‘You’re not going to chase him?’ Alice said.

‘I don’t need to,’ Ending said. ‘Without his little toy, he has nowhere to hide from me. This is my labyrinth, after all.’ Her eyes went to the copper band, and disgust crept into her voice. ‘Give me that.’

Alice tossed the trinket on the ground. A heavy black paw came down on it, and the metal broke with a crack.

‘Vile thing,’ Ending said. ‘I will make him tell me where he got it.’

‘Remember that you promised to let him go,’ Alice said.

She’d thought a long time about that. The banyan could have crushed Vespidian for her, if that’s what she’d wanted. But Alice had eventually decided that he’d only been doing his job, after all, even if that job involved threatening people’s families. Scaring him a little was one thing; killing him would be quite another.

If it had been him that hurt Father . . . But she was fairly certain he’d been telling the truth about that, and she was a little relieved she wouldn’t have to face that particular choice. At least, not today.

‘I will,’ Ending said. ‘Eventually.’ She padded off into the undergrowth, her voice slowly fading away. ‘But it can be so hard to find your way out of here, you know . . .’

It was the small hours of the morning before Alice returned to the house, passing by Emma standing as blank as ever in the front hall, and made her way to her bedroom.

She stripped down and got into her nightshirt, folding everything neatly and lining up her boots beside the door. One of the ancient rabbits had slumped over against the window frame, so Alice straightened it up and gave it a wistful pat on the head. After scrubbing her face with a tag-end of soap and the water from the basin, she blew out her candle and lay down on her small bed in the warm, dusty darkness.

She was desperately tired, but sleep wouldn’t seem to come. Her mind kept going back to Vespidian’s terrified face, and the feeling of strength in the vines as they’d coiled around him.

It hadn’t got her very far. Another name, someone else who might know what had really happened aboard the Gideon. But this one was a Reader, and Alice had no idea how she was going to go about getting her answers out of him.

Esau-of-the-Waters. Alice didn’t even know what the name meant, really, and she didn’t know who to ask. Geryon would know, or Ending, or even Ashes, but she wasn’t sure whether she could trust any of them. She felt suddenly, profoundly alone.