As she plummeted towards the earth, Storm knew she would die. In a way, it was a comfort. She had failed, but at least she could stop now. Nothing would be her fault after this.

The ground rushed up to meet her. She could hear it coming. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for stone and gravel to smash her bones to jelly. When she landed with a ridiculous-sounding squelch on something soft and springy, Storm gave a whimper of outrage. Shocked at being alive, she bounced two, three, four times, before quivering to a stop.

The ground stank of dank, root-full richness. Storm lay face down in what seemed to be a peat bog. She groaned and turned over. As she lay there, the squelchy ground beneath her firmed, grew hard and stony. The Tortoise had saved her life yet again. Storm pushed to her feet, wheezing with shock and sore all over, but very much alive.

Something scurried towards her, scuttering over the gravel. Storm drew her knife in a panic, then resheathed it with a sigh as a familiar scolding voice announced Scoundrel. The monkey darted forward and tugged at her trouser leg, muttering and fretting.

“I’m glad you’re alive too,” Storm said crossly. “But I don’t need you to tell me what an idiot I’ve been. How was I to know the ladder was going to break?”

“Huh! Huh!” It was a contemptuous, sarcastic rebuke. Scoundrel kept tugging until she followed him reluctantly to the bottom of the ladder.

“You want me to go back up there? Are you mad?”

But she had no choice. Other than knocking on the front door and announcing herself, there was no other way to get back into Talon’s house. Scoundrel was clever: there must be enough of the ladder left intact. Maybe only enough to support a monkey! cautioned her mind-voice. But Storm began the climb again on less than steady legs.

The cling-monkey scampered up before her. As she neared the top, a warning hiss told her to go carefully.

“Like I was going to do anything else,” Storm muttered under her breath.

The faint glimmer of starlight showed a gap in the ladder just above her head. Only one rung was broken. She could climb past, with care. But something strange caught her attention… Storm peered closer at the place where the rung had broken away. On one side, the place was splintered, the wood torn as it broke beneath her weight. But on the other she saw a neat stub. This side of the rung hadn’t broken. It had been cut.

Someone had sawn this rung in two since she had travelled this way. Someone had tried to kill her, and it could only be one person.