“Bracing,” was his only comment.

Rove looked past Lucas towards the stern. There was a pane of ice positioned there, transparent, less than an inch thick but six feet tall and three wide. It seemed impossible that it hadn’t shattered, except that impossible was a word that held no real meaning now. Staring into it, Lucas saw the mirrored image of his own and Rove’s pale faces, and past them, he saw a figure. A reflection with no original. It was a woman, robed and carrying a long staff, poling an ice boat down the side of a frozen wave in defiance of all logic and nautical convention.

“Ah,” Rove said with a wan smile. “Charen, my dear. Perhaps an overly artistic manifestation, but who am I to complain?” Calmly he dug into the holdall and began to extract layers of clothing. “We have something of a journey to reach the appropriate coordinates, Lucas. We’ll need to conserve warmth. There’ll be a little privation, unfortunately, but it will all be worth it in the end.”

They passed through that frozen, dead world with remarkable speed, their boat cutting a wake in the ice that healed slowly behind them. Lucas spent the trip huddled in the bows, wearing every layer he could scrounge and with his hands shoved into his armpits. He wondered idly what was going on back aboard Cam. He replayed the moment when he’d shot Alison Matchell dead. It wasn’t his finest hour, and he could have said no. But he was self-aware enough to know that once warm and safe he would justify it to himself as necessary. One more stop along the road to securing Rove’s inevitable destiny.

Then, obviously sooner than Rove was expecting, their spectral boatwoman said, “The inversion equations must be enacted now. You will have to transition immediately.”

“Of course.” Rove stood, even as their reckless headlong progress slowed. “Lucas, on your feet. Time to head home.”

As he said it, Lucas saw the world around them superimposed onto another landscape. He saw the ghosts of trees fighting their way clear of the ice, a hillside rising phantom-wise from within the all-encompassing glaciers. Ahead, the hard-packed ice was melting into a channel, so that it seemed as if their boat was descending into the bowels of the frozen Earth. Because the ice layer is higher than the ground layer. This is to stop us coming out in mid-air. All very well to rationalize the situation, but the feeling of being carried off to hell was inescapable, what with the boat and its ghostly gondolier.