Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones

feelings. Perhaps if he were very careful speaking to Mara and particularly careful not to mention the mermaid idea yet …
    But Mara arrived late for supper with two little creases full of her own worries above her pretty nose. She had gone very thin, and her hair had come down to hang in a fat fair plait over one shoulder. “Sorry. I can’t stay long,” she said. “Now Querida’s had herself put to sleep, I have hundreds of things to do for her tomorrow at the latest. I’ll have to get back and start moving people from the village tonight.”
    â€œFrom the village? Whatever for?” said Derk.
    â€œDidn’t Shona tell you?” Mara asked, and Shona looked down at her plate, not wanting to say that Derk had been too worried for her to want to tell him anything. “Well, you know I never liked the idea of them sitting right in the path of the Final Confrontation,” Mara said. “You might be careful, Derk, but Pilgrims never are, and the village people could be hurt even in those pits. So I solved the problem by hiring them all as servants to the Enchantress.”
    Derk gave her an appalled look. “What with? ”
    Mara frowned the two little creases tighter yet. “What do you mean, what with?”
    Derk swallowed and remembered he was meaning to be very careful and tactful tonight. She’s borrowed a lot of money from someone, he thought. I have to go even more carefully. “Mara,” he said, “you aren’t being paid for being the Enchantress. And I’ve been fined a hundred gold before we even start. We haven’t any money to hire a whole village.”
    Mara gave an odd little smile. “Oh, I think I can manage.”
    She’s borrowed a massive amount! Derk thought. Dear gods! “Have you hired Fran Taylor and Old George as well? I went to a lot of trouble emaciating them.”
    Mara chuckled. “Fran wants to stay picking about in the ruins, but I love Old George! He’s far too good to waste on the village. I want him to be my former lover that I’ve drained to skin and bone. The Pilgrims should be really impressed.”
    Derk watched all his plans for a mermaid daughter dwindle into unimportance and then to nothing. His chest hurt. Mara’s going to leave me, he thought. She’s going to leave me for this person she’s borrowed money from. What shall I do? He had always been afraid of this. Wizards’ marriages almost never lasted. Nearly every wizard he knew had one broken marriage, and some had more. That young Finn was on his second marriage; Barnabas’s wife had walked out years ago; even Querida had been married once. Derk miserably supposed he should consider himself lucky that he and Mara had lasted eighteen years.
    Mara meanwhile had turned to Shona. “Shona, darling, have you made up your mind yet? I want your help over at Aunt’s house more than ever now, with Querida out of action. I’m going to need lots of silly, fashionable clothes, the kind you and Callette are both so good at inventing. What does Callette say?”
    â€œCallette’s on her hundred and nineteenth gizmo,” Shona said. “She’ll need another day at least to do the rest. She says she might come over then. But—” She shot a look at the brooding Derk. “Mum, I don’t think I can come. There’d be no one but Lydda to look after things here.”
    â€œI’ve said I can manage,” Lydda said with her beak full.
    â€œI can help here, too,” Elda muttered into a pile of fruit. “Everyone thinks I’m too small. ”
    â€œNot so much small as young,” Mara told Elda. “You are only ten, love, and I want you to come over to me with Callette. And why should Lydda do everything here? What’s wrong with you, Don, or you, Blade?”
    Don sat with a raw chop halfway to his beak, Blade sat with a cooked one on the end of his fork. They exchanged