Miss Chamuel’s CV lists her age as twenty-four, but in fact she came to teaching late in life. She never struck a child in her classroom, but there was something about the way she would hold a yardstick: balanced in a light grip, point low. Her students watched it very carefully.

Now she raps the hilt of her sword on a door deep inside a hot, dark warren. A great dingy white wolf emerges and growls.

“I’m the Guardian again,” she says, “and so you must be the Guide.”

Golden eyes go from hunter’s to hunted, without even a blink.