To Johannes Cabal, this showed shocking over-familiarity and ill-breeding. Winter as a whole was a trial to him, forcing his attention from his work and to the necessities of running a house as the mercury dropped and the pipes threatened to burst at the first frost. Even when his house – a three storey building apparently stolen from the middle of a row of late Victorian townhouses and dropped on a remote hillside intact down to its small front and back gardens, woodshed and ingrained soot – even when his house was in good repair and proof against the December cold, there was little he could do professionally but bring his notes up to date and plan new experiments for the thaw. It was, after all, terribly difficult to rob a grave when the soil was frozen. Johannes Cabal’s profession was analytical necromancy. It wasn’t a calling that attracted adoration or even tolerance. It seemed ironic to him, while escaping one torch-bearing mob or another, that doctors were regarded so highly for their stumbling and short-termed treatments when all he wanted to do was surpass their greatest efforts.
