Her colleague, Soren Scabious, was quite different. His family had been engine masters for nearly as long as the city had been mobile, and he was the nearest thing Freya had left to an equal. If things had been normal, she would have been getting married to his son Axel next summer; the margravine often took a man from the engine districts as her consort, to keep the city’s engineering-classes happy. But things were not normal, and Axel was dead. Freya secretly felt quite glad she would not be getting Scabious as a father-in-law; he was such a stern, sad, silent old man. His black mourning robes blended into the darkness of the breakfast room like camouflage, leaving the white death-mask of his face hanging disembodied in the shadows.

“Good day, Your Radiance,” he said, bowing stiffly, while Miss Pye curtsied and blushed and fluttered beside him.

“What is our position?” asked Freya.

“Oh, Your Radiance, we are almost two hundred miles north of the Tannhauser Mountains,” twittered Miss Pye. “We’re on sound sea-ice, and there has been no sighting of any other city.”

“The engine district awaits your instructions, Light of the Ice Fields,” said Scabious. “Do you wish to turn back east?”

“No!” Freya shivered, remembering how close they had come to being eaten in the past. If they went back east, or turned south to trade along the edges of the ice, the Huntsmen of Arkangel were sure to hear about it, and with only skeleton crews to man the engines Freya did not think her city could outrun the great predator again.

“Maybe we should bear west, Your Radiance?” Miss Pye suggested nervously. “A few small towns over-winter along the eastern edge of Greenland. We might manage a little trading.”

“No,” said Freya firmly.