This fountain was frozen too. The ice had plugged the great bronze lotus flower and cracked it all down one side. They stopped in front of it, and Poppy slipped on black ice under the snow and just managed to catch herself. She popped back up, slapping the wet off her hands.

“Same,” she said. “All right. We need a way out of here. Or we need shelter and something to burn.”

She was rattled, but she was hanging on to her nerve. Good old Poppy. She set a good example, and it woke him up a little.

“The doors on some of these buildings look like wood,” he said. “And there are books inside the buildings. I think. Maybe we could get some and burn them.”

Together they walked the square till they found a broken door, a Gothic-arched monster that had been knocked askew. Quentin touched it. He broke off a splinter. It felt like ordinary wood. They would have to try a fire spell. He explained about how magic acted in the Neitherlands: it was supercharged, explosive. Penny had said never to use it at all. Desperate times.

“How far away can you cast a fire spell from?” he said. “Because we’d better be as far away as we can get when it goes up.”

“It goes up” came out of his numb lips sounding like “id go dup.” He said it again, enunciating a little more clearly, but only a little. This was going downhill faster than he’d thought. They didn’t have long at all. Maybe fifteen minutes more in which they could plausibly get a spell off.

“Let’s find out,” she said.

She began pacing backward away from the door, back toward the center of the square. He couldn’t help thinking that this was just a stopgap, a way station on the road to the inevitable. After they’d figured out how to light a fire, they’d have to find shelter. After they found shelter they’d need food, and there wasn’t any food. His mind churned uncontrollably. They could melt snow to drink, but they couldn’t eat it. Maybe they could find some leather bookbindings to chew on. Maybe there were fish under the ice in the canals. And even if they could survive indefinitely—which they couldn’t—how long till whatever broke the Neitherlands came along and broke them?

“All right!” Poppy called. “Quentin, move!”

He pressed his palm against the wood, if that’s what it was. If this didn’t work, could they make a magic button from scratch? Not in fifteen minutes. Not in fifteen years.

There was a crack between the two doors. Thin blue light shone faintly through it. Starlight. But it wasn’t starlight. It flickered.

“Hang on!” he said.

“Quentin!” He caught a note of desperation in her voice. She had her hands jammed in her armpits. “We don’t have much time!”