It was our day off. Una and Amira were going all the way down to the harbour with a young cobbler and a baker from the neighbourhood. They had politely invited me along, but it was clear that since I didn’t have a date, there wouldn't be much for me to do.

  “It really is such a pity that you always have to be on the road,” Una said. “I think the guys here would love you if they ever got to meet you.”

  We were having a breakfast of porridge at the dining hall. We didn’t have oats back at home, and we very rarely ate food that was that bnd in the Midway Isnds. On work days I woke up long before the other girls to make my early trip into the city. I would eat a bit of bread with fruit, because no-one was up to make the porridge yet. Like old Garon before me, I had a longer work day but no cooking or house cleaning duties other than to maintain my room with Una and Amira.

  “Don’t pity her too much,” Amira said. “She’s also getting paid more and she gets to have soft hands.”

  We ughed, but it was true. Lena could have chosen to pay me less than she had paid old Garon, since I was a foreigner, and female, but she had kept the wages the same. Garon had had his own room though, but since he left Lena had turned it into another storage space, so I did have a slightly worse deal than him. Mostly I didn’t mind. I liked sharing a room with Una and Amira, since I had always slept in the living room with Elina and never had my own room.

  The other girls at the undry could handle the soaps better than I could, but still their hands were scratched, calloused and sore. I didn’t have soft hands like a dy, but I had the average hands of a working woman, in stead of the very hard ones washerwomen usually had.

  Lena was very insistent on doing the best she could for the girls’ backs. She gave them more breaks than the other undries, and more comfortable washing stations. This ensured that they would not be broken and bowed by their mid thirties like the washer women at the cheaper undries usually were. But there was no method or technology avaible to save a washerwoman’s hands. They were simply a casualty of the job.

  The girls went out, and I was happy to have a bit of time to myself. I really did like sharing a room with them, but it gave me much less time to work on my goal of finding Titius. I had sadly not had very much time to learn magic from Izzy and Ana Abya. I had learned how to make the drink to prevent pregnancy, a drink to help heal, a little about how to make myself unnoticeable and one complex spell. The spell of Control.

  The spell was theoretically extremely powerful, and Ana Abya told me that there were stories of potent spellcasters in the far South that could control human beings. For a beginner, though, it was extremely difficult, and I had only ever been able to control rodents and birds.

  I couldn’t even make the birds fly, since when one controls an animal, one has to do all their movements for them. Flying does not come naturally to humans.

  The night before I had id out a piece of cheese at the castle stables, with the magical component inside that creates the connection. It was made out of half of a cowpea, soaked in a brew of magical herbs. I hoped that a mouse had eaten it, because if it had that would mean that I could connect to it.

  I had spent a weeks pay to buy a beeswax candle. They were expensive, but they were the only way to complete the spell. I lit the candle and ate the other half of the cowpea, and crawled up into my bunk as quickly as I could.

  The transfer started.

  I looked up at the ceiling, which started to spin and blur. I was beginning to feel nauseous. I closed my eyes and hoped that that would help a little bit.

  I had to focus. Once the transfer started, the spellcaster only had a few moments to push the being out of their own brain and take over. I could feel the mind of the creature that had eaten the other half. It was like a mouse, but a little more complicated. Damn it! It was a rat!

  Rats were a little more intelligent than mice, and a lot more determined. Mice usually just rolled over and let the control happen, rats fought back. I had never been able to wrest control from a rat before.

  But this was my only chance to examine the castle for a long time. I had to take it. With swift force I used all my determination and pushed the rat’s mind out of the way. I was in control. Great! I had never done so well before!

  Now I could feel the rat’s body. It was a little old, a little worn. It’s left back leg hurt a little, and it’s fur was very matted in some spots. As I thought about how gross it was, I could feel the rat trying to wrest back control. I would have to be very focused.

  As with mice, rats sense the world mostly through their whiskers. It was very difficult for people to make sense of. In this way, birds were a lot easier, they see much like humans do. I tried to sense where I was. There was hay, and a lot of things moving around. I could hear the whinnying of horses. I was in the stable.

  I moved out of the stable and into the courtyard. I would have to be very careful if I wanted to go fully into the castle. If someone would see me, they would kill me. Izzy had told me that if you are killed during your use of the control spell, you don’t get physically harmed in the real world, but you feel all the sensations of death. This could drive a person insane.

  I skittered blindly out of the stable. The world around me was blurry and colourless, but my field of vision was wider than usually. It was uncomfortable, and every movement felt like a potential threat. I had no depth perception any more and the low vantage point of being so close to the ground was a disadvantage as well.

  The use of the whiskers at least kept me from bumping into things.

  I scurried as quickly as I could towards the servants entrance where the undry was sent up. That was the part of the castle I knew the best. The courtyard seemed retively empty, and no-one noticed me.

  I found a pce behind a rock and simply waited. While I did I noted how quickly my heart was beating. Moments passed, and finally the door opened. I ran in to the castle, next to the person’s feet. They shrieked, but I was already hurling myself up the stairs before they could do anything.

  I ran and ran until I was sure I was out of the person’s sight, then I rested for a while. My bad leg hurt like hell. I wondered what had happened to the rat.

  I continued on my way climbing the stairs and exploring the castle, making sure I was never seen. I ended up scurrying into a hallway, where a big cupboard stood. I scurried through a hole in the cupboard and then it was just time to wait. First a bunch of maids passed me by. They were usually gossiping about something trivial, like their boyfriends and such.

  Then two men were walking in the hallway. They were speaking in the High Tongue. At first I assumed it was about something boring. Then one of them said the word Titius, and then the word Alvar. They were speaking about them!

  I scurried after them, hiding in the shadows when I could. One of the men was clearly wearing a long flowing robe. I could feel it on my whiskers. But my stupid rat eyes couldn’t see anything more than that.

  I heard the words Titius and Alvar again, now whispered, but I could fortunately hear it with my rat ears. They were definitely saying something that was not for everyone to hear. The only thing I could understand was names. Then Talia, Jarion, Cato. I needed to learn the High Tongue! This was obviously an important conversation.

  I scurried a little too close to one of them. He turned around, and shouted something, pointing at me.

  I snapped out of the rat’s body, both from surprise and from fear of death. In my bunk bed in the undry I blinked my eyes open.

  Well this was pointless, I thought. I can’t learn about anything that happens in the castle unless I learn the High Tongue.