‘Doesn’t it annoy you?’ she asked Lug, ‘that the arbomancers think they’re the best just because of where they live?’

Lug winced. ‘Don’t say that so loudly!’ He cast a nervous glance at a passing mage strutting by with her silver staff and an angry-looking rook perched on her shoulder. Then he leant in to whisper in Liska’s ear. ‘Of course it’s annoying. And unfair. I mean, being able to grow and shape the trees . . . well, that’s an important power. But they shouldn’t look down on everybody else the way they do. We all play a part in Arborven.’

‘Do the circles ever change? Do groups of mages ever become more powerful?’

Lug shook his head. ‘It’s always been this way. Power comes from the tree, and those closest have more of it. They’d never want to move, not unless they were forced out of their houses. Besides, arbomancers need the most power. Their kind of magic uses up lots of it.’

It did indeed seem unfair to Liska. But then, she supposed, it was a bit similar to the shapewalker families. The cockatrices and manticores thought they were stronger and better than the rest, and that would never change. Nor would they ever give their precious skins to anyone outside their family. Power, or the thought of it, was hoarded by shapeshifters like a wyvern hoarded gold.

Soon they passed out of the first circle and into the second. The trees changed from oak to hazel: smoother bark, ramrod-straight branches and catkins dangling from sprays of bushy green leaves. The sun made rippling streaks of light as it shone through the canopy and Liska’s feet seemed to sink in the spongy soil. Red squirrels dashed up and down the tree trunks or scurried about the ground burying stashes of hazelnuts for the winter, and chirping birds of all colours flitted through the branches.

How different it was from walking on granite mountaintops and through stone-paved hallways as she was used to.

The tree houses here were of a different style, too. Still built of wood, they were all pods or spheres, hanging from the branches or clustered about the trunks. This was the circle of the stormsingers: mages who were a bit more familiar to Liska. She often saw them visiting the mountains where they kept the mists swirling around the outside of the city, hiding its presence from hungry wyverns.

Here, in their circle, were traces of their magic. Weather charms hung from twigs everywhere and there were random patches of fog, drifting on stray gusts of wind. Liska even saw a tiny thunderstorm, crackling with baby lightning, as it hung over one of the rooftops.

‘Don’t you wish you could learn another kind of magic?’ she asked Lug. ‘Then you could move into one of these circles. You could swan around in silver robes and sneer at everyone else.’