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that some harmings could manage to influence the weather in a small way as well. The reminder was unwelcome: no matter how despicableI found them, how much I clung to my human side, I was still a harming. Un-Turned, but a harming just the same. I stalked inside and flung myself on my bed. I didn’t want any part of it, heat or not.
    I checked the time candle. Hours until midnight. I began pacing the room, too anxious to be still.

    I started seething over Lilith’s words again as I waited at the north-west gate. Creeping away like a common criminal, I thought with a snort. Like I had something to be ashamed of. Renata was hundreds of miles away, and yet her influence seemed to extend all over.
    I heard the clip-clop of hooves on cobbles, and Rodden emerged out of the darkness, leading two horses.
    ‘This is rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say?’ he drawled. ‘Creeping away in the dead of night?’ I saw the flash of his teeth as he grinned in the darkness. He hailed the guards, asking them to open the gates for us.
    ‘I read it in a book once,’ I said sourly. ‘Thought it sounded like fun.’ I mounted my horse, and Leap jumped up to sit on the saddle blanket before me.Griffin was already settled on the horse’s rump, her head nodding.
    My grouchiness began to dissipate and I felt a little thrill as we trotted out the palace gates onto a wide gravel thoroughfare. These were the times I liked best, when it was just the four of us. My skin prickled with excitement.
    We reached the main boulevard and broke into a canter. Few were abroad. We slowed to a walk as we rode through the city, passing patrols and one or two staggering drunks. Darkened townhouses gave way to black paddocks, dotted with farmhouses, and then we were on the open road, flanked by fields. This was the Drissian Way, the highway that connected the four major Pergamian cities, from Xallentaria in the east to Jefsgord in the west. The road was smooth and flat, and during the day it was populated with traders from all over Brivora. Everyone came to Pergamia to sell their wares. It was the richest country on the continent.
    An hour or so before dawn we napped under a copse of pines, the needles springy and fragrant beneath us. Blazing sunshine woke us, and we were back in the saddles, sharing an oatcake and a water skin as our horses walked side by side. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time we’d spent living andsleeping rough in Lharmell. It had been a terrifying, thrilling time, and a totally alien experience to me then. I felt proud I could slip back into the simple, meagre way of life as if I’d been born to it.
    We alternated trotting and walking, and around early afternoon I felt the pain begin. We’d been travelling parallel to the tors but our distance from them must have begun to lengthen. It wasn’t the clawing pain I had felt the previous day, but a dull throbbing, enough to make me shift uncomfortably in the saddle.
    To distract myself I looked at the countryside. The year was creeping towards high summer and the hay stood tall and golden in the fields, alive with chirping grasshoppers and delicate blue-and-white butterflies. I had a switch of willow leaves in one hand that I waved in front of my face, shooing the flies. Our horses were continually flicking their tails to discourage the insects.
    Rendine was our first stop and we were to reach the city the day after tomorrow. After the sun had gone down we settled ourselves some distance from the highway, making camp under the spreading branches of a sycamore to avoid the falling dew. I lay on my cloak, with my saddlebags acting as a pillow, and chewed bread and cheese and a few driedfigs. Griffin was nodding off in the tree and Leap lay curled beside me. I fed him morsels of cheese which he licked from my fingers with a rasping pink tongue. The horses were tethered nearby, noses in bags of oats.
    It was growing dark and Rodden’s eyes began to glow faintly. That was one of the