“You look older,” says Miss Chamuel to her mount.

The white wolf casts a disparaging eye back at her.

“Of course I do too,” she says, a bit sharply. “I’m aging now. You know I don’t go in for the alternative.” She rides bareback in divided skirts; her sword hangs scabbarded from a complicated belt.

The wolf growls in a way that might be a chuckle. They’re cantering up a bridge of ice, its claws taking easy traction in the chipped and gritty surface. Deep in its heart is a refracting oily band: what might, once, have looked like a rainbow.