Her husband didn’t feel the same way, but then he had been brought up differently, and anyway didn’t really have that much to do with the child’s upbringing. These old families. Hers had been rich and influential and probably quite unbearable in its own power-deranged way, but it had never displayed quite the degree of almost wilful eccentricity Kryf’s had down the generations.

She looked at her wrist-screen and turned down the heating in her boots, which were quite cosy now. Midday. Kryf would probably just be getting up, ringing for breakfast and having his butler read him the news while a footman proffered a selection of clothes from which to choose that afternoon’s attire. She smiled, thinking of him, then realised that she was looking across the car at Xellpher. The bodyguard-the only other occupant of the car-was solid and dark as some old-fashioned stove, and smiling a little too.

She gave a small laugh and put her hand to her mouth.

‘M’lady?’ Xellpher said.

She shook her head. Outside, behind Xellpher, an outcrop of rocks ridged above the trees, caked in whiteness but streaked with naked black rock, a dark foreign body amongst the sheets and pillows of the snow. The cable car rose to meet the clouds and was enveloped by them.

A mast went past, grey and quick outside, and the cable car whirred and bumped on its wheels for a second or so, then continued its silent, burringly smooth ascent, seemingly nodding to itself as it was hauled on upwards past ranks of trees like the ghosts of some great descending army.

It went all grey. A grey post went by and the car rocked. The view stayed grey. There were some trees and she could see the other cable, but that was all. She looked round, annoyed. Xellpher smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. There was a cliff behind him, black bits in the white snow.

She turned back to the window and rubbed, hoping to see better. She watched a cable car appear out of the mists above, coming down to meet them on the other cable.