Grace read for an hour before she raised her head, looked around the room and realised that she knew what to do. It was all there, in the book, as she had hoped it might be, and all she had needed was the imagination to join the various parts together.

Powerful riezehn would put their apprentices under a trance, she had read, and link with them in order to add to their power... But only in the Queen's time has it become a constant, involving boys so young that they are barely aware of their powers...

It had made her angry again, reading that, in spite of the twist of sympathy she still felt when she thought of the Queen and that child she had lost in the snow. She had read on, about the mages who had created vast and complex works of magic through linking. Without it, the wall would never have been built, and the kingdom would not have been enclosed from the cold.

Yes, Grace thought, and it would never have become the arrogant, heartless nation it is now.

She had learned more: that experiments with linking had been kept brief, because those who were subjected to it began to show signs of madness. She didn't want to think about how long it might take to drive someone mad. She didn't want to remember that Benjamin had been in the trance for four or five days now, and less still did she want to remember Afi's brother, who had been taken four years before.

Linking also came to be distrusted by those not involved, she read, trying to forget about madness for now. The power wielded by the riezehn controlling the link could become vast, and once created, the link is difficult and dangerous to break. It takes a power greater than that of the riezehn who controls it.

What did it mean by dangerous? Dangerous to the mage? To the one breaking it? Or to the boys linked?

Tell me! Grace thought, urgently, as she scanned on, but the book went on to tell her something else instead.

The mage who controls the link may be male or female, but those in the trance must be male. Experiments in linking women or girls in this way have always failed.

Which Grace had already known, but now she wanted to know why.

There are differences in the way men and women use magic, the book told her. For men, the extraordinary impulses which allow them to manipulate possibility are used reflexively, meaning that they need to thought process to be triggered. This is what makes male mages swifter and capable of more brutality as a rule.

Grace had remembered the Cold Mage, reading that, and wondered whether men turned to the Cold more often than women.

For women, the mind must be involved, the book had continued. This makes their works of possibility slower, but more detailed, and capable of far greater complexity. Though of course there are men and women who have stood in defiance of those rules...

Grace didn't need to know about the exceptions. Right there was the reason Ruidic had sent her here. But as she gazed around the room, at the girls and young women who either slept or read or involved themselves with games or drawing, she realised that it wasn't enough. They were trapped by those stones, and even though Grace had a fake circlet on her forehead, she was as powerless here as a child.

And so she had returned to the book, flicking through until she found a picture of a black stone, and the title Fane Stones.

She had traced the drawing with her fingers, almost expecting to feel the same surge of dread that she felt ever time she touched one of the stones themselves, but she didn't need that confirmation that the picture and the stones were the same; not after she had read on a little.

Also known as banishing stones, fane stones absorb possibility from the air, or from whatever they are put into contact with. The effects are profound: even the most powerful of riezehn find themselves unable to work magics within their area of effect, because there is no possibility to work with. Close by them, the world becomes a dull and restrictive place, with no chance of spells or miracles.

Grace thought of her life back in High Peaks, with a heavy sadness. They make life like mine, and Maggie's and Benjamin's and Ma's and Dad's, she thought, and she tried not to think about having to go back there and live her life like this: without magic, and perhaps without Afi too.

The effectiveness of fane stones is most profound, however, on riezehn. They have the unique capacity to erode extraordinary impulses over time. Those mages who have come into contact with them for prolonged periods will be weakened, and where mages have handled them a great deal, their powers have been reduced to a fraction of their original strength. Although cases have not been recorded, it is generally accepted that exposure over a long enough time would make riezehn lose their powers entirely.

Grace looked up at the girls again, this time with a touch of horror, half-noticing as she did that one of the closest and youngest looked quickly away when she did. So that's why they were all so young. The stones drained them dry of power, until the Queen deemed them safe to release.

And then she began to wonder why it meant so much to her, this power she had. As much as she wanted to pretend to herself that it was all about Benjamin, she knew that it wasn't just that. It was about her, too.

