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ample opportunity to observe the family while they were employed at Stratton House. Perhaps Mr. O’Brien might yet prove to be suitable.
    The carriage rocked to a halt. With London’s traffic, this was not entirely unusual, but a moment later, she became aware of shouting. “Another riot?”
    “Let me see.” Vincent disengaged himself from her, and looked out the window. He shook his head. “It is in front of us. A moment.”
    Before Jane could protest, he had stepped out of the carriage. Cold air gusted in, stirring Vincent’s hair as he stood on the step of the carriage, peering over the crowd. With the door open, Jane could now make out some phrases coming from the mob, like “coldmonger” and “weather fiend” and “stop the snow.”
    Jane leaned out to look down the street. She had expected to see more Luddites pulling a frame out of a building, but instead a crowd had gathered in front of a grocer’s. Their anger was affixed upon a clear spot in their midst. One protester held a sign on a stout stick demanding “God’s wrath for weather meddlers.” Another read, “Coldmongers are the Devil’s servants.”
    Jane stared in disbelief. “They cannot think that coldmongers are responsible for the weather. It flies in the face of science.”
    “Superstition rarely troubles with facts.”
    The crowd rushed around that same clear area. A man in a ragged muffler lifted a cobble from the street and threw it into the middle. For a moment, Jane had a clear view of the centre.
    In the middle was a young man of colour wearing the blue armband of the coldmongers’ guild. He was bleeding.

 
    Four
    Relations
    As the mob heaved around the young man, Vincent’s jaw tightened. “Jane. Stay in the carriage.”
    She did not. Jane ran behind her husband as he raced toward the crowd. She snatched her gloves from her hands so that she would be better able to seize glamour. At the back of the crowd, Vincent came to a sudden halt. He drew a mass of glamour out of the ether and knotted it quickly.
    It sounded as though an enormous detonation went off in the middle of the street accompanied by blinding light. Neither was true, but the illusion so confounded the crowd’s senses that they backed away from the perceived blast. Jane darted through the gap in the throng.
    Vincent shouted at her, but she paid him no mind, intent on the young coldmonger. Behind Jane, her husband caused another concussion, employing military tactics from the Battle of Quatre Bras.
    When Jane reached the coldmonger, she seized glamour. As Vincent’s next explosion caused the crowd to cry out and cower, Jane twisted light into a ball, which she expanded quickly into a Sphère Obscurcie . This invention of Vincent’s would hide them from the eyes of the crowd. It was too difficult to maintain the folds while walking, but it would guide the sunlight around them and leave them masked for the time being.
    She turned to the lad, who had blood trickling from a cut over his eye. “They cannot see us.”
    Indeed, someone in the crowd shouted, “He got away!”
    Jane wove again, using a variation on the percussion glamour to create the sound of horses galloping closer. It would not pass as real were it not for the discord around them. As it was, the syncopated beats gave the crowd an alarm. She left that to loop around and used a separate thread to sound a whistle, as though the Bow Street Runners were on their way. Crying in dismay, the crowd separated and fled.
    One man ran through the apparently empty space where Jane stood with the coldmonger. He collided with her, knocking Jane back and out of the Sphère . She fell hard against the cobbles and he tripped, landing heavily atop her. His elbow came down on her ribs and forced all the air out of her lungs. Stars and dark spots swam in front of her eyes as though she had done too much glamour.
    A moment later, the man seemed to fly up and away from her. Vincent had seized him by the collar and flung him