Sooli felt as if a strong current was pulling at her, trying to drag her under water. Or perhaps it was the Black Wind, with her name on its lips. Or the Grafine’s path, stuck to her hand.

Everyone had a path, Great-Grandmother had taught Sooli that. It was like a shiny silver thread that extended a little way in front of them, where they were going, and a little way behind them, where they had been.

If you were Bayam, and had worked very hard at your training, you could pick up those threads and turn them in another direction, so that people went where you wanted them to go.

Sooli had not worked at all hard at her training. And even if she had, she might not have known how to let go of the Grafine’s path. It was no longer silver. It was soot black, and it made her hands feel soot black too, like something that had been burned to a cinder and had no life left in it.

She tried to speak. Tried to whisper, ‘Help,’ but no part of her would move. She could hear Duckling, Pummel and Otte, though they sounded as if they were miles away. And when they picked her up and half-dragged, half-carried her to the Grafine’s bedchamber, she could smell the ancient tapestries and the oiled furniture, and the long, stolen years of the Strong-hold.

But she could not speak.

The soot crept higher up her arms. I am turning into a ghost, thought Sooli. I am tied to the path of a dead woman, and it is dragging me to my doom.

Still, she resisted the pull. The Saaf were a digging-in-their-heels sort of people. Stubborn. Difficult. And the Bayam was always the most stubborn and difficult of them all.

So although the soot-black path dragged at her, Sooli resisted.

Duckling had never felt so helpless. She and Pummel had carried Sooli to the Grafine’s room, hoping that no one else would want to use it. They had laid her on the enormous bed and pulled the cover over her, trying to keep her warm.

‘Wake up, Sooli,’ they said, over and over again. ‘Please wake up.’

Otte had lit all the candles he could find, and in their light Duckling could see Sooli fading right in front of their eyes – first her hands, then her wrists, then her forearms.

Otte was beside himself. ‘If I had some hawberry, I might be able to wake her,’ he whispered. ‘But I used it all in the salt mine, and have not had time to gather more.’

His arms tightened around the chicken, who gave a startled squawk. The cat, sitting upright and alert on the foot of the bed, blinked but said nothing.

‘We shouldn’t have let her do it,’ said Duckling. ‘It was too dangerous. We should’ve stopped her, or pulled her back quicker—’

She broke off as a sharp gust of wind blew past her. Pummel quickly shielded the nearest candle with his hands, and although all the others were snuffed out, it was not. The cat flattened herself against the bed, her fur bristling.

By rights, no wind should have been able to find its way through the thick stone walls of the Keep. And even if it had, it should never have got as far as this room on the fourth floor.

But this was no ordinary wind. It was bitterly cold, and it made the hackles rise on Duckling’s neck. It reminded her of a dream where she had wrestled with an old woman, knowing that if she lost, something terrible would happen.

‘The Black Wind,’ she whispered. ‘It’s come for Sooli.’

‘Deeeathhh,’ hissed the cat.

‘No!’ cried Pummel, still protecting their only light. ‘We can’t let it take her. Duckling, can’t you make it go away? Tell it she’s not ready or something?’

Duckling knew it was useless, but she tried anyway. She hummed, in a cracked voice, and her breeze came skipping past her as if this was just an ordinary day, and all she needed was a new kerchief or a bit of information.

But the Black Wind was there too, so big and terrible that Duckling felt as if their hiding place was about to burst open, throwing them all to their deaths.

‘Potoq,’ she whispered, because that was the name of the Black Wind in Saaf. ‘Please leave her alone. Please!’

The Black Wind ignored her.

Duckling cleared her throat and tried again, more forcefully this time. ‘I command you. She’s not ready to die. We need her; she’s our friend!’

A laugh whisked past her ear, the way a giant might laugh at the pleading of a mouse. The wind grew stronger. It stalked Sooli like a tiger, blowing her hair back from her face, blowing the life out of her, bit by bit.

Duckling racked her brains, trying to think of something that might help, but nothing came to her. Sooli’s face was growing greyer and greyer. Her arms had disappeared up to her elbows now. Her breath and her pulse were almost too faint to find.

Duckling’s own heart felt as if it was going to stop at the same time as Sooli’s, from fear and grief. She shut her eyes – and snapped them open again. ‘Otte,’ she cried. ‘The chicken!’

She snatched the startled bird out of his arms and sat her on Sooli’s lap. ‘Dora,’ she said, ‘you’re the Bayam. I know you don’t remember, but you’ve got to try, or Sooli will die. And she mustn’t. So do something. Anything!’

The chicken’s bright eye looked back at her.

‘Please,’ said Duckling.

The Black Wind ruffled the chicken’s feathers and flattened her comb. The chicken gave a squawk of annoyance. Then she settled herself more firmly and began to cluck.