The book pulsed with a gentle light, as if asking for her attention again, and she read onwards. Their size dictates how much they can absorb. Each stone has a capacity, and once it is full, it will not take in more. So the larger the stone, the greater the area of effect.

Grace lifted her head again, and this time she smiled.

There was a small part of her that still worried about who had written the book. She felt as though it was pointing her towards the right answers, even though these were answers that nobody should have known. She almost felt as if they were too obvious, but perhaps nobody had ever read the book or researched their subject-matter with such a strong motivation to work it all out.

She uncrossed her legs and stood slowly, sliding the book back into its package. She could feel the young girl who had been stealing glances at her watching her openly, now, and she felt herself growing red. Had the watcher seen what she was really reading? She had tried to hide it by taking a book from one of the shelves along the wall, and slotting The Dazzling Lights inside. But perhaps it had been obvious all the same.

She felt a little as though she had been caught cheating in class under that look, and it didn't sit well with the urgency of her need to solve all this. It was a strange reminder of the Grace who had visited the fair on a cold winter's night, instead of the Grace who now stood here determined to save a whole kingdom. She wasn't quite sure what had happened to that Grace, but she did know that she liked this one a lot more.

For a moment, her fingers touched a bulge in the package, and her heart leapt. Roschan had given her something else as well.

She crossed the carpet carefully, aware of the young girl's gaze on her again. When she looked at her, it darted away, and she was left looking at a fall of brown hair.

The old Grace wanted to hide the package from all of them, not just the two women who were keeping their quiet watch. But the new Grace understood why she was here, and she realised that she would need each and every one of these girls to help her, and willingly.

She glanced over at Merrily, and was dumbfounded to see that she was leaning next to Afi, talking quietly and giggling a little. And Afi was responding, standing at ease and giving her a brilliant smile. While Grace watched, he ducked his head towards her ear and murmured something that made her laugh out loud.

The rush of jealousy that gripped Grace seemed to come out of nowhere, and it was like nothing she had ever felt before. It seemed as if it punched a hole in her chest and dragged her insides out through it. The feeling left her breathless and horrified.

Is she pretty? Grace thought, dazed. Dimpled Merrily, the one Grace had only seen as an opponent - and a weak one at that. Was her curly blonde hair and curvy figure what Afi liked in a girl?

She wanted to go over there and shake him, and maybe drag Merrily away by her pretty hair while she was at it. Particularly when Afi reached out and plucked one of the long blonde hairs from her collar.

Grace had to look away. It was unbearable. And when she did, she saw that the large elderly woman who acted as their jailor was watching the two of them too, looking almost as sour as Grace felt. Though perhaps her reasons were different, Grace thought, a little bitterly.

She closed her eyes, and made herself breathe in. What was she doing, standing here and making herself wretched whilst the women were both distracted? She needed to act, and to remember what was important.

She found the brown-haired girl looking at her again, and she gave her a tiny smile that she didn't really feel like giving. Deliberately, she walked over and sat on the couch beside her.

The girl shifted, glancing quickly between her and the book on her lap and back again. Grace thought about saying something, but she had never been good at small-talk. She would show her something instead.

She could see the curiosity on the girl's face as Grace moved the book she had borrowed aside, revealing the red cloth where it was clumsily folded around The Dazzling Lights. Her eyes were fixed on Grace's hands as she drew the smaller cloth bundle out and laid it down on top, a bright blue packet against the dark red.

As she unfolded the fabric, to reveal the carved stone of the true-seer on its leather string, Grace heard the girl's indrawn breath.

She glanced up at the two guardians again, her eyes lingering only for a moment on Afi's smiling face and Merrily's slightly flushed one.

As long as he's distracting them both, she thought, I should be grateful.

"Do you know what this is?" Grace asked the girl, very quietly, wondering how old she was as she did. Ten? Eleven? She couldn't have been any older.

She saw the dark brown hair dip as the girl nodded.

"Why do you have it?" she asked Grace, and Grace could hear a note in her voice that had been like Afi's, and like the Captain's.

