“Are you going to do it?” the Railway Director asks. Their voice is desolate, like the stillness upon the frozen lake, like warmth remembered and unreachable. They want her to say no, but Furnace has never been beholden to what they want, and what she is beholden to – it’s not the debt they’re thinking of.

She doesn’t say with no choice; she doesn’t say with no regrets. She takes their hands and kisses each three times, and says that the city she builds from her own bones will know no crown, and will not rest on a reservoir of sorrow.