It was not much past dawn. She’d slept in her paint, and her teeth tasted like pigment. Harrow wrapped her veil around her mouth as a muffler, and rose silently from her bed. The others slept on, in silent hummocks like graves: Ortus before her, a black and faintly whuffling hill; on her right Protesilaus Ebdoma, who slept with his sword on his breast like some soldier’s monument, one where the sculptor had gone overboard on the muscles; on his right, his necromancer, her short buff-coloured curls falling on her childlike cheeks; and on her left, Dyas, who lay with her eyes open and her sword on her breast. Her gloves were very white against the steel hilt of her rapier, and very white against the bared sepia of her wrists.

The door to Pent’s room opened on silent hinges to reveal her kind-eyed, curly-haired, and abominably silly cavalier. He had his slippers on, and two coats over his pyjamas: on seeing Harrowhark, he touched his lips and beckoned her through to his room. Within, Abigail Pent was curled up on an enormous windowsill, a decrepit love seat tattering itself to pieces beneath her, watching the hail come down in calm fascination. There was a roasting smell, like chocolate and dust. A little electric heater blarted out tepid air on the floor, its fans wheezing hotly. To Harrow’s numb fingers, it seemed to be warming approximately jack shit.

“Pretty foul out there,” Pent said in low tones. “Coffee?” (That must have been the chocolate scent. Harrowhark accepted a cup, mainly to warm her hands.) “The pressure’s dropping freakishly … though of course, you aren’t victim to atmospheric conditions on Drearburh, are you? Are you getting any sleep?”

Harrow said merely, “I don’t care about surrounds. It could easily be less advantageous.” Often her cell had been worse.

“Hear, hear,” whispered Pent’s cavalier, holding the coffee pot, which was wildly belching steam. “That’s the stuff. We’ll make a Fifth of you yet, Reverend Daughter. Not that bad—can’t complain—it’ll be a damn sight worse in the River.”

“Just so long as the Duchess Septimus is holding on,” said Abigail, unperturbed by a fresh smash of icy pellets next to her head. “I tried to make her take the bed—she was so upset that the Templar pair weren’t on board. I told her that I didn’t think we’d get Master Octakiseron first time round … She won’t tell me what he said to her, just that he ‘was horrid.’”

“Cheeky little so-and-so,” said Magnus. “If he were my son, I’d give him something to think about. I’m not surprised he’s gone to ground.”

“I would hope your son might be of different character,” said his wife, half-smiling.

“Protesilaus should have biffed him.”

“It’s strange,” said Abigail, ignoring her husband’s exhortations to biffing. “The Eighth are not generally the type to hide.”