“So there are ordinary folk living on the hill, not just these . . . presences?” I’d have to run to catch up with Magnus before he disappeared up the path into the woods.

Tomas’s gaze sharpened.“Magnus is the most ordinary it gets up there,” he said.

“I must go after him,” I said.“I can do the job. I can read and write. I’m a trained scribe, and I need work.Will the barrier still be open?”

“You can read?” Tomas’s incredulity was not so surprising; people tended to respond like this when they heard about my skills. “A young woman like you? That’s the strangest thing I ever heard.”

“What you told me last night was a lot stranger,” I said.“Tomas, I have to run or I won’t catch up with him.”

“Whoa, whoa, now wait a bit.” Tomas looked genuinely alarmed. “That story you heard last night might have been hard to swallow, but it was simple truth.You’d only need to spend a few days here to discover that for yourself. I’ll accept that maybe you’re a scholar—why would you lie about such a thing?—but as I said to Magnus, no scribe in his right mind would touch this job. I didn’t take you for a fool, lass.”

“I have to tell you something,” I said, deciding to risk part of the truth. “I’m being followed and I don’t want to be found. I didn’t do anything wrong, but there’s someone after me and I need to get away. And I do need paid work, quite badly.Will you ask the men to let me through the barrier, please?”

He didn’t like it, and nor did the men who were on duty by the fence this morning, a different group from last night. But the barrier was still open.They were just beginning to replace the iron bars when I got there.

“You’d be safe enough with us in the village,”Tomas protested. “I told you, nobody comes here.”