They're all waiting for someone to help them, she thought. How desperate did anyone have to be to hang their hopes on a shy girl from High Peaks who had only started using magic three and a half days ago?

She tried to squash the surge of doubt that hit her at the thought. It was almost as crippling as her furious jealousy.

"I need to see what the Queen's son really is," she told her, knowing that she should be saying more. But she was unwilling to take the burden of being another person's heroine. Wasn't having Captain Roschan and Benjamin relying on her enough?

"Why?" the girl asked immediately, and Grace met her eye without meaning to.

It was the same look the others had, too. This girl looked at her in just the same way, as if she didn't quite want to believe that Grace could help because she couldn't bear to be disappointed if she failed.

And then Grace realised that every one of the girls and young women were watching her, their hands still at their tasks. She looked back and met the blue eyes and grey and green and brown, and she felt the weight of their hope like weights on her shoulders.

The weather outside seemed to feel it with her. As she sighed, the sun disappeared behind clouds for the first time since she had arrived in this world, and the room suddenly seemed a little more like a prison than it had.

"I need to rescue my brother from the trance," she said, at last, and saw two of the nearer girls react. She lowered her voice, and spoke to the brown-haired girl. "And I need your help if I'm going to, because it's going to take a lot of power to break the link."

She found herself looking at such a radiant smile that it made her blush slightly, the old Grace returning for a moment. Generally speaking, only Maggie and Dad had ever been so obviously pleased by anything she said back in High Peaks.

"Tell me how." The girl said. "Though you may have to do something about this..."

She held a hand up to her forehead, her mouth twisting with distaste.

Grace checked towards the door once more, where Afi was now leaning against the doorframe, his head inches from Merrily's. The older woman was pretending to read, but Grace could tell she was watching them with disapproval. None of them were looking at Grace.

She raised her hand, fighting the rush of unease as it met the stone on the girl's forehead.

Each has a limited capacity, she thought, and alongside that thought, she remembered Mr. Fredrickson's heavily accented voice telling her, There is possibility in all things...

She wrapped her left hand around the wand under her shirt, Ruidic's wand that must have possibility ingrained in every knot, and she made herself a channel for it. She didn't have to use the possibility in the air and wield it, she just had to use what was in the wand and direct it where she wanted. And so she poured it into the fane stone on the girl's circlet.

It was like opening a gate to an oncoming horde. Grace felt a rush of dizzy power as more possibility poured through her, coming from the fabric of her clothes, and from her feet where they touched the floor. But there was no end to where it was stored. There was possibility in the weave of the rich carpet, and in the cushions; in the stones of the floor beneath, and in the walls of the palace on the floors below. Only the walls of this place were empty of power, set as they were with fane stones.

There was a quiet, hollow cracking sound and a lurching feeling as if she had taken the brakes off a car. Grace snatched her hand back, and saw that the fane stone was no longer black, but a pale grey, and it was split neatly down the centre.

The girl held a shaking hand up to the stone, and then in a rush Grace was enveloped in thick, draping fabric and slightly mint-scented hair.

"Oh, my light," the girl said, her voice a sob. "Thank you. Thank you."

Grace realised that everyone in that room was looking at her now; well, looking at them, because the young girl's weeping was audible even with her face buried against Grace's shoulder.

Grace's own face was on fire, and she caught Afi's eye without wanting to. He was so close to Merrily he might as well have been touching her, but his face was alive with delight.

Is he laughing at me now? Grace thought, and then she saw Merrily frowning at her and gave an awkward shrug.

"There there," she said, and hoped they would believe the girl was just upset about something. There was plenty to be upset about as far as Grace was concerned.

How am I going to get away with fracturing all the stones? she thought, as both Merrily and her colleague continued to stare at her.

But before she had the chance to try, she saw the smile vanish from Afi's face in an instant. He held his hand up to his ear, as if listening to something, and then said urgently, "Grace. Roschan needs you. Now."

And then a howling that Grace recognised too well tore through the air, and Grace knew that the Cold was here.