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mind in a wash and tumble of power as he grapples with the vexatious question of what to do, and contemplates the wisdom of a course of action that has been proposed by Most Honorable Second Wife, Highest Liege of Airborne Strike Command.
    Second Wife is young, hungry, and fearsomely ambitious: she displaced formerly Honorable First Wife (Highest Liege of Armored Cavalry) in his affections six months previously, shortly after his decision to abandon the plan to sleep past the end of the world. First Wife did not react swiftly or favorably to the change in circumstances: Second Wife stole her true name, and now First Wife’s mortal husk dangles from a machicolation beneath the roof of the high tower, calcifying slowly, as an adornment to Second Wife’s ambition. All-Highest is not stupid. He has bound his new spouse to fealty and enjoined her against interfering with his other children or taking certain actions to his or their detriment. She will have to prove her mettle before he will allow her to give him an heir. But at this moment, as she follows the report from the overworld with her own proposal, he can taste the sharpness of her mind, like an overeager knife:
     
    We cannot go south, for the cosmic bombardment will render all our efforts futile for years to come. We cannot go east, for Fimbulwinter comes and the Dead Gods’ tentacles scrape bare the valleys for tribute. We cannot go west, for beyond the ocean Hy-Brasil has succumbed to the flowery death. North is inadvisable. This leaves one direction, and one direction only, Oh Husband and All-Highest, and I have consulted the Oracle and they agree that it holds to the highest probability of the Host’s survival.
    The ghost roads are still available to us. It is just a matter of choosing which to open…

3: THE GATHERING STORM
     
DEAR DIARY:
    I have a bad record of letting Pete talk me into sticking my nose into dusty, mildewed sheds. It’s getting to be a habit. First there was the MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY public information campaign posters, which we found amidst huge quantities of junk stored in a warehouse on the outskirts of Watford. (The less said about that, the better: a vampire elder was using it to hold his personal stash, some of which was still alive and twitching.) Then we were sent on a couple of training courses in the secure document storage tunnels under Dansey House. And now we’ve drawn this fool’s errand.
    I’m a mathematician with an interest in higher-dimensional topological deformations, and a recent career track that includes designing visualization systems for directed exploration of stochastic market movements with application to the Black–Scholes model – a weaponized banker, in other words. I have
zero
training or understanding of architecture, facilities management, structural engineering, or logistics. So I’m somewhat puzzled that Management have shoved me out here with Pete (who, as a vicar, is just as unqualified as I am) to tramp around various decaying crown estate assets in West Yorkshire and pronounce on their fitness for refurbishment for various missions that I am not yet cleared to know about.
    I suppose it
could
be that, as unqualified but not unintelligent laypersons, Pete and I are both deemed to be free from the pre-existing prejudices and unreasoning enthusiasms of our expert facilities management people. So we’re not automatically going to deliver the message that Facilities think Management want to hear, as opposed to the truth, whatever that may be. On the other hand, maybe the organization is just so short-staffed that sending untrained amateurs into the field is the best they can do, because everyone who actually knows what’s going on is running around naked with their hair on fire shrieking about the end of days. I’d rather not think about that possibility, because in this time of cuts it’s all too plausible – even without the looming prospect of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, whatever that is.
    Does CASE