Alice pulled her shawl over her head. The middle part of the day was past and the sun had dipped already towards the warehouses and church spires of the city. The rain had held off and for four days the sky had radiated a light so vivid, so blue, it hurt the eyes. But as the winter day waned the warmth drained from it with a swiftness that caught a person out. You needed a shawl and Alice drew hers closer about her shoulders.

She entered the courthouse and no one stopped her; indeed no one was abroad at all, though she could hear voices behind distant doorways. She found herself in a vestibule carpeted in crimson and gold—not the rich carpets of the Dunlevy house, but a functional and hard-wearing carpet that stamped its authority on the person who walked upon it. The walls were painted a deep forest green and a pale cream that ought to have had no place in a chamber carpeted in crimson, but here was a room that thumbed its nose at good taste. This building had a job to do and, if its walls clashed horribly with its carpets, what of it? A silent and dimly lit corridor led off to the left with, about halfway along its length, a coldly uncarpeted staircase fashioned from some ancient timber so dark and knotted it might have been salvaged from a medieval manor house. There was a smell, too, of musty disuse, which was curious for a building not much more than half a century old.

Alice took the corridor rather than the staircase, passing long, hard wooden benches on which no one sat and a series of closed doors, and the signs above the doors—COURT OFFICIALS ONLY, BARRISTERS ROBING ROOM, PUBLIC DEFENDERS—suggested worlds beyond her knowledge, and her fear grew. The corridor twisted and turned, throwing up corners at random intervals, and she found herself outside in a courtyard. The sudden sunlight made her stand and blink. It was a small, square, sandstone place walled in on all sides, and apart from yet another unwelcoming bench it seemed to be a place to pass through rather than one in which to linger.

But where was Court 3?

Alice sat down on the bench, which was half in the sun and half in shade, one part of her warm, the other part cold. She did not know if Milli had been called before a judge already, for the afternoon was fading and surely, Alice thought, she must be too late.

And so even in this she had failed her sister.

She lifted her face to the patch of purest blue above and she wished with all her heart Milli had not done this thing. She wished she might help her sister, though it seemed to her there was nothing she could do. Milli had made her own plan without Alice’s assistance, without her blessing.