“Thirty! When I’m thirty I want to still be having fun.”

Again the shrug, a small smile. Snorri didn’t take offence at much. Which was a good thing all told. “Where we’re going, living to thirty is hard work.”

“Is there anything good about the North? Anything at all? Any single thing that I can’t better find somewhere warm?”

“Snow.”

“Snow’s not good. It’s just cold water gone wrong.”

“Mountains. The mountains are beautiful.”

“Mountains are inconvenient lumps of rock that get in people’s way. Besides, if it’s mountains I want, I have the Aups on my doorstep.”

We clomped along in silence for a minute. The traffic on the Roma Road had thinned, but on its long straight sections you could still see carts and horsemen, even travellers afoot, stretching off into the distance.

“My family,” he said.

And though I laid no claim to wisdom, I was wise enough to say nothing to that.

• • •

The summer that had welcomed us belatedly in Ancrath wore thin as we progressed north. At the town of Hoff, amidst fields ripe for harvest and on a cold day with more of autumn in it than any other season, Snorri led us east from the Roma Road.

“We could take ship from a Conaught port,” I said.

“Men of the true North are not loved in Conaught,” Snorri replied. “We have visited too often.” He urged Sleipnir onto the unkempt and rutted track that pointed east towards the mountains of northern Gelleth.

“And the Thurtans will be better?”

“Well, the Thurtans will be bad too,” he admitted. “But in Maladon a warmer welcome awaits.”

“Fewer visits?”

“There we stayed. We’ll take ship in Maladon. I have cousins there.”

“We’d better, because I’m not going any farther east.” East of Maladon was Osheim, and nobody went to Osheim. Osheim was where the Builders built the Wheel, and every fairy tale that ever launched a nightmare starts, “Once upon a time, not far from the Wheel of Osheim.”

Snorri nodded, solemn. “Maladon. We’ll take ship in Maladon.”

The mountains thrust us up through autumn and into winter. Those were bad days, despite warm clothing and good provisions bought in Hoff. I’d paid the coin out with more than the usual measure of begrudging, knowing that the pieces of silver could have been paving my way back to the heat of Vermillion.

Amidst the high places of Gelleth I came to miss the small taste of luxury our night in the Tall Castle had afforded us. Even the stinking cots of the Falling Angel would have been heaven compared to bedding amongst rocks in the teeth of a gale halfway up some nameless mountain. I suggested to Snorri that we take the longer but less arduous path via the Castle Red. Merl Gellethar, the duke who kept that seat, was Grandmother’s nephew and would have some family duty to help us on our way.

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s too long a detour.” Snorri muttered the words, ill tempered—an unusual thing for him.