They left the hut an hour after sunrise. Now that they had some kind of plan, Grace had been adamant that they leave within the hour, and that she felt fine. Afi had told her, with folded arms, that she wasn't going anywhere until she could stand and walk without coming close to blacking out. After a heated argument, Afi had won the day by walking out of the hut with her coat and boots whilst she had been trying to get shakily to her feet.

Grace had sat back down, both angry and secretly relieved. Once Afi returned without her clothes, an irritating half-smile on his face, she'd grudgingly accepted two pieces of bread and what looked like a chicken leg that he drew out of the sack and handed to her. She was halfway through them in seconds, and the meat tasted wonderful.

"This is delicious," she had said, through a mouthful. "What is it?"

"Oh, just chimri leg," he told her, crouched to mix more tea.

Grace stopped eating, appalled. Afi turned to see her face and started laughing. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. It's mattin leg."

Grace swallowed, scowling at him. "Let me guess. It's a cute little fluffy thing that looks like a puppy."

"It's a particularly dim-witted bird that runs towards any lights it sees," he said, still smiling. "Honestly, you feel like hunting them is doing them some sort of favour."

"OK," she said, and then added, "if you keep playing on my ignorance, I'm going to get mad. And you don't want to see me mad."

"I think I saw earlier," he said, "with the big guy and the kick to the groin." He shook his head. "I don't think I'll risk it."

Grace had tried to pretend that she wasn't quite pleased by this, and reached out to pick up the book. For the next three hours, she fought to stay awake while she read, mouthing the names of the creatures and spells and symbols it held in an attempt to remember them. The more she read, the more she felt a depressed admiration at the creativity of these cold mages. Evanescents, nightmares, dusk-walkers... They were impressively imaginative in the ways they found to terrify and to hurt.

When dawn eventually came, she felt drained and shivery, but she stood anyway, and proved to Afi that she could walk around quite competently. He responded with a grudging nod, and went to fetch her clothes from wherever he had stashed them.

The walk to the bridge took them half an hour when it should have taken no more than ten minutes. Grace was stiff, sore and still a little dizzy. She stumbled more than she should have done, and she was painfully aware of how often Afi had to stop and wait for her even when she was moving as fast as her legs could manage.

He said nothing until they made it to the bridge, and when he waited it was with none of the impatience she thought he should feel. But she saw his expression grow more and more concerned, and he called a halt for her to lean on the rail over the white waters.

Grace was breathing heavily, and she felt almost as wretched as she'd felt when she'd woken up the night before. She folded her arms over the railing and closed her eyes, seeing those grainy patterns again behind her eyelids. She was shocked to find that she was fighting to stay awake, and without the thundering of the water, she might have fallen asleep where she was.

"How far is it to the road?" she asked.

"Three miles," he said, and she didn't need to look at him to work out that he was worried about that. "We might find someone to carry us with them when we get there, but..."

The thought of having to walk the whole distance, some nine miles, made her want to lie down and give up right there.

Come on, Grace, she said to herself. He's alone, and afraid, and maybe losing his mind already. You just need to put one foot in front of the other.

She pushed herself upright, and opened her eyes. She almost overbalanced, and she saw Afi put a hand out to her, but she brushed it off and began to walk again.

"You don't want to rest for longer?" he asked.

Grace shook her head, and concentrated on keeping her footing on the far side of the bridge. The north side was in shadow, and the snow was crusted with ice. 

"All right, but I'm carrying your pack," Afi said, and jogged up to her as if he had dry grass under his feet instead of sheeny, hard-packed snow.

"No, you aren't," she told him.

"There's no sense you carrying it," he told her, sternly. "You're ready to fall over as it is."

"You might drop it," she told him. The one foot in front of the other approach was working. She reached the sloping snow on the far side of the bridge and felt her feel grip comfortably in it.

"That is the worst reason for stubbornness I've ever heard," she heard Afi say from behind her. "I could carry you and it and go more quickly than this."

"There's nobody here to be impressed with your displays of masculinity," she told him loudly.

He jogged again, and then drew level to walk next to her. "Well, it's a good thing displays of pointless pig-headedness impress me," he answered. He laughed when she shoved him lightly, and she supposed she must have won the argument because he walked in silence for a while.

Grace tried not to think about the long walk ahead of them, but as they cleared the trees and she saw the river stretch out across an open plain of snow, she couldn't help dreading the distance. She looked away from the road towards the North, over to her left, where the Fragile Tower was now visible as a shining point in the air. A pale green travelling wind arced overhead. It followed the line of the road, she realised, and met the tower somewhere near ground level.

            She faltered and stopped, her eyes on the line of the wind, but her mind full of symbols.

            "Summoning," she murmured, and drew the book out of her pocket once again.

            She heard Afi call to her from a little way ahead, asking her if she needed to rest, but she did little more than make a vague noise in reply. She was too busy looking for the page she had re-read the night before.

            The Symbol of Summoning. There it was. A half-circle with a line drawn through it. Simple and easy to learn. She should have remembered it more clearly.

