Had he gone back to join the others and decide what to do? Or had he already decided to warn them not to go in? Fire and an elaborate metal framework—not worth the effort? Perhaps Param and Rigg had already been warned, had not come into the house this time through. But this iteration of Param and Rigg had not been warned, and so they would continue in this futile evasion of a danger that their alternate selves would never face.

I was once murdered in the Odinfolders’ library, by the mice, Param remembered. She remembered it as information she had been told, for Rigg had shown up to rescue her before the mice could bring in the metal bar to kill her. But there had been a version of her that died. Rigg had seen the body. Her corpse. Nobody in this timestream had ever had to deal with burying that body, because this was the timestream in which she did not die in the library. Instead, this was the timestream in which she would die here in this burnt-out, metal-lined pit. For there were archers stationed around the edges of the pit, and torches burned every night to make sure they did not escape under cover of darkness. Mother was not giving up. She and Haddamander had learned their lesson back at the Wall, when they had waited for days and yet Param and Umbo had never come to the ground where they jumped from the rock. Mother was going to have her assassins wait till the end of the world, if that’s what it took.

The end of the world.

Winter again, as they reached the edge of the burnt-out building and passed beyond the metal frame.

And still the archers waited, watching. Still there were men with heavy metal swords waiting just beyond them.

They were into their third summer of slicetime as they faced the spot where once a wooden stairway had carried them down into the pit. The stairway was gone, taken away as the observation platform had been. The walls of the pit were cut sheer, unclimbable—especially unclimbable as they were, clasping hands. If they let go of each other to climb, they would become visible to the archers. If Rigg jumped them back in time, they’d either be buried over their heads in undisturbed earth, or surrounded by the workmen digging the pit or building the house.

Rigg turned to face her, and winter came again as they changed hands and stood facing the other way, toward the south now, their faces into the sun as it rose, fell, rose, fell, sliding across the sky like butter across a hot pan.

She could see that Rigg was shaking his head and tightening his grip. She did not understand why. Until there was a sudden bright flash and a wave of heat washed over them. Far more intense and longer-lasting than the heat of the burning house.