If he was startled to see a disembodied eye suddenly staring at him through a hole in the ceiling, then I was utterly shocked by the sight of him. I felt as though I were dreaming. Why on earth was the son of one of the most important men in the empire – a member of the Mancer Council, at that – locked up in a Mancer prison? Surely they couldn’t suspect him of anti-empire activities or being an illegal wizard! The whole thing was quite unbelievable. Surely Count Otto could not know what had happened, because what kind of father would deliver his only child into the clutches of the Mancers? And if the Mancers had done it behind his back, what could it mean? Then a shocking thought struck me – what if Count Otto himself had also been arrested?

My thoughts fled as Max called up anxiously, ‘Who’s there? Please, who’s there?’

‘Friends. Oh, Max, are you all right?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m –’ And then he broke off and said in quite a different tone, ‘How the hell do you know my name?’

I swallowed, aware of Olga listening. I wanted to lie but somehow I couldn’t. ‘I’m – I’ve met you. Once. You probably won’t remem–’

‘Oh no,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘I know that voice. Of course I remember. It’s you, Camille. Oh my God, I’d so hoped –’

‘Hoped what?’ I said, and I could feel my heart thudding painfully for reasons I didn’t quite understand. I clutched the locket in my pocket, thinking wildly that he must have picked it up the night of the ball and kept it with him. That’s why it had been in the bowl.

He said, quietly, ‘I hoped they hadn’t found you.’

I looked up at Olga. Her eyebrows were raised and I made a sign to her meaning, I’ll explain later, and turned back to Max. I said, gently, ‘Max, why did they arrest you?’

He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Better you don’t know. It’s . . . too dangerous.’

‘Was it anything to do with what happened that night with me and the Prince? Please tell me, yes or no?’

‘No,’ he said, a little too quickly. But I let it pass for the moment. I said, ‘Was it . . . was it your father who had you arrested and brought here?’

‘My father? Oh no, no, he doesn’t even know it’s happened,’ he said firmly, and this time it had the ring of truth.

‘Then who –’

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said. But I knew – he must have been arrested on the Prince’s orders, no-one else would have had the authority.

‘If your father doesn’t know,’ I said, ‘then you must get word to him.’

‘How?’

‘The warders – bribe them, threaten them, whatever you have to do.’

‘It won’t work,’ he said. A shadow crossed his face. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘What I do understand,’ I said crossly, ‘is that you’re just sitting there waiting for the Mancers to . . . to do whatever they’re going to do to you. You’re giving in without a fight. I thought more of you than that.’

Colour rushed into his face. ‘And what about you, Mademoiselle St Clair, if that is in fact your real name? If I am not mistaken you too are stuck in a Mancer cell with no hope of escape.’ His voice hardened. ‘Or are you so chirpy because you know that the people you work for will get you out?’

I was struck dumb. ‘What the devil is that supposed to mean?’

‘For God’s sake! You appear out of nowhere, giving a name identical to that of a fictional spy. No-one knows anything about you, and when the border records are examined, no-one answering your description has entered the country from Champaine or anywhere else.’

‘They did that?’

‘They did indeed. Do you wonder that it’s easy to make a case against you?’

‘You think I’m a spy,’ I said blankly.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘For God’s sake,’ he said wearily. ‘Do you think I’d be talking to you right now if I really thought it? I’d never do anything that might endanger the empire.’

‘And yet you’re in a prison reserved for enemies of the empire,’ I said.

He sighed. ‘Yes. But then so are you.’

‘Not for that reason. Whatever you might think, I’ve not been arrested as a spy, but for quite another reason.’

‘What, then?’

‘If you can have secrets, then so can I,’ I said tartly.

He smiled for the first time. It lit up his whole face with great warmth. ‘Touché.’

I took a deep breath and said, ‘I have to ask you – I lost . . . something the night of the ball –’

‘Yes. The locket,’ he said steadily. ‘I found it after you’d gone. It intrigued me that such a fashionable young woman should wear a simple enamel heart. It made me think I had misjudged you.’

‘You didn’t open it?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a memento,’ I said hurriedly, replying to the questioning note in his voice. ‘A leaf from a tree on my mother’s grave. She . . . died a few years ago. I miss her very much.’

My voice must have cracked a little as I spoke because he said, gently, ‘I am sorry, Camille. I did not mean to –’

‘It’s all right,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I . . . did you tell the Prince – about finding it, I mean?’

‘Not him and not another living soul,’ he said. ‘He hadn’t noticed you lost it. I thought . . . I thought the locket could be a clue. That it might help me find you – before they did.’

My palms were prickling, my heart racing, my veins singing with a strange sweetness I had never experienced before. I said weakly, ‘Oh. I see.’

He sighed. ‘And now I’ve found you, but too late . . . Oh, Camille. We’re in a pretty fair pickle the pair of us, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘But we’re not alone.’ I motioned Olga over. ‘Max, this is my friend Olga. She’s from Ruvenya.’ Let Olga tell him herself about the werewolf thing if she wanted, I thought.

She didn’t. ‘Hello, Max,’ she said shyly, peering down.

‘Ruvenya, eh? I have visited your country. It is beautiful.’ He paused. ‘I am pleased to meet you, Olga, even if it is in this place.’

