Chapter 14 of 23·8 min read·The night after the Cinder-Burst
The Timber in the Gate
The youngest of the north-ward wounded had stopped shivering. Kaelen saw it when he came down from the bell chamber: the child’s teeth no longer clicked, and her mother was rubbing both hands over the girl’s arms as if she could force warmth back into them.
“Get her closer to the others,” Kaelen said.
“There’s no fire,” Oren replied. He had braced his injured arm against his ribs, his sleeve stiff with dried blood. “The last coals are gone.”
The lower room held a dozen people and the thin blue of their breath. Elora sat beside the child with a blanket over both their shoulders. She looked up at Kaelen, then at the girl’s still hands.
“Can you get a fire?” she asked.
“I’ll find one.”
He had no fuel. He had no time to pretend otherwise. He turned back toward the door.
Oren followed him into the snow. Vey was already waiting in the narrow street, a soot-blackened scarf tied over her mouth. Behind her, the north ward’s fires were dark, the smithy a low ruin of split stone and warped iron. The Cinder-Burst had taken the mass of Skahl-skin, but its force had left the street littered with ash and broken beams.
“Nothing in the store survived,” Vey said. “The forge is dead. The houses already gave what they could.”
Kaelen looked past her at the north gate. Its iron face stood shut, but the timber bracing behind it had been put in place after the first breach, thick beams wedged between the gate and the stone passage. “That will burn.”
Oren’s mouth tightened. “It’s holding the gate.”
“It’s holding an empty street.”
“It’s holding what might come next.”
The wind drove flecks of black snow between them. Kaelen could feel the bell’s spent ache behind his eyes. The Cinder-Burst had left the chamber cold and his hands unsteady. He did not have another answer hidden in the tower. The girl in the lower room had stopped shaking.
“We need heat now,” he said. “The gate is stone and iron. The braces are wood.”
Oren looked toward the ward. A few survivors stood under the eaves, too tired to come closer. They had heard him. The mayor’s gaze moved over them and returned to the gate.
“Vey, check the smithy,” he said. “If the fire left anything alive, I want it found. Kaelen, help me pull the braces.”
Vey’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve decided?”
“I’ve decided what can be done before that child dies.”
They worked with a crowbar and a short iron bar pried from the forge wreckage. The first brace had swollen against the stone passage and would not budge. Oren tried to get his injured arm around it, hissed through his teeth, and stepped back.
Next
With the gate braces gone and the wounded needing more fuel by morning, will Oren order timber taken from occupied homes—and whose roof will be the first to come down?
Kaelen took the bar. The wood groaned. A crust of frost broke from its side and struck the cobbles. He levered it again, putting his weight into the handle. The beam shifted by less than a finger’s width.
A scrape came from the far side of the gate.
Everyone stopped. The iron face held still. Nothing followed the sound. Kaelen listened for a heartbeat beyond it, for the dry, patient drag of charred hide. The wind pressed at the gate and carried only the scattered clatter of loose iron.
Oren took up the crowbar again. His left hand shook from the effort. “If something survived, it can meet us at the gate.”
The brace came free with a sudden crack. Oren stumbled backward. Kaelen caught him by the coat before he struck the wall, then let him go as soon as he had his balance.
Vey returned carrying a small iron pan. A few coals lay in it beneath a lid of ash. “The firebox had this tucked under a slab. They’re weak. They’ll take a spark if we give them something dry.”
She had also brought a short length of charred timber, the only piece of the ruined smithy that was dry through its center. Kaelen set it over the coals and watched for a flame. Nothing happened. Vey leaned close and blew carefully. The embers brightened, then sank again.
“More air,” she said.
Oren opened his coat and fanned the pan with the good side of his body. The coals caught. A small flame curled around the timber’s blackened edge.
The survivors in the street leaned forward. No one cheered. They watched the fire as if it might be taken away for looking at it.
Kaelen put his hands out, not to warm them but to judge what the fire could do. It would take more wood than the smithy ruin offered. The beam they had pulled from the gate was enough to keep it fed for a while, cut down and split. The other braces would give them more.
Oren saw him looking. “One beam,” he said. “We can keep the gate standing with the rest.”
“For a night?”
“For a night.”
“And after?”
Oren glanced at the people watching. “After, we’ll know more than we do now.”
The answer gave Kaelen no comfort. It was still an answer, and the injured were still waiting.
He picked up the crowbar. “Then we make the fire first.”
