‘I suppose I could try to kill the prisoner,’ Ashes said, ‘but if it was something I could kill, I doubt it would be locked up. I’m only half cat, after all. So when we find it, it will probably kill us.’

‘You don’t seem too upset at the prospect,’ Alice said. ‘If you’re half cat, have you got four and a half lives?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Ashes snapped. ‘And I’m absolutely terrified.’ There was a long pause. Alice swallowed hard. The cat looked back at her, eyes glowing yellow green, and sniffed. ‘It just wouldn’t do to show fear in front of any human, Reader or not. Mother would skin me alive if she heard about it.’

Ashes padded on, and Alice hurried after him. They walked for a moment in silence down the apparently endless corridor.

‘Maybe it’s not as bad as that,’ Alice said slowly. ‘Maybe the prisoner is something we can . . . talk to, or—’

‘Shh,’ Ashes said.

‘It’s not impossible,’ Alice protested. ‘You can’t just assume—’

‘I mean be quiet,’ the cat hissed. ‘I hear something coming.’

Alice stopped. Ashes was nearly invisible in the gloom, a grey-on-black shadow, but her eyes had adapted surprisingly quickly to the faint green glow. Ahead was another arched doorway, with some sort of room beyond it. From that direction she could hear a faint, fast sound, tik-tik-tik-tik, like a small dog running across marble. Something scurried out of the doorway in their direction, low and fast. Alice looked around for Ashes, uncertainly, but the cat had vanished.

In a few moments the thing entered the nearest pool of light. It was about the size of a large rat, but it put her more in mind of a bird, though admittedly the oddest-looking bird she’d ever seen. It stood on two bird-like legs, covered in dark fur or feathers except for splay-toed feet. A roughly oval body was angled forward, like a picture she’d once seen of an ostrich, but there was no neck, no head, and no wings, not even vestigial ones. Two black eyes glittered above a long, pointed beak that looked as sharp as a sewing needle.

The tik-tik-tik noise came from the claws on its feet, which blurred in a rapid, pigeon-like gait. It stopped a few yards away, body tilted so it could look up at her, and made a short, interrogative quirk.

Alice couldn’t help laughing. After all the dire pronouncements from Ashes, fear had begun to settle somewhere deep in her gut. But this little thing, while certainly odd, looked more like a creature you’d shoo out of the basement than any kind of a threat.

It might even be tame, she decided. Certainly it didn’t seem afraid of her. She crouched slowly and beckoned to it.