An old ship’s chronometer took up some of the space on the bookshelf to Jed’s right. Even with the sound of the storm, its solid tick-tock timekeeping seemed loud.

‘I see,’ said Humboldt.

‘No you don’t, Sarah. You never will. But if you want to secure the future of your settlements down in the Texas Mandate, and ensure that those responsible for attacking them in the past meet with some form of justice, this is what it will take.’

‘Might I ask why?’

‘It is best if you do not know,’ replied Jed Culver. ‘Trust me.’

10

NORTH KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

She worried about the horses. The snow had been falling for hours and now lay in a thick, white shroud over the park. Sofia pressed her nose up against the enormous plate-glass window that formed one entire wall of their loft apartment, offering a view of the park across the road, where they kept the horses. One of her neighbours, a creepy-looking man with a long shaggy beard, coaxed his animals out of the herd with something in his hand. He hitched them to a wagon that had been made from tubes and steel mesh welded together over a pair of axles fitted with bicycle tyres. As the combination pulled away, Sofia was surprised that the horses hadn’t flipped the contraption. It had to be impossibly light.

She had never actually counted the horses, but from many hours of standing at the window and gazing out over the parkland, she estimated there might be two or three dozen roaming around down there. The city was happy for its citizens to keep their horses in this way. For many people, they had become as important as cars had once been. And as important as horses had been before that, she thought.

So the city authorities – or maybe it was the government out in Seattle, she wasn’t sure – let people graze their horses and other animals in the public parks, which were otherwise used as market gardens. A good deal of Kansas City’s food supply normally lay out there, in the warmer months. Today, having to peer through the snow, she could make out a few hardy goats and dairy cattle. There was only the most basic stabling for the animals when the weather turned bad, though, and Sofia worried that their horses, Flossie and Marvin, would suffer in the cold. She had named both, of course, much to her father’s dismay.

Maybe later she would run some apples out to them. Papa wouldn’t get too upset about that. Being trapped inside was giving her a severe case of the crazies, in any case, and if he got upset, so what.