They pulled the second beam. This one had been notched into the stone and splintered at both ends. It tore free in pieces. The noise carried up the street, a harsh wooden crack that made the people under the eaves flinch. Oren stood beside the opening after it came loose, looking into the space where the bracing had been.
Vey started cutting the timber with a hand axe. She worked at the joints, keeping the pieces short enough to fit into the pan and later into a brazier. Kaelen joined her. His fingers were stiff, and every blow sent a dull ache through the burns across his palms. He kept his grip tight and struck where she marked.
When the first armful of split wood was ready, Oren chose two people to carry it toward the Spire. One of them looked back at the gate.
“Will it hold?” she asked.
Oren paused. “It will hold what it can.”
She nodded without looking convinced and took the wood.
Kaelen carried the pan himself. The heat touched his wrists through his gloves. It was small, but it was real. The black snow melted at the rim and ran in thin streaks through the ash.
At the Spire, Elora had moved the wounded into a tight row along the inside wall. She had tucked blankets around their feet and put the youngest child in the middle. When Kaelen entered with the coals, she stood up too fast and nearly stepped on the child’s blanket.
“Easy,” he said, reaching out to steady her.
“I’m fine. Is it enough?”
“For now.”
He set the pan on the stone hearth. The first split timber went over it. Flame caught along the dry inner grain, and the room changed by inches: the nearest faces lost their blue cast; a man’s hands stopped trembling enough for him to grip the cup Oren offered.
The child stayed very still. Her mother kept rubbing her arms, but now she watched the flame instead of the girl’s face.
Elora crouched beside the pan and pushed the next piece of wood closer with an iron hook. She checked the child’s blanket, then looked back at Kaelen.
“You used to laugh when I laughed,” she said.
The words found the place where the memory should have been. Kaelen remembered the fact of it. He remembered wanting to hear her. The sound itself was gone, beyond reach no matter how carefully he searched.
“I remember that,” he said.
Elora held his gaze. The fire shifted. She did not ask him to try again or make a sound for him to recognize. Instead, she took his hand and placed the iron hook in it.
“Keep that side in,” she said. “The coals are going out there.”
He turned the wood. The flame steadied. Elora kept her hand on his a moment longer, then let go and returned to the child.
Oren came in behind them with the next load. His injured arm hung close to his side, but he carried the wood with his good hand. He set it down without looking at the fire.
“How long will it last?” Kaelen asked.
“Until the timber’s gone.”
“That’s not long.”
“No.” Oren looked at the wounded, then at the small stack of split wood. “We’ll ration it. Keep the fire low and bring the worst cases close.”
Kaelen wanted to tell him that low fire would not be enough. He looked at the child’s fingers. The skin had begun to pink at the tips. He kept the words to himself.
The next hours were measured in pieces of wood. Vey brought more from the gate. Oren organized the carrying and made the able-bodied take turns so no one exhausted themselves in the cold. Kaelen moved the pan between the Spire’s lower room and the adjoining passage, where two more wounded had been laid down. Each time he returned to the north ward, the gate stood more open behind its iron face.
By the time the last usable brace was on the ground, the fire had lasted long enough for the child to start shivering again. Her mother put both arms around her and began to cry without making a sound. The shivering meant the girl was no longer slipping away from them.
Kaelen watched until the mother looked up. Then he turned to the fire and added another piece.
Oren stood at the doorway, studying the pile. There was little left. “This will carry them through tonight,” he said. “If we keep it small.”
Vey wiped the axe on her sleeve. “Tomorrow will be colder.”
Nobody answered her. They had all heard the wind building around the tower.
Kaelen took the empty pan back to the hearth. He had wanted the bell to be the last thing between Elora and the cold. Instead, the gate had become fuel, and the town’s defense had thinned by the handsful. The bell’s cost stayed with him. The fire did not take it away.
Oren left the Spire before the wood ran out. Kaelen followed him to the lower landing. In the street, people had begun to gather in small groups around the dark houses. Their doors and shutters were already gone; now they looked up at the roof beams.
“We can’t take every house,” Kaelen said.
“No.” Oren’s voice was rough from the cold. “We can’t leave the wounded to freeze, either.”
A knock struck the Spire’s lower door. Oren and Kaelen turned together. A woman stood outside with snow on her hair and a child behind her. She had come from the south end of the ward, where the roofs still held their beams.
Her eyes went past them to the glow in the lower room. “Mayor,” she said. “They told us the gate burned. Is it our roof next?”
Oren looked back toward the room of wounded. The fire was already eating into the last stack of timber.
“We need more wood by morning,” he said.
The woman’s hand closed around the child’s shoulder. “Then tell us whose.”