It was not likely to be anybody else standing on the threshold, unwilling to cross over and listen to the rest of the conversation. Harrowhark had been standing in profound silence, without so much as the rustle of a fold of robe, but the necromancer of the Fifth House had demonstrated extraordinarily acute hearing for eavesdroppers. “We’re used to Jeanne and Isaac, you know,” she had said, as though that constituted an explanation all by itself.

No hope of disappearing back into the corridor, or taking refuge in audacity and answering, No. The Reverend Daughter swept into the frozen library as though she had been noticed at the moment of entry, and found the Fifth and her swordsman-apparent standing before a rack of old and crunchy maps. He had his fragile, rusty sword balanced courteously on his palms before the mild-eyed adept, and she had been rubbing a sort of clear balm over the knobbled base. Ortus, as blackly gowned, deep-eyed, and sadly painted as ever, had taken to wearing his black canvas panniers all the time. His hood was recklessly pushed away from his freshly shaven head—it took a sense of duty shading into martyrdom to shave in these conditions—and he looked rather as though he had been caught opening birthday presents a day early. His breath emanated from the black scarf around his face and nose as a pale mist.

The bloody fog had turned to sleet; the sleet had, in its time, turned to ice. A soft snow began falling like volcanic ash about a week after the first hailstorm. Banks of snow piled up through the cracks in the windows and blew loose into everyone’s faces in the more exposed halls and ways of Canaan House. Sometimes the snow fell red, and the ice settling into the cracks of the paving stones and the steel of the dock terraces was a deep, unsettling carmine. The fresh vegetables had died, and they were down to preserved food. The rainbow-girdled constructs had kept fishing in the still-moving salt sea, but Teacher had taken one look at their catch and refused to have it cooked, or to let anyone else even see it.

Nonetheless, the snow and the bloody ice proved to be the least of the changes facing Canaan House.

Ortus sheathed his rapier with more care than finesse, and he asked: “How fare the preparations, Lady?” at exactly the same time Abigail said, “You shouldn’t really be walking unaccompanied, Harrow.”