His voice was crisp and tinkly and musical – the sort of voice you'd imagine an icicle would have if it could talk.

"What is your name?" the demon added, as he slowly lowered Jack to the ground. It didn't seem to cost him any effort.

"Jack Cade."

"Seere," said the demon, extending a hand to him, for all the world as if they were in a boardroom and not a subterranean snowfield.

He saw Jack looking at his hand – making no move to take it – and his frosty brows contracted. "Is this no longer the way your people greet each other? In the above-world? It has been a long time. I imagine."

Jack felt a wrench of hunger in his stomach. He had already reached out to shake the demon's hand – with some misgivings – but now his own hand tightened on it, and he pulled the creature towards him with all the strength he could muster. "Can you get me back there? To the above-world?"

There was some kind of correlation between warmth and wanting. He had always thought so. There was just more mental room to spare when you weren't struggling to keep yourself alive with every chattering breath.

Now, as the cold left him, he remembered his desperation to get back to Oxford. He remembered Ellini, and his fervent hope that they could spend two solid weeks in bed together once this was all over. He remembered that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast – which was perhaps weeks ago, in above-ground time.

"You may come with us if you choose," said the demon, extending one of his long, angular fingers and pointing across the plain. "We go to the Goddess. She has called us at last."

Jack turned, trying to shield his eyes from the wild, whirling snowflakes, to see what the demon was pointing at.

It was not a goddess. He had previously thought it a long ridge of black rock poking out of the snow, but now he saw that it bristled with spears and glowed with the light of lanterns and cooking fires. It wound through the snow for a mile or more – an endless queue of black-armoured soldiers, walled-up with shields, draped here and there with furs. Straw, which had presumably been packed in for warmth, was poking through the joints in their armour.

There were banners and pennants waving in the storm – and baggage-carts being drawn by huge, shaggy beasts with clumps of snow matted in their fur. There were even siege engines on trundling wheels, and demons with shovels and pickaxes clearing a way through the snow before them.

And there were dragons. Not the lithe, silver things from Faustus's cave, but big, barrel-chested, lumbering creatures with spiny black wings, padding through the snow on their back legs. They didn't look particularly aerodynamic, but they looked strong – as if they could get airborne just by pushing the ground away from them.

And it was all winding up to an opening on the far horizon – almost obscured by snowflakes and distance but unmistakably the colour of sunlight. Jack felt a wrench of homesickness in his chest the moment he looked at it.

The demons were coming to make war on the above-world. That meant, presumably, that Elsie was in trouble. Which might mean that the people who usually stood in front of her – Danvers and Ellini, Sergei and Manda and Sam – were gone.

But Ellini couldn't be gone, could she? Not if Elsie was still alive. If their pain and injuries were reciprocal, then surely their lives would be too.

It wasn't really a comforting thought – not down here, in front of a mile of demon soldiers. It made him stagger with the immensity of the task. How did you keep alive someone who could call an army like this, someone who could cause this much trouble? Everyone on the earth would want her dead, even the new-breeds.

Still, at least she wasn't defenceless now.

Jack stood there for a moment, clenching and straightening his fingers to try and come to terms with the sight in front of him. The demon was watching him take it all in with a delicate, frost-bitten smile.

At any other time, Jack would have had a thousand questions. He would have asked about the siege engines, the tactical advantages of their weaponry, the sheer, dizzying logistics of moving an army this big through the snow. He had only managed skirmishes and tricks with his tiny army. A campaign this big would take a genius – a mind as shiny and multifaceted as his skin.

At any rate, he didn't ask. Impatience was eating at him in place of the cold. Evidently, something always had to be gnawing away at you down here.

"Yes," he said, aware that he had been silent for a long time. "Yes, I'll come with you. Do you – I mean – is there anything faster than-?"

The demon tilted his head quizzically. "Faster?" he said, as though he didn't understand the word.

"I have to get back," said Jack, motioning to the sunlight-coloured hole on the horizon. It was a blinding silver gilt – his eyes could hardly stand to look at it – but he wanted to wrap his arms around it and swallow it whole.

"You need not fear that you have missed anything, interloper."

