“Not so much to tell. Awful place. The food’s bad, the men surly and ignorant, the women cross-eyed. And they’re thieves to a man. If you shake a Rhonish hand, count your fingers afterward.”

“You’ve never been there, have you?” He shot a narrow look back at me, then lurched to keep his place in the saddle.

“Did you not listen to what I said? Why would I go somewhere like that?”

“I don’t understand it.” He risked another glance back. “Rhonish kings founded Red March, did they not? Wasn’t it the Rhonish who saved you from Scorron invasion? Twice?”

“I hardly think so!” Now he mentioned it, though, it did trigger a faint memory of too-hot days in the Grey Room with Tutor Marcle. “I suspect a prince of Red March knows a little more about local history than some . . . hauldr off the frozen slopes of a fjord.” I’ll admit to sleeping through most of Marcle’s history lessons, but I probably would have noticed a thing like that. “In any event, they’re a bad sort.”

To change the topic of conversation, and because every time I glanced back my imagination hid monsters in the shadows, I brought up the topic of pursuit.

“When I ran into you, the fissure, the crack that was chasing me . . . it came from the Silent Sister’s spell.”

“You told me this. The spell she placed to kill everyone at this opera of yours.”

“Well . . . it would have killed everyone, but I don’t think that was the reason she cursed the place. Maybe she wasn’t out to destroy us all—maybe she had her target and the rest of us were just in the way. Could whatever she was after have chased us to the circus?”

Snorri raised his brows, then frowned, then shook his head. “That unborn was new-formed, from Daisy’s child. It didn’t follow us there.”

That sounded a touch more hopeful. “But . . . it didn’t just happen by chance, surely? Aren’t these things supposed to be very rare? Someone made that happen. Someone trying to kill us.”

“Your Red Queen was gathering tales of the dead. She knows Ragnarok is hard upon us—the last battle is coming. She’s drawing her plans against the Dead King and likely he’s drawing his plans against her. The Dead King may know about us, he may know we’re headed north, dragging the witch’s magic with us. He may know we’re bound for the Bitter Ice where his dead are gathering. He may want to stop us.”

Whilst I’d successfully steered the conversation away from Rhone, Snorri had told me absolutely nothing to ease my mind. I chewed on all that he’d said for the next few miles and very sour it tasted. We were pursued, I knew it, blood to bone. That thing from the opera stalked us, and in running before it we plunged headlong into whatever the Dead King placed in our path.

• • •