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coat pocket.
    I wait a few heartbeats, letting the silence of the night drift around me in a thick mist before I set off again. This time I keep to the long shadows where the darkness gathers thickest, picking my way across the silvery damp grass until I reach the edge of the world. Below, the rocks and waves are grinding against each other, and the wind sucks at me, begging me to take one more step, to throw myself down. Sacrifice, the water says in its sea-witch voice, full of whispers and promises. Sometimes I have to wonder if the Hob belief that the sea is animate, alive and full of magic, is more than just primitive nonsense.
    Instead, I kneel and pull a rock free from the cliff edge. The wind tugs at the golden-brown silk as I unwind and rewrap the shawl around the shoes and the lump of pale chalk. Then I stand, take a careful step away from the edge, and hurl the shawl out into the ocean.
    That’s all the sharif will find of me.

4
     
    B Y THE TIME I see the Levelling Bridge, the sun is streaking the horizon pink. Gold edges the last of the smeared clouds, and the sails of the returning fish boats are cheerily white. My feet, however, are far from cheery. The whole of my right heel feels like one huge blister—the boots are certainly a size too small. My toes are pinched and sore. With my teeth gritted, I hoist my little holdall higher and walk down Spindle Way, drawing closer and closer to the bridge. Around me the first of the early-morning delivery carts are clip-clopping past. The large goatlike nillies with yellow eyes—unicorns who have had their horns sawed off to feed our need for a cut-rate replacement for scriv—shove at one another, and the stone road is already covered with the little black pellets of their dung. Straw and mud have been tracked here, and they mingle with the fine white sand that blows in from the harbor.
    I stand with one foot on the bridge. The bridge-houses loom on either side of me, packed close as cards in a Saint’s deck. Once I cross and lose myself in Old Town, it’ll be done. That’s what you want, Felicita.
    Or I could be a little bird again and fly back to my tower. And then what? A lifetime of dull and careful parties, a marriage engineered for Pelim’s fortune, and then a long stretch into eternity. Gray and featureless.
    Old Town might stink of fish and feces, but it still has to be better than that .
    Even the thought of my mother’s face creased in anguish can’t slow me. She will soon forget any heartache, I’m sure. After all, she has Owen. If I return before my mother has time to panic, all that will happen is that I’ll be watched more closely, have less privilege. A few months and then I’ll be trapped in House Canroth, watching Piers blow baubles of glass. Perhaps, dutifully, I’ll even make my own.
    I imagine his white fingers touching me, slug-like in the dark, and I shudder. A show of weakness that I can’t allow myself. If there’s one thing my mother taught me, it is how to wear the perfect mask. Never show them what you’re really feeling because that’s how they hurt you. I picture my mother’s face when she must go out in public with Owen, the cold arrogant look she wears, as if the whole world is filth before her. It is an expression I’ve learned to copy well, and like all roles, if you can believe it, you can be it. I press my hands to my face and push, smoothing the worry and fear away. I’m better than them. Better than Owen, than Canroth Piers. They can never really control me because they cannot bridle my thoughts.
    It works. I’m calm again. Let Piers and Owen make the wedding arrangements, just don’t expect the bride to be there like a dog called to heel. I’ll choose my own Gris-damned husband, thank you. If I even want one, and I’m not exactly certain of that. I want life on my own terms, not on the dictates of tradition and of haggling over power and land.
    I will never let myself be caught like that—any marriage I make