’s Crovan?” Revekah snorted. “That’s how you greet an old woman who’s travelled hard to be here? No respect, Josiri. None at all.”

The twinkle in her eye belied both words and tone. Revekah’s sixtieth year lay long behind her. Nonetheless, she’d not softened an inch since the chaos at Zanya, where she’d heaved Josiri onto her horse and ordered him to flee. She still wore the phoenix tabard over her leather jerkin. Like her, it had faded and worn thin with the passage of time.

“Crovan’s away to the south. Might even be across the Thrakkian border by now.”

Josiri frowned. “What went wrong?”

“A raid went sour.” She shrugged. “It happens. He’ll be back. But not tonight. I saw the shutters, and feared you’d be lonely.”

They’d settled on the shutter-code years before as a way for Josiri to communicate with those southwealders who’d not yet given up the fight. Some, like Revekah, were survivors of his mother’s doomed rebellion. Crovan belonged to a younger generation. Together, they named themselves the Vagabond Council, a bitter jest aimed at the “noble” men and women who ruled the Southshires’ fortunes from Tressia. The law named them Wolf’s-heads – creatures of the wild, not the civilised world – and like wolves they were hunted.