The mountain roads took three days to clear.
The descent from Elmbridge Academy's elevation ran through switchback passes that the carriage drivers navigated with the practiced efficiency of people who made this journey twice a year and had long since stopped finding the drop remarkable. The views were extraordinary in the objective way that elevation always produced — the valley revealing itself in pieces through gaps in the mountain terrain, the world looking simultaneously vast and manageable from above.
Raze watched it through the window and thought about Fedora.
Which was not a new activity. He'd been thinking about Fedora since the carriage left the Academy grounds, which was approximately the same moment she had arranged herself at the opposite end of the carriage interior and begun a sustained performance of being entirely interested in the landscape outside.
The performance was technically convincing.
