18 
Later that day, Ottilie visited Alba in the root cellar. She was settled on a grain bag with a woollen blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon. ‘It’s slow going,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look like a big book, but every page I turn, it’s like I get nowhere.’ She tapped the spine, the tips of her fingers poking through the ends of her chunky gloves. ‘I don’t know if it’s because it’s really dense, or because the book is spell’d.’
Ottilie frowned and leaned away. ‘Why would a book be spell’d?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alba, stroking its cover. ‘It’s about witches, and not the kind of things you normally read – about how they were evil and they ate their babies.’
‘I have never read that,’ said Ottilie, with a grimace. She wished they were having this conversation somewhere else, preferably in a wide-open space beneath a cheerful sun.
‘Well, trust me, it’s out there,’ said Alba. ‘But this one … I think it was written by witches. Did you know they were sort of growers first – “keepers of the land”. Then they learned that they could heal people, like they could heal plants and animals, and then … well, that’s about as far as I’ve got. The writing is really small and I have to keep stopping to look up words I don’t know, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a much bigger book than it pretends to be.’
Ottilie blinked at the book and crinkled her nose. ‘What do you think Whistler will do if she finds it missing? She’ll know it was us.’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t punish us for breaking in. I think she quite liked it. “Lions not mice”, remember.’
Ottilie picked up the other book, the one Whistler had given them. She traced a finger over the lettering on the cover. Sol. Everything kept coming back to the royal family. Centuries ago, the young princess, Seika Devil-Slayer, had felled the first dredretch, then a hundred years ago, Viago the Vanquisher had broken the promise and caused the dredretches to infest the Laklands, and now their current king, Varrio Sol, had created the Narroway Hunt. And Whistler had given them this book – what did it all mean?
The door to the root cellar flew open. ‘What do you two think you are doing!’ said Montie.
Alba jumped to her feet, masking the book from view. ‘We’re just talking, Mum.’
‘Just talking? Secretly in the root cellar?’ Montie’s eyes were sharp as daggers. ‘Ottilie, dear one, I’ve told you, you can’t come down here for a while. Alba’s name was on that petition – if they catch her talking to you like this –’
‘Why would they catch us?’ said Alba. ‘Why would they come in here?’
Montie sighed, her eyes heavy. ‘You know very well that they’re watching all of you. Our … my position is not secure here, Alba, and they don’t allow people they consider untrustworthy to just go back to the Usklers! Who knows what they would do with us.’
Not for the first time, Ottilie wondered why Montie had come to the Narroway. What had driven her to bring her daughter to such a place? Her eyes traced Montie’s face. Ottilie had never asked about the burns slinking down from under her scarf, twisting the skin on the left side of her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she really meant it. The last thing she wanted to do was cause trouble for Montie and Alba.
Montie’s eyes softened. ‘It’s all right. I love that you visit us, I do, but you both need to settle for a while. No creeping around – not until things calm down.’
Ottilie needed to stretch her legs. She felt as if she had spent half of her afternoon off crouching in store cupboards. The sun was setting over the trees and the grounds were bathed in fiery light. Deciding to make the most of it, she looped the pond and wandered further across the fields.
Bayo Amadory passed, crossing paths with a sculkie with coppery hair and fairly large ears. Ottilie recognised her immediately. She was infamous. It was Fawn Mogue, the girl who had accidentally let the wyler into the sculkies’ bedchamber.
Fawn was pushing a barrow loaded with shiny red apples from the grove. Hitting uneven ground, the barrow wobbled and a few apples tumbled onto the grass.
Ottilie watched Bayo retrieve them for her and was just about to go after the last rolling apple herself when she caught a flash of orange in the corner of her eye.
Her mind said it must have been the sun, but her gut stopped her in her tracks. Bayo and Fawn paused too. Fawn touched her temple. It looked as if she, like Ottilie, was sensing the ghost of a headache.
In the distance, a shepherd howled.
Ottilie’s heart froze as she spotted another flash of orange – a bushy tail. She swallowed. She and Bayo were both unarmed.
‘Run!’ Ottilie cried. ‘The wall!’ It was closest and there would be armed huntsmen up there.
Fawn released the barrow. It tipped and apples rolled underfoot as they sprinted. Ottilie tripped. Bayo and Fawn ran back to help her up, and the wyler pounced out of nowhere. Ottilie grabbed the only weapon she could find, pelting the dredretch with apples. One after the other, she missed, but dodging kept it busy.
Ottilie heard shouts, howls and thundering hooves. The wyler leapt at Fawn.
‘Your ring!’ cried Bayo.
Fawn lifted her left arm high and kicked out. The wyler tore across her leg with its claws. Ottilie hit it hard with an apple and it fell back. Bayo grabbed Fawn, helping her to her feet and then shifting to stand between her and the wyler, apple in hand, his broad shoulders masking Fawn from view.
Ottilie could see Leo running towards them, bow raised, but he was too far away. Further still, the dark shadows of shepherds streaked through the dimming light. The hoof beats were louder and Billow thundered into view, Ramona Ritgrivvian on his back, her red hair flying.
She was a wrangler – she had no weapons, but Billow reared and stamped. The wyler dodged and leapt back. It bent to spring: Billow, the biggest threat, was its new target. The wyler leapt high. Billow lunged sideways and kicked hard.
She heard bone crack and the wyler hit the ground with a thump. It didn’t fall to pieces. That meant it could heal. She took a step towards it. The wyler got shakily to its feet and she could almost see the bones of its spine clicking back into place. Its fiery eyes met hers. There was a whoosh and a nasty sticking sound as Leo’s arrow flew past her ear and pierced its horned skull.
Ottilie watched him approach. The shepherds overtook him, hackles raised, teeth bared. One of them leapt forward and sniffed at the bones. Ramona dismounted and Ottilie could hear her checking on Fawn, who stood trembling, fat trails of blood snaking down her leg. Ottilie didn’t move. She looked Leo right in the eyes. He was pale.
‘Congratulations. Thirty points,’ she said coldly.