Jack sighed. He hadn't missed the sound of that word, though this demon said it in a friendlier tone.

"Some little time has passed since you came here, but not a great deal. The pace of time is slower in my kingdom than almost anywhere else." He said it as though it was a point of great pride.

Jack took half a step towards him, hardly daring to believe it. "I haven't been gone long?"

"You have not."

"Seconds?"

"I do not know what that word means."

Jack waved a hand, light-headed enough to laugh. "Never mind. Thank you. Do you have horses down here? I don't have time to explain, but I need to get to the above-world fast–"

The demon made a sound at the back of his throat – it could have been laughter, puzzlement or irritation. "I thought I had already explained about that. There is no danger of missing one's time down here. The only virtue possible is patience."

He made the sound again – it was definitely a laugh this time – as Jack turned round to stare at him. He knew he was fidgeting. He knew he looked like an appalled schoolboy. But he couldn't help it. Somehow, the idea that he had only been gone for seconds had increased his urgency, rather than dispelling it.

The demon relented, and pointed to the head of the formation, where the dragons reared and tossed their heads.

"You shall go with the light cavalry, if you please. The dragons," he explained, seeing Jack's bewildered look. "They sweep in first and clear a space for the infantry to follow. They must also take up position by the portal to prevent the enemy from picking us off as we emerge. If the portal were to become clogged up with the dead too soon then none of the troops behind would be able to follow."

Jack looked at him, half-disturbed and half-curious. "You've thought about this a lot."

"I have been here before. Many times."

"You know, there's no army waiting for you on the other side."

The demon gave him a serene, untroubled look. "There will be one before too long, I expect."

"And who are you going to attack in the meantime?"

"Whoever is threatening the Goddess."

Well, that was some comfort. He couldn't imagine these troops would be too discriminating, but most of the city was clear, and he liked the thought of this army descending on Myrrha. Surely she couldn't survive that? Unless she found some way to take control of them.

Seere led him up to the dragons, which were black and towering as the cliff-face he had broken his nails on. They were giving off a rank, steaming heat, especially with so many of them packed together, but Jack's stomach only turned over with excitement when the reins were dropped into his hands.

He looked up at the beast he was supposed to ride. Its wings were folded tight to its back. Its eyes were a watery yellow, and just behind its neck was a saddle with many dangling straps and buckles.

But strangest of all was the standard affixed to the saddle. None of the other dragons had one like it. It was a tall, narrow black banner, with a design stitched on in threads of turquoise and white: one small, jewel-like snowflake surrounded by curls and sweeps of fog. It looked like the demonic equivalent of a needle in a haystack.

Jack turned to the demon and said uncertainly, "Are you – are you making me your standard-bearer?"

"Do you not wish to be?" said the demon. He was smiling indulgently – he'd been doing that, off and on, ever since Jack had gaped at him like a wounded schoolboy. He knew he must seem childlike to this creature, but that just made the standard-bearing thing all the stranger. Why would he trust him with a responsibility like that?

"I..." Jack trailed off, and then decided to plump for honesty. "I'll probably just jump off the dragon's back as soon as I get through."

"But you will get through," said the demon. "I am never wrong about these things."

Jack opened his mouth and then closed it again. In a way, it was a reassuring answer – the demon was just being practical, just ensuring that his standard would get through. But there was still something uncomfortable about all this. He was almost too impatient to care, but not quite.

"Why did you save me?" said Jack. "Why are you helping me now?"

"I look after my own," said the demon. "You are very strange. You are always–" He made a languid motion with his hands. "–moving. But you are one of my own, I think. Much sullied, but still true."

Jack didn't know what to say to that either. It didn't sound like a compliment. But he decided he wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth any longer. "Thank you."

He had wanted to climb up as soon as the demon had dropped the reins into his hands. He didn't trust all his assurances that time moved slower here. But a tiny splinter of common-sense held out against his impatience – as if there was one little shard of cold that the demon had failed to draw out of him.

Jack drew off a little way into the snow, falling fresh and already coating him. It was too cold to melt, so it just formed a powdery layer across his clothes, collecting in all the hollows and creases.

