"Anyway," says Tony.

"I don't know if we have male alts. I suppose it's the kind of thing I could have missed. People wouldn't recognize me or be all 'excuse me, Your Majesty' on that basis."

"I find the other Sherlock perfectly recognizable."

"Yeah, but the Bells don't have handy twins."

"Exactly," says Bell. "I imagine he'd look similar, but there are loads of people who look similar and aren't even related, let alone alts. I'd probably have to talk to such a guy for a while, or notice him wearing a tastefully designed crown, or something, before I'd guess."

"I'm thinking permanent ice, for my tastefully designed crown," says Isabella cheerfully. "I've been thinking that since I was little and my crown-related musings were all in the form of what if I were made clan queen one day even though I'm not anywhere close to the line of succession and don't really want that many clan sisters to die."

"Coral, abalone, and pearls," says Shell Bell, grinning back.

"...Permanent ice?" says Tony.

"Oh, witches aren't harmed by the cold," says Isabella, completely misunderstanding his interest.

"I mean, permanent ice is a thing?"

"...Yes? Permanent ice is easy, it's a pure verse spell, I learned it when I was eight?"

"Okay, so I found your favour. That was easy."

"Cool," says Isabella. "Do you want me to do it now, then? I won't even need any materials. I was worried you were going to have me drawing honey runes all afternoon," she laughs.

"First I have to figure out where I'm going to put it," he says. "If you were gonna make a crown, you can probably do shapes, right?"

"I was going to sculpt the crown in, you know, the ordinary way, with sharp objects, and maybe warmth here and there for smooth parts," says Isabella, producing and twirling her dagger. (She was obliged to sit through enough dagger lessons to Not Be A Complete Embarrassment To The Olympic Clan; this is one of the few physical tricks she can do that doesn't give away her clumsiness.) "Then permanent-ify it. If you want relatively simple shapes, like spheres or something, I can probably invent a spell for that, but it's not easy as pie like the permanentification."

Isabella tucks her dagger away. "I can also freeze water, so if you have some water that you would like to be cold, I could probably work out out a way to freeze any given fraction of it in an easily defined shape," she says.

"First I'm gonna figure out exactly what I wanna use it for, and how," he says.

"Oh, I thought you knew. If you don't have an application in mind how do you know that's what you want?"

"There's a difference between knowing you're looking at the solution to a problem and knowing how to implement that solution," he explains. "The problem is cooling systems for equipment that generates a lot of waste heat, the connection is obvious, the trick is figuring out where and how it'll do the most good."

"You don't want me to just... you know... make a room cold, without involving actual ice?"

"How specifically can you control temperature?"

"If you loan me a thermometer, then I don't see any reason I can't do it as specifically as the thermometer can read it."

"Okay, but how specifically in terms of area, and against how much resistance?"

"The area has to have borders already, like a room or a group of rooms, or be an easily defined shape, and if by resistance you mean things trying to be warm, I... doubt I'd be effective against a volcano?"