Storm. Sarah Driver

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      We step into the flickering torchlight of the long-hall. The place rings with the cries of babs, the bleating of goats and a score of mismatched tribe-tongues. Squidges have wedged themselves into clusters along the tops of the walls and on the chains of the lanterns. The round, feathered, squidlike creatures squeal about the cold, chubby tentacles quivering. They drip ink onto folks’ heads and into their food.

      Great oaken eating benches glitter with hollowed, hungry eyes. The benches are laden with piles of kids, thumping each other’s arms, tumbling around, jostling for space. As we walk past, they nudge each other, staring at my scar. Their stares make me feel skinned. What I did for Leo’s lost spirit is famed round here.

      ‘There treads the sea-witch,’ someone whispers behind our backs. Nervous laughter whistles around my head, and my shoulders tense.

      ‘Ignore them,’ whispers Kestrel.

      Easy for her to say. She’s getting out of here. We stand in line for shallow bowls of goats’ milk porridge. Pangolin joins us. She’s bundled in thick wool dyed the colour of flame, and a grey enamelled pin in the shape of a draggle holds her cloak close around her neck.

      She greets us both, but Kestrel’s manner is stiff and the two eye each other warily. Maybe Kes still ent forgiven Pang for the way she was under the old regime.

      I’m so busy watching how they are with each other, the seed of my idea swelling in my bones, that I end up stepping on Pang’s cloak and she trips, almost knocking a pot over.

      Curses whip from the cooks’ mouths.

      ‘She never meant to!’ I blurt.

      ‘Make her words big to her elders, will she?’ threatens a fat old waddler called Kid, with six chins and three mean looks she switches between. She raises a tarnished ladle like a fist and turns to Kestrel. ‘Sawbones, you keep these filthy sea-roving folk out of my kettle-fires.’ She turns her broad back on us. ‘That’s the last of the provisions. Protector says we’ve to hold back the pot-scrapings for the prisoner.’

      Axe-Thrower. But she wasn’t the only prisoner, before. Leo captured a mystik and locked him in the belly of Hackles, but one day the cell was empty ’cept for a dark stain on the floor. The mystik leaked through the cracks in the stone.

      Kestrel’s cheeks have reddened. ‘If my mother finds out you spoke of Mouse in such a way, she will not be pleased!’

      Kid rounds on us, eyes rolling in her head. ‘You dare take a tone with the women who have kept watch over you since you were belly-swell?’

      Lunda appears, holding a bowl of porridge scraped clean. ‘Your mother won’t be around much longer anyway. Oh – haven’t you heard?’ she asks innocently. ‘She received a summons, just before the mid-meal bell. She’ll be flying to the Frozen Wastes as soon as possible.’

      As me and Kes hurry from the hall, Kid’s words arrow into our backs. ‘She and her kin pine for the sea like a pack of seals. I say, let them fish for their breakfast.’