Chapter 5 of 5·6 min read·That evening through the first hours before dawn
The Rooms They Gave
Oren laid the house list across the table in the gatehouse. Beside each address he had marked the wood that could be taken: shutters, interior doors, stair rails. The remaining abandoned houses were already crossed out.
“Enough for the line through tomorrow,” he said. “If we take all of it.”
Around the table, the town’s defenders kept their gloves on. Meltwater darkened the black stone beneath their boots. They had come in from the north gate with frost in their beards and smoke in their clothes.
Vey tapped the list. “The bell might last longer than the fire. Or it might take what we can’t spare.”
Kaelen looked at the marks. “It takes something every time.”
Oren’s eyes stayed on him. “And the homes?”
“Take from occupied rooms and people lose heat. Ring the bell and I lose memories.” Kaelen folded the corner of the list flat. “There isn’t a clean choice.”
Nobody answered. A defender at the end of the table rubbed a thumb over the leather seam of his glove. Another looked toward the narrow windows, where the cobalt fog pressed against the glass.
Oren turned the list so the others could read it. “We can take the wood by order. Or each household can say what it can give. We don’t have time to ask every person twice.”
“Then ask once,” Kaelen said.
It took until the second bell of the town clock to settle. Some households offered shutters from rooms no one slept in. Others gave up interior doors, which meant hanging blankets across the openings and sharing what warmth remained. One family offered a length of stair rail and then spent several minutes arguing over whether the rail was load-bearing. Oren sent a carpenter to look.
The list filled with smaller marks, each one a piece of someone’s house. It still fell short.
Kaelen set his own name at the bottom. “The table in the Spire. The shelves in the lower room. My bed frame.”
“You need a bed,” Oren said.
“I need the line to hold.”
Oren studied him, then added the items.
Outside, they carried the first loads through the twisting streets. The wood was damp and heavy. Kaelen took one end of a door while a woman from the house took the other. She was older than he was, with a wool scarf tied over her hair. Her back room had been warm enough for sleeping; now its window stood open to the cold while the shutters went to the gate.
“Leave the door,” she said when Oren pointed to it. “My sister can stay in the main room with me.”
Next
Kaelen and Oren must find a way to seal the drain beneath the north gate before the Skahl-skin use it to enter Verndall again.
The woman’s sister, wrapped in a patched coat, looked past Kaelen toward the tower. “He’ll ring if the line fails?”
Kaelen shifted his grip. The door’s iron latch pressed into his palm. “If there’s no other way.”
“Then take it.”
They lifted together. The sister caught the door’s edge when it bumped against the stone wall, steadying it so the latch wouldn’t tear free.
By the time they reached the north gate, the older woman had a folded blanket tucked under one arm. She was going back to her sister’s room. Kaelen watched them turn down the street, then lowered the door onto the fuel pile.
The new line was thicker than the first. It filled the gaps along the broken gate and ran farther down the inner wall. The defenders packed coal beneath the timber and covered the kindling with scraps of tarred cloth. Oren assigned watches. Vey checked the powdery black snow beyond the gate, then came back with her jaw set.
“Nothing moving out there,” she said.
“Good,” Oren replied.
Vey looked at the stacked timber. “For now.”
Kaelen climbed back to the Spire before the fuel line was lit. Elora was at the table with her tally slate, counting the remaining coal twice. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and a smear of chalk crossed one thumb.
“Did they take the table?” she asked.
“Soon.”
“Then I’ll use the slate on my knees.” She pushed the small fuel map toward him. It showed the Spire, the gate, and a row of squares for the town’s coal stores. She had drawn a tiny figure beside the tower, holding a stick. “That’s you carrying the bed.”
He took the map. “I didn’t carry the bed.”
“I know. I drew you carrying it because it was heavier than the shelves.”
She returned to her tally. Kaelen folded the map and put it in his coat pocket.
The fire line lit at dusk. It burned low and close to the ground, a strip of orange under the gate’s black teeth. The household wood caught slowly; smoke gathered beneath the wall before the wind pulled it away. Kaelen stayed at the tower window, watching the glow shrink into the valley fog.
A shout rose from the north gate.
He was already moving when the second shout came. He took the stair down two steps at a time, one hand dragging along the cold rail. At the bottom, Elora called after him. He stopped long enough to turn.
“Stay here.”
“I know.” She had the tally slate clutched to her chest. “I’ll keep the count.”
He left before she could ask what he would do if the count ran out.
At the gate, the defenders had drawn back from the fire. A Skahl-skin crawled over the stone on its hands and knees, brittle hide breaking at the elbows. It had come through somewhere inside the wall. No one could get close enough to drive it toward the flames; it tracked each warm body that moved.
Oren held a torch out in front of him. The creature turned toward the living heat, its head tilting as if to listen.
“Clear the yard,” Kaelen said.
The defenders shifted behind the stone supports. Oren stepped back, but one guard stumbled on a fallen plank. The creature snapped toward the sound of his breath and lunged.
Kaelen reached the Pyre-Chime’s outer ring in the Spire and pulled the cord.
The ring struck once. The sound went through the stone and came back through the soles of his boots. At the gate, the Skahl-skin broke apart in a spray of charred flakes. The defenders dropped to the ground, hands over their ears. The guard who had stumbled lay curled behind the support, still moving.
Kaelen lowered the cord. A small piece of the night’s ordinary life had gone with the toll.
When he returned to the Spire, Elora was still at the table. She had turned the fuel map toward the lamp and was rubbing at one of the charcoal squares.
“Do you remember when I drew this?” she asked.
He looked at the little figure carrying the stick. He knew her hand in the uneven lines. He knew she had made it for him. The moment itself had vanished.
“No,” he said.
Her finger stopped on the square. “It was yesterday. You were fixing the hinge, and I was telling you the coal count.”
He waited for the picture of it to come. There was only the map.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Elora took the chalk from beside her slate. She wrote beneath the drawing: I made this yesterday while Father fixed the hinge. Then she turned it toward him again.
Kaelen read the sentence. “Thank you.”
She left her hand beside the words, close enough that his sleeve touched her knuckles. He didn’t move away. The paper stayed in his pocket, but he took it out and set it beside her new note.
Oren came up the Spire stairs while Elora was sharpening the chalk. He had a strip of blackened cloth in one hand.
“The Skahl-skin came through the drain beneath the north gate,” he said. “We found the track.”
Kaelen looked from the cloth to the map on the table. The little drawn gate sat at the end of Elora’s row of coal stores.
“How wide?” he asked.
“Wide enough for one. Maybe more if they break the stone.” Oren laid the cloth down. “The fire line doesn’t reach below the wall.”
Kaelen took his coat from the peg. The new fuel would last through the night. It would not seal the drain.
Elora picked up the slate. “I can keep counting.”
He nodded, then went with Oren to see what the wall had left open.