‘If there are Hedra among them, they may have weapons that the rain won’t hinder,’ I said, remembering the golden liquid called honeyfire that I had seen demonstrated in the mind of a Herder priest. Once ignited, it would burn anything and it could not be extinguished with water. The effect of it would be unthinkably horrifying were it to be thrown onto a person.

‘The only one close enough to be hurt will be you, mistress, if they seek parley, which is why we will precede you out the door. Whoever would speak with you had better be prepared to dismount and put their hands atop their heads.’

Ceirwan stiffened and after a distracted moment, he said, ‘That was Lina. Alad sent her because he thought we might need a beastspeaker who can also farseek, since you are likely to be too busy to deal with the horses. She just farsought me to say that Jaygar and some of the other horses are going to come through the farm gate and round to the front entrance so that they can communicate with the riders’ horses in case they have been demon-banded. If they have, Lina will go out and make physical contact with Jaygar to find out what he has learned.’

‘Why do you speak of demon bands?’ I asked. ‘Surely they have long since been rounded up and put in caves where the taint-devouring insects can cleanse them?’

Catrin came to join us. She was wet to the skin, hair slicked against her scalp. ‘I might as well have bathed fully clothed!’ she muttered, wiping a sodden sleeve over her face.

‘The demon bands were all collected just as all the barrels of black powder were disposed of,’ Linnet said. ‘Yet black powder was obviously used in that attack in Guanette a few nights back, which tells us that some of it slipped through the net. All we can say of the black powder and the demon bands is that most were turned in because we circulated the information that the black powder is unstable and likely to explode and the demon bands contained tainted matter that would eventually affect the wearer. But the renegade soldierguards and Malik’s men who were not captured in Saithwold would likely have dismissed our warnings as a trick to disarm them. And if there are still Hedra at large, as rumoured, they might have arranged to have caches of both stashed away by Malik before ever they came here. That could be one of the reasons they rigged his mind so that if anyone tried to probe him, he would die.’

‘I still don’t get how they did that unless they had coercive powers of their own,’ Catrin said.

‘Most likely they used a captive Misfit to do their dirty work,’ Linnet said.