She asked me how the Winter Consuls were treating me, and I said that I was doing their cooking, washing and ironing.

‘It was the same with my first Winter with HiberTech,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a form of hazing. In the military you’re dumped thirty miles away in your underwear in the snow, in civvy street it’s washing up and knitting. Mind you, it’s good for team-building, and you’ll find it improves your ironing.’

‘My ironing doesn’t need to improve.’

‘Everyone’s ironing can do with improving.’

She then thought for a moment and asked me to ‘keep my eyes open’. I asked her for what, and why, and she replied that as a representative of HiberTech, she had a duty to maintain a good network of intelligence – and I was the only person in the Consuls she knew that she could trust.

‘What’s not to trust about a Consul?’ I’d asked.

She told me: ‘Lots’ but didn’t elaborate, and the conversation had swiftly moved to other matters.

‘May the Spring embrace you,’ I said, giving her a hug before we parted.

‘And embrace you, too,’ she said.

*   *   *

I didn’t see Logan again until ten days before Slumberdown. The days were now short, the temperature below zero, the snows long established. For the last week there hadn’t been a breath of wind, the snow heaped precariously on even the most steeply pitched of roofs. Every now and then I heard a muffled thud as a half-ton of snow slid off and onto the streets below. Drowning isn’t the only way water can kill you.

I was leaning on the broad tracks of the Sno-Trac, heart thumping, nervous as hell, looking as professional as I could in my snug-fitting Winter Consul’s uniform. Aside from my domestic duties within the Consulate I’d spent two weeks at the Consul Training Academy learning basic survival skills and various modules on the physiology of sleep, dreams, Villains, climate, wind-chill, the H4S radar set and even Wintervolk. The tutors had looked me up and down and there had been muttered conversations behind my back regarding preparedness. Most Novices got a whole Summer to train.

The door to the Ivor Novello Dormitorium opened and Logan stepped out, paused, then took a deep breath of the chill morning air. He looked refreshed, and was surprisingly lean – the month’s fat contingency I was carrying wasn’t something he was willing to carry himself.

‘Welcome back, sir,’ I said. ‘Sleep well?’

He looked me up and down with a quizzical expression.

‘Your new Novice,’ I reminded him, knowing that the mind can take a while to remap after hibernation, ‘I’m—’

‘—don’t tell me.’

He concentrated hard, then clicked his fingers and grinned.

‘Charlie Worthing. The kid with the memory over at Pru’s. Yes?’

‘Yes, sir. You never did tell me what you wanted my memory for.’