            Unlike the mark for Conjuration, the Symbol of Summoning calls to the riezehn things which are already in existence, she read. Summoning can be as difficult as conjuration, since it relies on a clear imagining of the object summoned. Most riezehn begin by calling to them things that are within sight, and within a distance of only a few metres, and build up their ability and stamina from there.

            She squinted up at the travelling wind. Well, she could see it, even if it was more than a few metres away. And she couldn't imagine that summoning it could possibly be more tiring than walking with a concussion.

            Putting the book away, she unhitched the rowan-wood staff, and held it in both hands. She was shocked to find that it shook in the air, her fatigue translating itself into a tremble in her arms. Steadying it as well as she could, she began to drawn the symbol.

"What are you doing?" Afi called, and she tried to ignore him while he started to hurry back towards her.

The symbol flashed in the air as she completed it, and then turned her eyes to fix them on the wind once again. She was frowning at it so intently that she didn't see that Afi was next to her until he grabbed at her arm.

"What are you doing?" he repeated, tugging on her arm with what was clearly anger.

She swiped at him with the staff, annoyed to find her concentration broken.

"We need to get there quickly, and I'm useless on foot," she snapped, trying to look at the wind and not at him. "So I'm hitching us a ride."

The great trail of the travelling wind began to arc downwards to meet them. There was a surge of exhilaration that went with it, and a feeling of power that was unique. Nothing in Grace's life had made her feel giddy and ecstatic like this. Even while she had been terrified of the Cold Mage, it had been a wonderful feeling to wield possibility.

The wind was dropping more quickly now. It was coming closer, and hovering over Afi's blond hair, haloing it in green. He turned up to watch it with a strange expression on his face. And then the cloudy green touched her skin and she felt a rush of warmth.

The wind was suddenly around them. It shifted and flowed to hold them. Then as gently as if it were water it lifted them both. She felt a weightlessness that was like the time she had flown to Florida with Dad and Ma. They were both still standing, as if there was ground beneath them, but with a touch around them that was as soft as it was reassuring.

The wind carried them up above the snow until through its slight green haze she could see the kingdom spread out below them. She was struck all over again by how beautiful this place was.

She laughed in sheer delight, and looked at Afi to share the giddiness with him. But he was studying the land below with that same expression, and she felt as if he'd decided to shut her out.

The wind stopped rising and instead began to move them forwards, a gentle movement that soon built to breath-taking speed. Grace watched the tower as they approached, beginning to understand why the Queen needed magic to keep it working. It wasn't so much a building as a dream turned solid. A white and silver collection of cloud-like shapes and spires hung in the air with no visible means of support. They were connected at times by only slender lines, which gradually revealed themselves as staircases. The whole thing moved, too, turning and shimmering in the sun, and some of the shapes swung around and moved past each other as she watched.

As the wind began to drop down towards the city at its base, Grace suddenly realised how large it was.

Grace had meant to leave Afi to his thoughts, but as they fell into the tower's shadow, she asked quickly, "How tall is it?"

She watched him as he replied, his eyes focused ahead. "More than two thousand feet," he told her, as if it meant nothing.

Two thousand feet. She felt as if the tower had started pressing down on her, squashing her determination under its vastness. The exhaustion the excitement had kept at bay rushed back in on her along with it, and for the first time she felt that she should never have come. What was she doing here, so far from home, when she barely ventured out of her room by choice? And worse still, when she understood nothing?

She would have given a great deal to stop the wind and make it turn around and take her away. But she was caught in it, and they were dropping downwards towards the top of a squat tower with a circular top. She recognised the symbol carved into the stone as it rushed up to meet her. It was the symbol for holding, and for a moment she had a flash of fear that it would trap her feet there while the Queen came for her.

But her feet touched down gently and she was able to step out of the wind alongside Afi. Her legs were shaking slightly, but she was free.

They walked together towards a staircase which spiralled around the outside of the tower. Grace glanced at Afi, but his face was closed off and his eyes distant. A squeeze of worry added itself to the hopelessness. He was angry, and she had no idea why. What would she do if he left her to do this alone?

She sighed. She would do what she had planned to do in the first place. She would go in there alone and find her brother. That was still the only plan.

They rounded the edge of the tower, and Grace's breath caught in her throat. She had expected to see magic and wonder here. The proud tower had held out the promise that the city would dazzle her as much as the travelling winds and the chimri had dazzled.

Instead there was poverty, and dirt, and desperation. The houses of the street were plain stone or rickety wood, and here and there a pile of debris showed where one had collapsed. Scores of people dressed in ragged greys and browns shuffled along the street, some of them selling painfully basic wares out of carts which seemed to be held together by string. Others were huddled at the ice-covered edges of the street, begging with their hands or with carved wooden bowls.

Afi walked ahead, his head fixed straight ahead, and he quickly began to leave Grace behind as she tried to tear her eyes away from each pleading face before being trapped by the next. Some of them were children, little boys and girls younger than Maggie and Benjamin, their faces pinched by cold and hunger.

