It takes four men to drag a screaming and fighting Elias away. Through it all Ox stands above us, blocking the cable-car platform. My sister doesn’t bother looking at him. Instead she shoots another plague rat, clearing a path for us below.

I wait for Ox to pronounce some sort of sentence but instead he just stares at me, his hands buried in the pockets of his thick coat as if trying to figure out what it will take to break me. I smile at him, cold and mean, thinking, Nothing. I will never break for you.

Ox narrows his eyes and nods his head before turning to the few Recruiters left standing guard by the cable car. “You can let them up at sunset,” he says. “Not before.”

I have no idea what any of this means, but it can’t be good, because one of the Recruiter’s eyes go wide and he glances at me, looking concerned. “There’s a snowstorm coming in over the horizon. Should be here by the afternoon. We weren’t even going to put the other Sweepers out tonight.”

Ox shrugs. “Maybe it will get cold enough to slow the rotters down.” And with that he walks off, leaving my sister and me clinging to the ladder.

The Recruiter, a slightly older man with gray at his temples, looks at us with a deep furrow between his eyebrows. He stares at my bare hands—I didn’t have time to find any gloves. He checks over his shoulder, and when he’s sure no one’s paying attention he unwinds his thick scarf and drops it to us, saying “Good luck” before turning away.

My sister responds by shooting a bolt into the forehead of the last Unconsecrated reaching for us on the shore. We slip to the ground, a thin sheen of ice crunching under our feet.

I loop the scarf around my sister’s neck. “You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell her, picking up the shovel and testing its weight.

She tugs the scarf tight and pulls a stray bolt from where it lodged in the ground. “I don’t particularly like killing them, but if we were going to get off that ladder they had to go.”

I try to force a smile—I know that’s what she wants. “I mean you shouldn’t have helped at all. You should’ve stayed on the platform where it’s safe.”

She shrugs but her lips tremble, her hands unsteady as they fit the bolt onto the string. “I’m your sister,” she says and her voice is uneven as she clarifies, “Your older sister. And it’s my job to take care of you.”