‘And I you,’ said Olga. She added, hurriedly, ‘Max, my friend Selena she is a very brave person and she –’

‘Ah,’ he said, interrupting. ‘So that is her real name! Come dance with me, Selena seen by moonlight,’ he quoted. It was a line from a well-known song. ‘So not Camille, but Selena. And not Champaine but Ashberg, right?’

‘Right, but never mind about all that for the moment,’ I said impatiently. ‘What we should be thinking about is getting out of here.’

‘Indeed,’ he said wryly. ‘What are you proposing? That we walk through walls? Fly through the bars? Squeeze through the keyholes and swim out through the river?’

‘The river?’ I echoed.

‘Yes. Part of this dungeon is built on the river. Below me somewhere there’s an entrance to some steps that go down to the water. They sometimes bring in prisoners that way if they don’t want anyone to see them.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because they brought me that way,’ he said simply.

‘Well then that’s the way we’ll go.’

He laughed. ‘Really! And how do you propose we get through the solid walls and the locked doors and all the rest? And it’s not just a question of locks and keys, either.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said sharply.

‘I heard my father speak of it once. All doors in Mancer prisons have a spell on them. That is why they do not need to employ as many guards as in an ordinary prison. You see, not only do you have to have the key, but you must have the words to unlock the doors. And even if you have both, it will do you no good – they only respond to a Mancer.’

‘Well then, we’ll have to get a Mancer to do it for us,’ I said firmly.

‘Oh, Selena, why not ask for the moon too while you’re about it?’

‘Good idea, I might try that,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You are quite the most unusual girl I have ever met.’

‘You can’t have met many girls then, Maximilian von Gildenstein,’ I retorted.

‘I can assure you that –’ he began, then in a different tone said, ‘I can hear someone coming, talk to you later.’ He walked rapidly away to the other side of the cell, and I hurriedly covered up the hole in the flagstone with straw so the chink of light couldn’t possibly be seen from below.

Olga said, with a sidelong glance at me, ‘He is nice man.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly.

She looked a little severe. ‘But you have not told me who this Max is and how you meet, and how it is that you say you are not witch but still you have magic leaf.’

‘Look, it’s rather a long story and we should be thinking of –’

‘All the family Ironheart like long story,’ said Olga firmly, patting the straw next to her. ‘You sit here, Selena, and you begin from beginning.’

So I sat next to her and I began from the beginning or, rather, from my mother’s death. I told her just about everything except the secret my mother had told me about her moon-sister ancestry, for I was still afraid of voicing that to anyone. Olga listened without interrupting me, her great green eyes fixed on my face. When I finished with how I’d been arrested for stealing, she looked at me and said, ‘You are not witch, you say, yet you can work magic.’

‘Correction,’ I said. ‘I can’t work magic, it works me. Big difference, Olga.’

She shook her head. ‘In this country where only Mancers may know magic, people forget it come in many ways. It is not only in books and spells. No, the best magic – the very best – you do not choose it, it choose you. And it choose to grow in deep soil only – in fine, strong heart. And this is you, Selena.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, startled.

‘I am of the family Ironheart,’ she said seriously, ‘and we are brought up to be strong. But I cannot endure such a thing as you suffer with those wicked ones.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘Long since, I would have killed this Grizelda and her daughters, I would rip their throats out and leave them to the crows, I would cast out my father. But not you – you give your word to your Mama, and this word you keep. Not because you are weak, but because you are strong. And this is why magic grow in you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I had nothing to do with it. It was my mother, in a dream.’

‘This you tell me,’ she said, ‘but this also I believe: that in other hands this hazel twig, it stay a hazel twig; in yours, it work magic. You may not understand now why or how but magic choose you, that is certain. And that is how I know you get us out of here, like you tell Max.’

I squirmed. ‘Oh, Olga, I was just speaking off the top of my . . .’ I trailed off because she wasn’t listening. She’d picked up the top again and was turning it over in her hands.

She said, ‘This come to you for reason. It show Max was here.’ She looked at me. ‘Maybe there is more, Selena?’

‘Maybe,’ I said slowly, her bright hope contagious. ‘Let’s try another spin,’ I said, and did so. The top bounced along merrily, spinning faster and faster till it started whistling and the mechanical bird came out. We watched it intently, hoping something would happen. But all it did was slow down and come to a stop. We pulled up the straw around where it had been spinning, in case it had deposited some useful item for escape, or even that it might have transformed some of the straw into gold with which to bribe the warders. But there was nothing. The straw stubbornly remained unchanged and all we found in it were some definitely non-magical fleas, which we promptly squashed.

‘So what we do now, Selena?’ said Olga.

I shrugged despondently.

‘Maybe when warder come, I kill him,’ she said.

I sighed. ‘Don’t be silly. You might be a werewolf, but he’s at least twice your size and much stronger. And he’s a Mancer, even if not of a very high rank. You’d probably be dead the instant you sprang at him. No, we’ve got to use our wits, not brute force.’ I sighed. ‘And the top won’t last, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The hazel-tree magic only lasts for a few hours. By morning it will be a leaf again – a dead leaf.’

‘Then what good is this stupid toy?’ said Olga fiercely, and she was about to snatch it out of my hands to throw it against the wall when all at once we heard voices just outside the cell, and then the heavy keys rattling in the keyhole. I only just had time to shove the top well out of sight, deep in my pocket, when the door crashed open.