He found Isfrid in the east courtyard, and for the first time in a long life, Faust was afraid of a child.
The courtyard had frozen solid.
Every cobble, every wall, every fallen man. A shell of pale ice lay over the whole yard and the air shimmered with a cold that burned. The mercenaries who had fought there lay locked in the ice in the postures of their last moment, mouths open, swords raised.
Two of the Herzog's own household guards stood frozen at the gate, one with a hand still stretched out to the boy who had killed him by accident.
And in the centre of it all, ankle-deep in white, stood Isfrid.
He had Frost unsealed and held low in both hands. The blade shone with a pale, terrible light. His eyes were open, but they were not looking at anything in the yard. The scales on his arm had spread across his shoulder and half his neck, silver and delicate and dreadful.
"Isfrid," Faust said.
Nothing.
"Isfrid. That man at the gate was Hans. He taught you to ride." He took one careful step across the ice. It cracked under his boot like a bone. "You're freezing your own people, godson."
"They killed Grandfather." The voice that answered was Isfrid's, but it had a second note under it, a low slow echo like a bell under water. "They came into his house. They came into his house."
"I know."
"I'm going to freeze all of them. And then I'm going to freeze Reinhardt. And then I will—"
"And then you'll be alone," said Faust, "in a world made of ice."
The pale light shivered.
Faust took another step.
He did not reach for the deck.
He had a feeling, deep in his gut, that cards were the last thing the boy needed in that moment. He took off his bandage instead, slowly, deliberately, and let the gold of his left eye shine in the cold light.
"Look at me," he said. "Look at what I am."
The boy's head turned, a fraction at a time.
"I hear a voice, you know. I have heard it for a long while now. It tells me, every day, that I should let them all burn. That the world is full of fools and weak men and it would be kinder to put them out of their misery." Faust's voice stayed very soft. "It sounds, I am sorry to say, exactly like your grief. It is loud, and certain, and reasonable. It offers me relief."
"What do you do?"
"I breathe," said Faust. "And I do it for the people who are still standing behind me, godson, because they need me to be the man I was before I heard it. And so does your mother. She is in the east wing, alive, and she has been asking for you."
The light flickered.
"Mother?"
"She is frightened. She needs her son."
The scales began to retreat.
They went slowly, from neck to shoulder to arm, like frost under sunlight.
The cold in the yard thinned.
Frost sagged in the boy's hands and the pale glow went out, and Isfrid dropped to his knees on the ice, shaking, his face wet.
Faust crossed the last few steps and caught him before he fell.
"I'm sorry," Isfrid sobbed. "I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"I know." Faust held him. "I know. On your road there will be a lot of difficulties, you need to face them with dignity."