The wounded had stopped shivering because they were too tired to keep doing it. Kaelen watched a man’s fingers turn blue around the edge of his blanket and looked at the fire. The last of the gate braces had settled into a bed of red coals. There was enough heat left for a little while. After that, the Spire would be cold again.
Oren stood by the stair with his injured arm tucked close to his body. Vey had brought him a piece of charcoal and a board. He wrote the names of the north-ward households on it, one line at a time, pressing hard enough to make the charcoal snap.
“We need wood before the fire dies,” Vey said. “The houses are still standing.”
The wounded heard her. A woman near the wall pulled her blanket higher over her shoulders. No one asked what she meant.
Oren finished the list. “We take timber from the houses nearest the north ward. One shutter from each, where it can be spared. We start at my place.”
Vey glanced at the board. “A shutter won’t carry the wounded through another night.”
“Then we take doors after.” Oren’s jaw shifted as he flexed his good hand. “Mine first.”
Kaelen looked from the dwindling coals to the man’s stiff arm. “You can’t carry a door.”
“I can tell you where it is.”
Elora was kneeling beside the blue-fingered man, folding the edge of his blanket under his shoulder. She looked up. “I can carry a small shutter.”
“You can carry blankets,” Kaelen said.
She considered this, then nodded as if the jobs had been divided fairly. “There are three by the stair.”
Kaelen went to fetch them. When he came back, she had put her hands under the man’s blanket to warm them. She pulled them out when Kaelen set the stack beside her.
“His fingers are stiff,” she said. “He can’t tie the blanket himself.”
Kaelen crouched and knotted it for him. The man’s eyes stayed closed. Elora passed him a cup of water, holding it while he drank. Then she picked up two blankets and started down the stair.
The words he might have used—stay here, let me—came to him too late. She was already moving carefully, one hand on the rail and the blankets held against her chest. He took the remaining stack and followed.
At the bottom, a gust came through the broken lower hatch and found the gap in his coat. The entry still smelled of smoke from the attack. Above them, the open roof let the cold down into the bell chamber. There was nowhere in the tower the weather could not reach.
Oren led them through the narrow streets. Vey carried a hatchet. Kaelen had a pry bar over one shoulder. Elora kept to his side, carrying the blankets. The small fire in the north ward made their shadows long over the black stone.
Next
With the north gate bending and the new fire drawing warmth to the ward, can Oren and Kaelen keep the Skahl-skin from forcing their way through?
Oren’s house stood two streets from the gate, wedged between a cooper’s shop and a narrow storehouse. One shutter had already been torn off by the wind. The other was fastened from inside.
“Front door,” Oren said. “It’s oak. Good hinges.”
Vey looked at his arm. “You’ll need to stand clear.”
“I’ve managed that.”
Kaelen wedged the pry bar beside the top hinge. The door resisted, swollen in its frame. He leaned into the bar until the old wood groaned. Vey struck the hinge pin with the flat of her hatchet. Oren watched from the threshold, his injured arm still and useless at his side.
The first pin came free. The second took longer. When the door finally tipped outward, Oren caught it against his hip with his good hand, then had to let go as its weight pulled him sideways. Kaelen steadied it before it fell.
Oren’s gaze stayed on the bare opening. Beyond it, a room stood in darkness, its hearth black. A narrow table and two chairs sat inside. No firewood remained beside them.
“Put it on the sled,” he said.
Kaelen and Vey carried the door between them. Oren stayed in the open entrance. He did not ask them to wait while he fetched a blanket or a coat. He only watched them take away the piece of wood that had kept the cold outside his own rooms.
At the next house, a woman opened the door before they knocked. She had a sleeping child against her shoulder. The child’s hair stuck to her cheek, damp with sweat.
“One shutter,” Oren said. “The fire needs it.”
The woman looked at the child, then toward the dark window behind her. “Take the one over the bed. The other still catches the wind.”
Vey went in with the hatchet. The woman stayed at the threshold, shifting the sleeping child higher when the small body stirred. Kaelen carried the shutter once it was loose. Its painted inside faced outward now, a faded blue flower on the board.
“Will there be another fire tomorrow?” the woman asked.
Oren paused. “I don’t know.”
She lowered her eyes to the child. “Then take the door too, if you have to.”
“We’ll ask before we do,” he said.
The woman nodded, though the answer had not made her warmer. She closed the door behind them. The latch caught with a thin click.
They gathered shutters from four more houses. At each one, Oren named what they needed and waited for the answer. Some people chose a shutter. One man offered a cupboard door and then stood beside it while Kaelen pried it loose. In another house, a woman handed Vey a chair and kept the shutter. They did not have enough wood for a long burn, but the pile on the sled grew.
Kaelen’s hands began to ache around the pry bar. The work came more slowly when the hinges were frozen. He could have made the bell do this differently. One toll, one shock, and every creature outside the town would be ash. The thought had the clean, useless shape of a tool on a workbench.
The bell was silent above them. He did not reach for it.
When they returned to the Spire, Elora was already handing out the blankets. She had wrapped one around the man whose fingers had gone blue, then tucked the edge under his arm so it would stay. The last blanket lay over her own shoulders. She lifted it off when she saw Kaelen come in.
“Keep it,” he said.
“There are more cold people.”
“There are more blankets.”
She looked at the stack he carried. “Those are for the fire.”
He took the blanket from her hands and put it back around her shoulders. She let him, though she turned at once to see who else needed help. Kaelen pulled the knot tight enough that it would hold and not tight enough to stop her moving.
They fed Oren’s door into the fire first. The flames took their time, blackening the edges before they caught. The shutters followed, then the smaller pieces. Smoke rolled up the Spire’s stair, and the wounded shifted closer to the warmth. A man who had been silent all night opened his eyes and reached both hands toward the fire.
Elora knelt beside him with a cup. He drank without spilling. When he finished, she set the cup in his lap and moved to the next person.
Kaelen watched her pass through the crowded room. Her steps were careful around the injured, her attention moving from one face to the next. He knew she laughed. He knew he used to listen for it in the tower. The sound itself remained beyond him, as blank as the cold iron of the silent bell.
She glanced back to see if he was watching. He held out a strip of cloth, and she took it to bind a man’s cut palm.
Oren stood close to the fire, keeping his good hand open toward the heat. The other hung stiff at his side. Vey came up beside him.
“That buys us till morning,” she said.
“If the wood lasts.”
“It won’t last past morning.”
Oren looked toward the wounded. “Then we find something else.”
A sound came from outside: a low iron scrape that traveled through the stones beneath their feet.
The room quieted. The man with the bandaged hand lowered his cup. Kaelen looked at Oren. Oren was already turning toward the door.
Vey picked up her hatchet. “The gate.”
They went down together. Kaelen left the fire behind him, though he could feel its heat on his back until the stair bent away. Elora followed with the blanket still around her shoulders. He held out an arm to stop her at the entry.
“Stay with them.”
“I can carry the water.”
“Stay by the wounded.”
She searched his face for a moment, then picked up the empty cups instead. “I’ll bring these back.”
Kaelen nodded and went on.
The north ward was dim, the fire line dark beyond its last stones. Black snow lay in thin crusts along the street. At the gate, the iron face shuddered in its frame. The timber braces they had burned were gone, leaving the stone passage bare behind it.
A second scrape dragged across the iron. The gate bowed inward by the width of a finger.
Oren reached for the stone wall, his injured arm failing to lift. Vey planted her shoulder against the gate’s inner beam. Kaelen seized the iron beside her.
Something pressed from the other side. The metal bent another fraction, and Oren shouted for every able hand in the ward.