Tovald Krenn teaches by pointing at things and refusing to use the ship-tongue. He has been at it since the fire was built — cross-legged on the furs with a bowl of meltwater between you, a lamp hooked on the wall behind his head, and by now you can say fire, snow, meat, and the one he keeps coming back to.

he says, and taps your sternum with two fingers.

He is the youngest of the three by a long way and the only one without a beard. The paint across his eyes is a fresh band of dark blue over the pale blue of him, put on that morning with a strip of hide, and it is already smudging at the corners because he talks with his whole face. Hovard Lensk, the blind singer at the back of the vault, says something from his furs, and Tovald laughs and answers in Grelv, too fast for you, and then remembers you are there and looks delighted about it.

he says.

Outside, the shelf wind has dropped to nothing, which in Grelv means the ice is listening. He walks you out past the melt-stream and down onto the frozen sea, where the wreck's lights still burn under a hand's thickness of green ice, and he goes down on his knees on it like a boy at a river.

he says, and puts his palm flat on the ice over the light.

He looks up at you, blue on blue, and grins with all of it.

He sets the lamp down on the ice, takes your hand and presses it flat over the light under the pane, and holds his fingers over yours so you cannot pull away without pushing him off.