‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘and how would I do that?’

He knew how to delay the train; he didn’t need to ask. All we were really talking about was the price.

‘How about a Favour?’

When you urgently needed something from somebody in the Winter, the only true currency was influence. A Favour was simply general assistance – a no-quibble cash advance, parking ticket quashed, hundredweight of pasta when you were skint and a few pounds too light, that kind of thing. But even so, Moody wasn’t impressed.

‘With all due respect, Deputy Consul,’ he said, ‘a Favour from you wouldn’t buy me a pork scratching in Sector Twelve.’

I thought about being punched in the head five times.

‘A  . . . Debt, then.’

The freightmaster raised his eyebrows. A Debt was bigger than a Favour by a factor of fifty. For a day or two you could have a Consul pretty much in your pocket.

‘You must want that Vacant pretty badly,’ he said.

‘A lot depends upon it.’

‘Okay, then,’ he said with a short snorty giggle, his demeanour changed, ‘you’ve got yourself a deal. I’ll recheck the loading; probably take me an hour.’

I thanked him, ran off to the station exit and found the taxi driver waiting for me. Comically, he had vapour rising from his bald head. Mrs Tiffen had been taken to the John Edward Jones Dormitorium, about ten minutes’ drive away.

‘That’ll be fifty euros,’ said the taxi driver when I asked him to take me there.

‘I’ll pay when we get back.’

He turned around to look at me.

‘You’re a Novice, trying to repo a Tricksy walker from a Footman in a Dormitorium out in the Scorch?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll pay in advance.’

I sighed, handed him a fifty, and we set off.

The John Edward Jones

‘ . . . Consolidated Power & Light looked after its workers well. They were the only Utilities company still offering double puddings from August to Slumberdown, and workers flocked to their recruitment offices. Forget pensions, cash bonuses or Tog-28 duvets; jam roly-poly and custard was the fringe benefit of choice  . . . ’

– CP&L Corporate History

The smell of smoke grew stronger as we drove north out of town, and we soon entered a landscape of fire-consumed desolation. We passed carcasses of terraced houses and pit workings blackened by decades of fire, then a burned-out bandstand and abandoned cars, their bodywork rusted to a wafer. I noticed that the snow, which had blown into drifts eight foot deep in town, had gradually thinned out as we drove until there was no snow or ice at all, and the trees seemed not devoid of leaves by virtue of the Winter, but by incineration.

‘We’re in the fire valleys, aren’t we?’ I asked, a mild tremor in my voice.

‘We call it the Scorch up here.’