She was strong, unafraid, and Peppercorn Clara was a distant memory.

She was the wolf.

She ran through the dense forest, thorn and branch snagging her silver pelt. Leaf and dirt felt soft and damp beneath her calloused paws. The gleam of the moon was bright and fresh, glaring through the canopy to light the way as she weaved between trees and vaulted over roots. The scent of earth and mould filled her nostrils.

She was the wolf.

Her pack bayed loudly as it ran proudly with its leader. Hidden by foliage, the wolves kept a respectful distance as she led the hunt. A challenger had come to the forest, one who sought dominance over her territory. The challenge had to be met, defeated. The trees were alive with the voice of her family.

She was the wolf ...

... A sweet aroma filled her nostrils. Her body lay upon a soft mattress. She gathered clean, silky sheets into fists as the dream faded to nothing. Other memories drifted up lazily to replace it ...

A chase through the alleyways. A man in a cell. A kiss ...

Clara jerked upright, confused and blinking against bright light.

She sat on a bed in a small room. Above, a prism shaped like a pyramid protruded from the ceiling, giving off clean and brilliant illumination. Her eyes struggled to gain focus. The walls were a bland cream colour, but decorated with a repetitive square pattern that looked like tiny mazes. There were hundreds of them, one after the other, in uniform lines.

There was no door.

Clara had no memory of leaving the police station or being brought to this room. But she remembered the elderly man in the three-piece-suit well enough. He had seemed so kindly, back in the cell. Clara knew he could not have been the Resident himself, but then who was he? The Nightshade is expecting you, he had said. Was she inside it now?

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Clara rubbed a hand through her short, greasy hair. A simple white gown had replaced the oversized rags she had been wearing and her feet had been carefully bandaged. She still stank like sewage.

Clara noticed a small scab on her forearm, no bigger than a pinprick, surrounded by the onset of a light bruise. She rubbed at it and smeared a tiny streak of blood across her skin.

This had to be the Nightshade.

Curiously, all Clara's anxiety and fear had gone. The silence in this doorless room was so total it was like being inside a sound-proofed cocoon, a safe bubble that calmed and soothed her senses. Was the Nightshade where Marney wanted her to be?

Clara's mouth watered at the sweet aroma in the air. It emanated from a table in the corner of the room, which had a thin cloth draped over its contents. Clara slipped off the bed, hobbled over on sore feet and peeled back the cloth to reveal a silver platter of various fruits and a glass jug of water.

Her stomach growled.

Three days had passed since she had last eaten – at least in her human form – and suddenly her location fell to the back of her mind, along with assassins and chases, kidnappers and empaths. She crammed a fig into her mouth greedily, washing it down with a glass of chilled water that she drained in one go. She ate a second fig, poured a second glass, and then picked up some sugar-coated lemon segments. Nothing had ever tasted better. She gorged herself.

Fresh fruit was hard to come by in Labrys Town; it was usually dried or preserved. Was this quality of food available to the Resident on a daily basis? Van Bam was the best-connected person in the Labyrinth.

Clara often heard the older denizens talking about Labrys Town and what it had been like before the Genii War, before the Retrospective came. They said there had been countless doorways out in the Great Labyrinth, each leading to realms and kingdoms beyond imagination. There, in these realms, the Aelfir had lived, and their Houses had coexisted in peace. The Aelfir were good friends to the denizens, and the Labyrinth was their common ground, the one House that connected all Houses, where they visited and traded, and life had been rich.

The Genii War ruined so much, it was said. At its conclusion, the doorways to the Houses of the Aelfir were sealed shut, and the endless shadows of the Retrospective began roaming the alleyways of the Great Labyrinth. No one had seen or heard from the Aelfir for forty years – no one save the Resident, of course. Only he still traded with the Houses. He procured all the materials and food stocks on which the denizens of Labrys Town survived.

Clara had to wonder, as she feasted on the fresh fruit, how many other privileges of his position Van Bam enjoyed; what luxuries that were denied the people he governed?

She checked herself. Here she was in the home of the most powerful man in Labrys Town, and she was worrying herself about food and history? All her life she had been taught to fear the Nightshade, but this didn't feel like a bad place. Even the wolf, that constant threat within her, felt sleepy in her breast, and it was not purely because of the effects of her medicine ...

Clara paused with a lemon segment halfway to her mouth. Her medicine! Did Jeter still have it?

At that moment a click startled her and she dropped the lemon segment to the floor. She backed away, both fearful and fascinated, as the outline of a door appeared on the wall opposite the bed. The door-shaped section swung inwards, and the small and elderly man stood on the threshold.