The last of Reinhardt's hired men gathered in the great hall, and it was there that Isfrid learned what his sword had been waiting to tell him.
There were seven of them left, backs to the great doors, weapons dripping.
The household guards had fallen back to the stairs.
The Herzog stood on the landing with a drawn sabre, white-faced and grim, and beside him Rita sat in her chair with a pistol in her lap she had no earthly business knowing how to use.
At the front stood the mercenary captain, a brute with a broken nose and a blade that wailed like a child in the dark.
"The boy's finished," he shouted up the stair. "The old bastard's dead. Hand over the seal and no one else bleeds."
The doors behind him opened.
Isfrid stood in the doorway, drawn and hollow-eyed, the cane held loose in one hand.
"Put it down," said the captain. "You're a child."
"I am Isfrid Ernst Frost," said Isfrid, quite gently. "And I am the Successor of the Frost family."
The cane moved.
It was not Isfrid's hand. It was not Isfrid's will. The dragon's head on the pommel lifted of its own accord, the pale metal flowing like water, the jaws parting as though about to speak. A pulse of cold rolled out through the hall, and every torch went out at once.
In the dark, something opened its eye.
Faust, watching from above, saw it with his own gold one: a vast slit of pale blue, bigger than the hall, bigger than the house, rising from somewhere beneath the world to look out through the cane into the room. It looked at the mercenaries, and the mercenaries stopped breathing. It looked at the Herzog, and the Herzog sank to one knee without being aware of it. It looked at Isfrid, and Faust heard, in the absolute silence, the faintest sound of a very old thing laughing in delight.
The cane unsealed on its own.
Frost came out of it like a dragon uncoiling. The greatsword was longer than before, broader, its edge a ripple of frozen light. Rime ran along it in the shape of scales. Isfrid, startled, took it in both hands and felt it settle into his grip.
"Oh," he said. "Hello."
The mercenary captain screamed and charged.
Isfrid, who had never in his life felt less like fighting, met him with a single stroke.
It was not a strike so much as an act of agreement. Frost sang, a note like wind across a frozen lake, and the captain's wailing blade split in two. The pieces fell to the flagstones in a shower of grey dust, and the man behind them fell silent and went down on his face.
The other six threw down their weapons and ran.
No one pursued.
Isfrid stood in the great hall, shaking, the sword in his hands steaming and quiet.
"It answered," he whispered. "Faust. He answered."
"I noticed," said Faust, from the gallery. He found that he was smiling. His face was wet. He did not trouble to wipe it. "Rather a fine entrance."