Grace's hand went to her purse, and she was drawing it out when Afi strode back to her and gripped her arm.

"You'll be mobbed if you bring that out here," he told her, quietly, "and you need it to get inside."

"But they're children," Grace answered, appalled. She could feel anger and the ache of pity bringing water to her eyes. "How can I help Benjamin and leave all of them to suffer?"

Afi shook his head, angrily, and squeezed her arm so hard that it hurt. "You can't help them with money. There are too many of them. All you can do is defeat the Queen and hope that whoever takes control here is kinder."

Grace snatched her arm away, but didn't try to take the purse out again. She walked past him, silently, stung by his anger. She walked on, fighting the tiredness and the lump in her throat. It would have been so much easier not to look, but she wasn't going to ignore them like Afi did. She didn't understand how he could.

He caught up to her and silently steered her down a side-street, across a small dark square and through a narrow alley. Suddenly they were out in a wide avenue, with well-tended trees in beds of flowers on either side. The plants bloomed with riotous colour as if it were summer, and it must have been magic that sustained them.

Grace's eyes followed the avenue to its end at the gates of the palace. She looked at the large, clean, beautiful houses here with nothing but disgust. How could they waste magic prettifying this place with flowers when people starved not a quarter of a mile away?

"One of these shops should do," Afi murmured, and began to walk towards an elaborately carved building with a fantastic shaped glass window at its front. Over the door, the words "Logein Fabrics" wrote themselves again and again in golden letters.

Grace stopped where she was, her head and her chest full of hurt. She couldn't walk inside and act a part, not now when it was the most she could do not to cry.

She turned away and began to walk down the avenue towards a fountain shaped like a kindly-looking woman. Water flowed from her raised palms and down over her almost-naked body, and sprayed in tiny droplets from her hair. The bright sunlight caught it and made it dance with rainbows.

 There were stone benches on each side, and she sat on the closest one and looked up at that benevolent face. She thought suddenly of her world, of the starving millions who lived only a few hundred miles from her country of plenty. Were any of them any kinder than the rich here? Was even Dad, with his determination to make everyone's life a little bit better? Or Maggie, who cried over every dead animal?

She heard Afi's footsteps as he came up behind her.

"What is it?" he asked, with such impatience that she wanted to hit him. Instead, she turned and poured all her anger and her confusion out in words.

"It's everything." She leaned forwards and shouted at him, "It's everything. I don't understand this place, where I thought I might finally belong. I don't understand how anyone can let others suffer like that, and walk past it. I don't understand what I've done to make you angry, and I don't understand how I can put any of this right."

He blinked at her, so surprised that it was almost funny. "I – you can't put it right."

"No, I can't," she snapped. "I can't put anything right when I don't know why any of it happens."

Afi sighed. "There isn't time. I can't – there are lots and lots of reasons why the kingdom is like it is. But understanding them could take days, and you want to be in the palace and out again in hours."

"Then explain why you're angry, instead," she countered. "That won't take days, will it? Or do you really think you're such a complicated person?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and turned away. Grace watched him stalk off towards the shop, and she swung round until she couldn't see him. She felt tears spill down her cheeks, and scrubbed angrily at them.

"Stop it," she told herself, through gritted teeth. "You don't need him. Stop crying over him and get Benjamin back."

She breathed in deep breaths, fighting for control. She didn't realise that Afi had come back until she saw him sit on the bench next to her.

He watched the fountain for a few moments, something fighting in his face.

"I'm not trying to make anything hard for you," he said, quietly, at last. "I'm trying to make everything easy for me. I was – I was angry when you summoned the wind like that."

"Because you don't trust magic-workers?" she asked. "Is that why?"

"No." He shook his head, giving a slight grimace. "I trust you more than I should. I just – I thought we had hours to walk together, and for me to feel like I could help you. And then you were helping yourself instead, and you brought us here in minutes. Which means you'll be gone again in minutes, too. And I-"

He shrugged, and ducked his head, then went on in a lower voice. "I want Eddin back more than you can understand. But you've turned up like some kind of a miracle and I don't want you... to leave again, and go back to your life and forget me in an instant."

Grace was glad that he wasn't looking at her. Her face was warm and the tears hadn't really stopped. She gave a small laugh.

"I think you're over-estimating how many friends I have."

Afi glanced at her, and then away again. He gave a small smile. "I'd wager money it's still more than I have. It's like I said. Not a lot happens around where I live. Otherwise I'd probably have let you fall into the river."

"Thanks," she said, and they sat in silence for the longest minute Grace could remember in her life. At the end of it, she sighed.

"I guess we have to go, don't we?"

Afi gave one of his strange, humourless smiles. "I think we do."

He stood up, while Grace rubbed at her eyes again. He held out his hand to her, and drew her to her feet, so that she ended up looking at him. And then, with a movement that was more gentle than she would have expected, he smoothed her hair down and tucked a strand of it behind her ear.

With an uncertain expression on his face, he drew his hand away slowly, and she followed him back towards the shop.