He found a spot behind one of the islands of black rock where the snow was deep, dug down with numb hands to make a hollow, and then took Gram's box out of his jacket.

He didn't want to flip the lid open. He didn't want to look at it. He half-expected it to come flying out of its own accord and try to stab him in the eye. But he felt as though some kind of recognition was necessary. He also needed to be sure that it was there – that he wasn't about to bury a fake – although the waves of hatred emanating from the box made that very unlikely.

The blade was dull. There was no light to gleam off it down here, but he couldn't help thinking that it was dull through hopelessness as much as dark.

Jack closed the lid, dropped the box into the two-foot hollow he had excavated, and pushed the snow in around it.

"Best I can do, mate," he said, when the snow was smooth again. "Better than you deserve. Goodbye, Robin."

It was hard to turn away – not just because he didn't like turning his back on that knife. He remembered loving Robin, and then hating Robin, and then – worse than either – understanding Robin. Either way, there had always been some Robin in his life. Now there never would be again. It was a blessing, obviously, but a strange one.

And he wondered if he was doing the right thing, burying his only bargaining chip. But you couldn't bargain with Myrrha. Better by far to not be able to, rather than facing the hideous compromises she would put you through if you tried.

The demon was waiting for him when he returned, still holding the reins of that mountainous dragon. He showed him how to mount up, and watched with the same strange, indulgent smile as Jack did the best he could with the straps and the stirrups.

The dragon didn't seem vicious, at least. It barely even turned its head when Jack climbed into the saddle. It snorted a few times, but probably just to clear the snow out of its nostrils.

"May you reach the Goddess," said Seere. Jack wasn't sure whether this was a standard benediction or one that was specific to his situation. The demon had raised his hand in a kind of salute, so he guessed there was something ceremonial about it.

Again, Jack didn't know what to say. He toyed with saying 'Same to you', but he wasn't wholeheartedly sure he wanted this demon – or this army – to ever reach Elsie.

"Thank you," he said, after a moment's struggle, and tried to copy the salute.

The demon smiled with an icy twinkle and slapped the dragon's flank.

It did exactly what Jack had thought it would do. It pushed off from the ground so fast that the world lurched and receded beneath them.

Terror rose up in Jack's throat, but deeper down, there was a sensation he recognized – not in the sense of ever having felt it before, but in the sense that it was a part of him. Exhilaration. A fierce love of the lurching cold and the storm battering around his ears.

And, as the air whistled past him, as he finally gathered speed to match his urgency, he looked back at the demon who had pulled him out of the snow and thought: Seere. The Finder of Lost Things.

It was hard to stay in the saddle after that. He craned his neck painfully. He tried to scramble round so that he was facing the other way. One of his feet came loose from the stirrups – he would have been jolted off the dragon's back entirely without the straps – but he hardly cared, he was so intent on catching another glimpse of the demon – his relative, his only living connection to all this chaos.

He was just an outline in the snowstorm now, though Jack thought he still had one hand raised in that strange salute.

The demon-realms had brought Jack face-to-face with his mother and his father, but neither of them had been particularly nice. This one had saved him – had spoken of him as one of his own – and Jack hadn't even realized what he'd been looking at!

God, the questions he could have asked! He could have found out how his ancestors lived, what they believed, what he had in common with them, whether a murderer could ever be forgiven – though he wondered if Prince Seere had given him an answer to that one, at least, when he had called him 'Much sullied, but still true'.

No, he would not feel bitter. He had been unbelievably stupid – the demon had even told him his name! – but he wouldn't complain. The one thing he had wanted to feel from his demon ancestors – a spark of recognition, a glimmer of affection – had already been given to him. He just wished he could have told the demon that he appreciated it.

Jack straightened in the saddle, turned back around and gripped the reins. He tried to slide his foot back into the stirrup, but it was flapping wildly with the dragon's motion, and he couldn't catch hold of it for long enough to work it out.

The sunlight-coloured hole on the horizon was getting larger, carrying with it the scent of life and vegetation. It was all so good he could have eaten it. He just hoped he wasn't riding at the head of an army that was destined to wipe it all out.

***

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