Chapter 21 of 23·6 min read·That same night, from the Spire’s evacuation through the survivors’ first hours in shelter
The Floor Beneath the Fire
The first wounded man slipped on the Spire’s lower stair, and Kaelen caught him before his head struck stone.
The man’s boots dragged. His bandaged leg shook against Kaelen’s arm, and he made a small, breathless sound when Kaelen lifted him again.
“Keep the line moving,” Oren called from below. “The bakehouse is clear.”
Kaelen settled the man’s weight against his shoulder. The stairs were narrow, damp with meltwater tracked down from the exposed upper chamber. Behind them, Vey guided two survivors carrying a door between them, with a wounded woman lashed to it in blankets. Elora came last, clutching the bundle of dry cloths they had salvaged from the Spire’s stores.
She had no gloves. Kaelen looked at her hands, reddened where she held the bundle, then pulled his own gloves off and pushed them into her grip.
“Keep those on.”
She took them without asking why. They swallowed her fingers.
At the foot of the stair, Oren waited beside the open tower door. Snow blew through the gap and gathered in the threshold. Beyond it, Verndall lay dark beneath the blizzard, its narrow lanes blocked by fallen stone and drifts. The north ward was a smear of black shapes. The bell’s Cinder-Burst had ended the assault, but the cold remained, and it found every tear in the town.
They carried the wounded toward the south ward. Kaelen kept the man’s arm hooked over his shoulder and watched the uneven path. Elora walked ahead with a lantern, stopping at each turn to look back and check that the group was still together.
The bakehouse stood near the old market steps. Its thick black-stone walls had held through the storm, though one shutter hung loose and snow had packed against the door. Oren shoved it open. The dark room smelled of cold flour and old ash.
The oven was a block of stone at the back, its mouth black and empty. Kaelen set the wounded man on the long worktable. The man tried to sit up, then fell back with his teeth clicking.
“Here,” Vey said. She and the others made room along the wall, drawing blankets over the woman on the door. “Get them off the floor.”
Oren inspected the oven’s flue, then the empty wood bin beside it. “The room will keep out the wind. It won’t keep them warm.”
Kaelen looked at the covered oven mouth. The stone was cold beneath his hand. “There’s a house behind this one.”
“Vacant,” Oren said. “The family went south before the gate fell.”
“Then we take the floor.”
Oren looked toward the door. His face had gone gray with fatigue. “Those joists held up a roof yesterday.”
Next
With the wounded warm for one night and every vacant house stripped, can Kaelen and Oren find a place for them tomorrow without leaving another family roofless?
For a moment, Oren said nothing. Then he took the lantern from Elora and went out.
The vacant house stood close enough that its rear wall shared an alley with the bakehouse. Snow had piled above its sill. They forced the door inward and found the front room stripped of chairs, shutters, and loose boards. The family had taken what they could carry. A table leg lay broken beside the hearth.
Oren leaned into the doorway. “We take the joists from the rear room. The front stays up.”
Kaelen stepped over the broken leg. “If the floor sags, we stop.”
“Everyone out but the two of us.” Oren’s gaze moved to Elora. “You too.”
“I can hold the lantern,” she said.
Kaelen looked at the timber overhead, at the packed snow beyond the broken shutter. “Stand in the alley. Where I can see you.”
She nodded and went out with Vey. Kaelen watched until the lantern reached the doorway, then turned back to Oren.
They pried up the floorboards one at a time. Dry dust lifted from the gaps, carrying the faint smell of stored grain. The joists beneath were old, thick, and sound. Oren set a wedge under the first and struck it with the back of his axe. Kaelen braced the beam with both hands.
The wood groaned. A thin crack ran through the ceiling plaster.
“Easy,” Oren said.
Kaelen shifted his grip. His palms were scarred from the bell’s ironwork, and the beam pressed against the tender skin. He set his shoulder beneath it and pushed as Oren worked the wedge deeper. The first joist came free with a splintering snap.
They carried it to the bakehouse together. Elora stood near the alley mouth, her arms crossed inside Kaelen’s oversized gloves.
“Three?” she asked.
“Three to start,” Oren said.
The oven’s wide mouth made loading the beams difficult. They cut the joists into lengths with a hand saw taken from the baker’s bench. Kaelen’s arms began to tremble before the first fire caught. The wood had been dry; the flame took quickly, brightening the oven’s dark throat.
Smoke climbed the flue. Heat followed more slowly, soaking into the stone. Oren fed the fire with broken boards from the vacant house’s remaining floor. Kaelen set the wounded close to the oven wall, away from the door and the draft. Vey shifted blankets around their shoulders.
The injured woman on the door kept her eyes closed. Her lips had gone pale. Elora knelt beside her and rubbed her hands through the blanket, then moved to the next person without waiting to be asked.
“How many?” Kaelen said.
“Seven here. Three still at the Spire.” Elora glanced at the door. “One can walk if someone holds him.”
“Stay here,” Kaelen said.
“I will.”
He went back into the house with Oren for another beam. The crack in the ceiling had widened. One floorboard dipped beneath his boot.
Oren saw it. “That’s enough. We have wood for the night.”
The fire behind them had begun to warm the oven’s outer stone. Kaelen pictured the wounded woman’s pale mouth and the man’s shaking leg.
“One more.”
Oren’s jaw tightened. He looked at the ceiling, then at Kaelen. “If it comes down, we leave it.”
They pulled one more joist. The rear room’s floor dropped an inch when it came free. Dust sifted from the ceiling. Kaelen kept his shoulder under the beam until Oren cleared the doorway, then followed him out.
They had taken the house’s last sound support. Its roof still stood, but the rear room floor sagged toward the cellar. No one would sleep there again until it was rebuilt.
Back in the bakehouse, the oven’s heat had spread through the room. Kaelen felt it on his face as soon as he entered. The wounded man’s shivering had eased. He opened his eyes and asked for water in a voice rough with cold.
Vey gave him a cup. “Drink slowly.”
He did. His hands steadied around the rim.
The woman on the door had turned her face toward the oven. Her fingers moved beneath the blanket, searching for warmth. Elora tucked the edge around her chin. When she stood, she rubbed her own hands together. Kaelen noticed the gloves had slipped off one finger.
He pulled the cuff down over her knuckles.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded, then moved a crate from the warmest place beside the oven. Elora looked at the open space, then at him.
“Sit there,” he said.
She sat. The gloves rested in her lap. He took the crate at the other end of the bench and settled with his back against the wall, close enough to keep her in sight.
Oren came to stand beside him. His coat was dusted with plaster. “This holds through morning. Maybe longer if we feed it slowly.”
“How much wood remains?” Kaelen asked.
“Nothing we can take without putting someone out of a roof.” Oren looked around the bakehouse at the packed blankets and the people huddled near the oven. “Tomorrow we’ll have to find another answer.”
Kaelen watched the firelight touch the woman’s cheek. Her eyes were open now. Elora had begun counting the cups, making sure each person had water. The wounded man drank again without spilling.
For tonight, the room held.
Oren followed Kaelen’s gaze toward the door. Past it, the south ward’s surviving roofs carried the weight of the snow. People slept beneath them, crowded together in rooms with their shutters gone and their doors burned for heat.
“There aren’t any empty houses left with sound floors,” Oren said.
Elora set down the last cup and looked up at them. Kaelen kept his hands on his knees, the warmth reaching his knuckles while the fire spent the town’s last vacant room.
Outside, the blizzard pressed against the bakehouse door. By morning, they would have to decide where the wounded could sleep without taking the roof from someone who still lived beneath it.