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him, but it was too late.
    First one, then two pairs of hands pulled him back and wrestled him to the ground.
    “Right! You little swine,” said the guard. “You’re coming to the palace.”
    They brought the rope and tied his arms behind him and then his legs, leaving him trussed up like a slaughtered deer.
    None of them saw the lens fall from Boy’s pocket and roll a little way into the snow.
    Outside in the street was a cart attached to a sturdy-looking horse. Boy was the first of Valerian’s possessions to be thrown into it, and while one of the guards waited with him, the other three spent the afternoon loading alongside him anything from the Tower room that wasn’t bolted down.
    Darkness had fallen when the cart finally set off at walking pace. Boy lay uncomfortably on his side, half covered by Valerian’s books and other possessions. His arms and legs had gone numb hours before, and it was all he could do to keep one eye on where they were going. After a while he gave up, and tried to ask the guards what they were going to do with him.
    They did not reply.
    “Please,” pleaded Boy, “at least tell me where we’re going.”
    One of them turned round and grunted.
    “We told you. The palace. You belong to the emperor now.”

3
    Willow waited by St. Valentine’s Fountain, but Boy did not come. As the night deepened, the temperature fell from freezing to well below that. For a while she stood and chatted to an old woman huddled over a brazier of roasting chestnuts, until finally the cold was too much. Though Willow had said nothing, the old woman glanced back at her.
    “He ain’t coming, you know,” she said, and before Willow could reply, shuffled away.
    Willow started to worry. They were supposed to have met as the church bells rang seven, but it was long after nine by now. Willow had studied every inch of the frozen fountain, whose long icicles hung from its spout like tusks, where in the summer the water gushed.
    Something must have happened to Boy. She thought about what the old woman had said. Something must have happened to him, because there could be no mistaking the plans they had made.
    Unless . . . what if she had misread him? She had been doing most of the talking; maybe she had just heard what she wanted to hear, that Boy wanted to come with her.
    She stamped around on the snowy ground by the fountain, getting colder all the time.
    It had all seemed so easy sitting in the Feather the night before, but out in the freezing streets it was different. How would they find somewhere to live? She wasn’t earning enough to feed them both, let alone rent a room. Perhaps Boy had thought it over; perhaps he’d realized how stupid it was, and maybe he didn’t even want her the way she wanted him. He was living in splendor now, relatively. Kepler had given him clothes and a proper room with a real bed in a well-to-do house. It even had that amazing system of electrical lighting Kepler had created. Why on earth would Boy want to leave all that to come and live on the streets again?
    She hadn’t even known Boy that well at the theater. It was only in those last five days of the year, when she and Boy had become entwined in Valerian’s terrible adventure, that she had realized that she felt something for him.
    Willow brushed some snow off the edge of the fountain’s basin and sat down. She put her head in her hands and cried.
    The bell of St. Valentine’s Church chimed ten.
    Now Willow was angry. If Boy had decided not to be with her, the least he could have done was tell her to her face, rather than leave her freezing by the fountain. Her anger grew as she began to feel shamed: how foolish she was to believe Boy cared about her.
    She’d let him know how angry she was!
    She set off for Kepler’s house. She’d been there only twice, briefly, but she knew she could find the way. It would be a long walk, but then, at least she would be moving, and might feel a little warmer.
    She was in a fury, and as