Nightfall, and Llian was huddled in the reeds beside a stinking drain. He had not eaten or drunk since leaving Wistan’s rooms early that morning and he was desperately thirsty, but the water was too foul to drink. The stench was making his stomach churn, and his cheek throbbed where Thandiwe had headbutted him.

He had gambled everything, and lost. What on earth had possessed him? How had he so lost sight of his true goal, and how could he find and destroy the summon stone now?

A chilling thought struck him. As the accused murderer of a great man, the constables might have orders to shoot him down rather than allow him to get away. Only Bufo and the killer knew that he was innocent, but Bufo was long gone and no one knew where. There was no way to clear his name.

Who could the killer be? Llian’s first thought was Turlew, though he was a sneak and a coward. It would have taken a far bolder man to cut Wistan’s throat and stroll away in a room crowded with masters.

He lay back in the reeds, probing his cheek. Where could he go? He still had friends in Chanthed from his student days, though most had families now, and responsibilities. He could not ask any of them to risk everything by sheltering him.

The news of his crime would be a sensation; Karan would hear about it within days, and so would everyone else who knew him. Would they believe the story? Well, Karan already doubted him; she no longer trusted him to protect his own daughter.

How, after all their years together, could she have so little faith in him? Was it because she had invested everything in the only child she could ever have, or did she see a flaw in Llian that he had failed to recognise in himself? But Sulien, Sulien! It was unendurable.

He knew what Karan would think of his choice to support Norp over Thandiwe. She would be apoplectic with fury. Why go all that way, at so much trouble and expense, only to betray the one person who could have helped us? Would it be the last straw? Would he ever see her again? Or Sulien? Llian slumped on the smelly ground, overcome by despair.

Was there any way he could send a message to them? He dared not take the risk; he was too well known here. Besides, his quest was more urgent with every passing day. Only four and a half weeks remained.

He counted his money: twenty-two silver tars and half a dozen grints. It would not last long. He was putting the coins away when he realised that the scholarship test would have finished long ago. Given all the revelations about corruption at the college, the test would have been rigged; the scholarship would either go to a favourite of the judges or to the student who had paid the biggest bribe. Wilm, alone and penniless, must be in despair. And Llian had promised to look after the lad; he had to make sure Wilm had enough money to get home.

Which meant returning to their rented room. Would the rooming house be watched? Probably, though as a teller Llian was used to assuming a range of identities. He could use any of dozens of voices and accents, and change the way he walked and his physical mannerisms. If he kept to the night and no one saw him up close he might get away with it.

He turned up his collar, pulled his hat down so it concealed his face, assumed a slump-shouldered, defeated posture and a limp, and set off. The streets were crowded, for it was a mild evening, and in his mud-stained clothes he looked like a hundred other unfortunates. He kept a sharp lookout for constables and saw several, but by keeping well clear of them he attracted no attention.

At the rooming house the danger was immediate, for the old lady who ran it had eyes in all four sides of her plump little head. But she also had an appetite for chard and a weak bladder, judging by her frequent trips to the jakes out the back.

Llian concealed himself in the shadows in the rear yard and waited until she came out, her copper lantern casting beams of yellow light across the bare ground. The door of the jakes banged. He slipped up the stairs and opened the door to the top room, which was in darkness.

“Wilm?” he said, hand on the latch, ready to run.

No answer. Llian stood there, staring around him. He heard no movement or breathing, and as his eyes adjusted he saw from the light coming in through the grimy window that the small room was empty.

His pack was gone; the constables would have taken it when they searched the room. Wilm’s canvas pack sat at the end of his bed. Llian retrieved Wistan’s dirt book from the mattress and sat on the bed in the dark, planning his next move.

If the secret of the summon stone existed at all, it would be in the thousands of forgotten documents in the library archives. Breaking in would be dangerous but he had done it before. In his student days, in search of stories no other student had access to, he had taught himself a burglar’s skills and cracked the locks. Such skills, once learned, were never forgotten.

There was still no sign of Wilm. Llian sat on the bed, opened the dirt book in a ray of light coming through the window and turned the pages until he came to his own entry, written while he was still a student and, evidently, never updated.

Llian sat back. Wistan had been a trifle harsh but not entirely inaccurate. His words would have been hurtful had the glow not lingered from being offered the mastership.

An hour had passed and he dared not stay any longer. He took three silver tars from his wallet and wrote a note.

He wrapped the coins in the note and put it in Wilm’s bag, then went to the window. As soon as the old lady’s lantern approached the door of the jakes again he went down the steps and out into the cold night. He would find a room in the seediest tavern in Chanthed, a place where no one asked questions, fill his belly, then get started.

If he discovered anything about the stone, he would set out to destroy it. It would not be easy; Gergrig had said it could look after itself. But, unjustly banned from doing the work he loved, his life in peril because of a crime he had not committed, and cut off from his own family, the quest was all Llian had left.