Izzi’s father sat behind his huge carved desk in his imposing and ornately decorated office, surrounded by stacks of ledgers. His fingertips pushed creases into his forehead. He shook his head slightly.

“I can’t help but think this is another of Myzina’s attempts for revenge from beyond the grave.”

He looked up, eyes dark and impenetrable. Izzi immediately felt small, and stepped back. The high windows seemed to sneer. The exit was far behind, designed that way to intimidate Penza’s business associates.

“Or is this all your own doing, daughter? On top of the shame of having you expelled from the Magekadeh, I am told you endangered the entire kingdom!”

“Only suspended, not expelled,” Izzi managed to say.

“Silence!” her father demanded. “I know not how you came upon that dangerous spell, since it would not have been within these walls, not even your mother would have been so foolish. And this on top of you embarrassing me in front of Mogh Kalu the other night. Kneel patiently while I consider appropriate action.” 

Izzi arranged her dress and knelt. She feared he would send her back to her old school to face the spite of those she had been so happy to escape. Penza tugged at the ripples of his beard. The last of the daylight left the blue-paned windows, leaving only a guttering lamp to flicker.

“Here is how it will be,” he said with a tone of finality. “All your mother’s trappings and trinkets will be destroyed. You will move to a bare room in the servant’s quarters. You will refrain from any dabbling in Myzina’s sorcery. You will return to your old school, and at all other times be at the service of Nezta in the running of the household. 

“Regardless of how foolishly you have acted Izbel, you are still a daughter of Penza son of Enzel son of the Vizier, and will serve the family and do it proud one way or another.

“Laleh will escort you back to your rooms.” He looked beyond her. “Laleh, ensure she takes nothing of her mother’s jewellery or writings, and only the minimum of her own clothes and items of necessity.”

Izzi felt her stomach churn. Her identity was being stripped away. And worse of all, to be at the whim of Nezta who had replaced her mother in her father’s favours, who she suspected had a hand in Myzina’s illness… This was far too harsh.

““No,” she said, standing. “This is too much. I will not work for that woman!”

Her father’s face shut down, showing no concern at her outburst. He dismissed her with a flick of his hand.

Laleh stepped up out of the dark and grabbed Izzi by the wrist. Her eyes burned with a malice Izzi had never seen in her maidservant before. Izzi wrenched her hand away and glared with a force that made Laleh step back. 

But Izzi decided to postpone that battle. She pointed, indicating that Laleh should lead her out, and Hakim fell in behind as they left the office.

“Not you too,” Izzi said. They were all against her. Hakim nodded in his oblique way, but remained impassive.

Her mother’s old rooms, her rooms, welcomed Izzi for the last time. The rugs, the curtains, the armchair, the lamps, and mirrors, everything was laden with her mother’s scents and memories, and seemed to smile sadly like the moon-faced girl-fish of Haroun’s story. Izzi was given one rack for clothes and one small sack to fill. Laleh helped with her clothes, jewellery, and small things like hair ornaments and cosmetics. The maidservant had also served her mother, and she easily recognised—and rejected—any of Myzina’s old jewellery or other belongings that Izzi tried to sneak into the sack. 

Hakim stood sternly, barring entrance to the reading nook where  her mother’s most prized items, including the journals containing a lifetime of sorcerous wisdom, were stashed.

“But many of them are mine, not Mother’s,” Izzi protested. “I need my journals, pens and ink for school.”

“I will check each item,” Laleh said, and Hakim stepped his muscled self aside with a nod and slit-eyed look of disdain.

Izzi tried to quickly scoop up everything from her desk, but Laleh stopped her. She chose and inspected items one by one. 

“And my journals,” Izzi said.

“They were Myzina’s. Penza has expressly forbidden.”

“But that old book is mine,” Izzi said, touching the spine of the book that had held the scrap containing the spell. “It is just an old children’s book, but I am fond of it. Grant me just that one and I will sadly relinquish the others.”

The maidservant shrugged and dragged it from the shelf. She looked at it suspiciously, and opened it up to flip through the stories of Haroun and the whale.

“I’ve not seen this one before so it is not Myzina’s,” Laleh told Hakim. “It is just a story book, one I read myself as a child. It’s not very good.”

Hakim shook his head. “Master says no journals.”

“It is not a journal,” Laleh said, and dumped it into the sack.

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