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purple-stained cork from the bottle he had just emptied into a decanter. Mr. Seuly took it and clasped it in both hands for a moment. Then he nodded and passed it on to Mr. Johnson, who did the same. The cork slowly traveled around the entire circle, including Uncle Alfred and Mr. Loder, standing by the table, who passed it back to the Mayor.
    Mayor Seuly held the cork up in his finger and thumb and beckoned me over to him. I still couldn’t speak. I stood there, looking down on his wealthily clipped hair, which almost hid the thin place on top, and wondering at how rounded and rich he looked. I breathed in smells of nutty, fruity wine, smooth good cloth, and a tang of aftershave and nodded at everything he said.
    â€œAll you have to do,” he said, “is first to have your moment of recognition and then to fetch out this cork. You hold it up like I’m doing, and you say, ‘I summon a Walker to bring me what I need.’ Have you got that?” I nodded. It sounded quite easy to remember. “You may have to wait awhile for the Walker,” Mayor Seuly went on, “and you mustn’t be frightened when you see the Walker coming. It may turn out bigger than you expect. When it reaches you, the Walker will give you something. I don’t know what. Walkers are designed to give you exactly the tool for the job. But take my word for it, the object you get will do just what you need it to do. And you must give the Walker this cork in exchange. Walkers never give something for nothing. Have you got all that?” he asked. I nodded again. “Then take this cork and keep it with you all the time,” he said, “but don’t let anyone else see it. And I hope that when we next meet, you’ll carry no karma at all.”
    As I took the cork, which felt like an ordinary cork to me, Mr. Johnson said, “Right. That’s done. Send him off, Alfred, and let’s start the meeting.”
    I didn’t really need Uncle Alfred to jerk his head at me to go. I got out as quickly as I could and rushed upstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. But by the time I got there, my mouth was hardly dry at all. That was odd, but it was such a relief that I hardly wondered about it at all. I wasn’t even very scared anymore, and that was odd, too, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

Four
    I got much more nervous as the week marched on. The worst part was the end-of-term assembly, when I had to sit on the left side with the school leavers, while all my friends sat across the gangway because they were going to Upper Schools. I felt really left out. And while I sat there, I realized that even when I’d found the karma person and got rid of him, I’d still be a year behind my friends at Stall High. And on my side of the gangway, the boy next to me had got a job at Mayor Seuly’s ironworks and the girl on the other side was going to train as a maid in Mr. Goodwin’s house. I still had to get my job.
    Then it suddenly hit me that I was going off on my own to a strange place where I wouldn’t know what to do or how to behave, and that was bad enough, without having to find the person causing my Evil Fate as well. I tried saying, “It’s him or me,” to myself, but that was no help at all. When I got home, I looked out of my window, up at Stallery, and that was terrifying. I realized that I didn’t know the first thing about the place, except that it was full of powerful wizardry and that someone up there was thoroughly wicked. When Uncle Alfred came and took me to his workroom to put the spell on me that would make this Mr. Amos give me the job at Stallery, I went very slowly. My legs shook.
    The workroom was back to its usual state. There was no sign of the comfortable chairs or the port wine. Uncle Alfred chalked a circle on the floor and had me stand inside it. Otherwise, the magics were just like ordinary life. I didn’t feel anything particularly or