Chapter 95: First Snow

Nell had been watching the river every night for weeks.

The infirmary bed was by the window, a whole window, just as Aren had promised, and from up here at the top of the Academy hill she could see all of Highcrest falling away below her: the Upper Ring, the merchant quarter, the lower city, and at the very bottom, the black curve of the river under the bridges.

Tonight, at long last, it was snowing. It had crept slowly down the hill roof by roof, and now she knelt on her bed with the red blankets around her shoulders and her nose pressed against the cold glass, watching the first flakes come down to the river.

She reached under her pillow, and the letter was still there, exactly where it always was. She had held it so many times without opening it that the paper had gone soft as cloth.

If I’m not back by the time the first snow comes down to the river, give this to Mira.

Something knocked lightly on the roof above her, twice, as it sometimes did at night. Every three days a black petal appeared in her water jug, the same petals Aren had dropped in her cup at the healer house, and nobody ever saw who left them.

"I know," she whispered to it now. "I’m going to."

She rang the little bell for the night boy and told him to fetch Mira Hale from the training yard, right now, because she had promised.

Then she sat and waited, and her stomach hurt, and it wasn’t the mark.

Mira came every day. She had come every single day since the funeral, with bread from the dining hall wrapped in a napkin, and she read to Nell from the farmer’s book, doing all the voices, even the cow’s. She had bought the red blankets with her own allowance. And every day Nell had looked at her, kept her promise, and said nothing at all.

Mira came in with snow in her hair and sand on her boots, completely out of breath.

"Nell, is it the arm? The boy said..."

"Sit down, please," Nell told her.

Mira sat on the edge of the bed, and Nell held out the letter.

It took Mira a moment, and Nell watched her recognize the handwriting and watched her face go still, then white, then something worse than white.

For Mira. If I’m not back by the first snow.

"Where did you get this?" Mira asked, in a dangerously quiet voice.

"He gave it to me."

"When?"

Nell made herself look straight at her.

"A week after the funeral, he came through the window at the healer house. He was thin and he had white in his hair, and he gave me medicine for my arm. A few nights later he came back, gave me this, and went north."

Mira didn’t move at first. Then she tore the seal open and read it once, and then again, and her hands had started to shake.

"Seven lines! Just seven lines!" She looked up, and her eyes were wet and furious at the same time. "He was alive, Nell, he was alive, and he sat on your bed, and he didn’t come up the hill to my door."

"He couldn’t, because bad people think he’s dead."

"And you knew." Mira stood up so fast that the bed shook. "You knew, all this time! I sat here every single day, Nell! I read you that stupid book and I cried in the stairwell afterwards so you wouldn’t hear, and you knew!"

"He made me promise," Nell answered.

"I don’t care what he made you do!" It came out so loudly that the lamp flame jumped. "He always makes people promise! He promises, and then he breaks it, and everyone else has to keep theirs! He promised he’d come to my fight, Nell, he actually promised, and now this?" She shook the letter furiously. "I’m alive, I’m sorry, look after Nell. Is that really all I get?"

Nell didn’t flinch. She had never flinched, not even at the healer house with the black roots climbing her arm.

"He’s not back," she said quietly. "That’s why I gave it to you. He said by the first snow, so look outside, Mira. He’s not back."

That stopped Mira dead.

"Where exactly? North where?"

"I don’t know," Nell said, looking at the window. "But there’s a merchant on Lantern Street. Aren went to him once, before, and Old Mag says he sells things nobody else can get." She hesitated. "And that he doesn’t sell them for gold. He takes memories."

The room went utterly quiet.

"Why are you telling me that?"

"Because you’re going to go anyway," Nell replied. "I’d rather you knew the price."

Lantern Street was completely empty.

Mira had run all the way down the hill with her coat open and the letter buttoned inside her shirt. Now she stood in the middle of the street, breathing hard, and turned in a slow circle. The snow lay smooth down the middle of the cobbles, with no footprints in it but hers, and there was no shop and no door, only old stone walls, cracked and furred with moss.

"Come on," she called out loud. "Come on, I know you’re here!"

Nothing answered, and somewhere in the wind a shutter banged.

She walked to the end of the street and back, with her fists clenched so tightly that her nails hurt.

"I’m not leaving!" she shouted at the walls. "Do you hear me? I’ll stand here till morning if I have to! I’m a Hearthwarden, I don’t freeze!"

She lifted her hands, and the orange dome bloomed out of them, wide and hot and furious, lighting up the whole street. The snow hissed into steam wherever it touched.

In the wall beside her, where there had only been moss, there was a door.

It stood open, and warm light spilled out across the snow. A small bell above the frame rang once, though there was no wind at all.

Mira let the dome fall and walked in before she could think.

The shop was full of things that moved: stones that slowly rose and fell on the shelves, breathing. At the far end, behind a long counter of dark wood, stood the merchant.

He was extremely tall and thin, in a long grey robe, and his long pale hands lay perfectly still on the counter. Where his face should have been, there was nothing at all, only smooth pale skin, like porcelain that nobody had finished.

Every hair on Mira’s arms stood up, but she planted her feet firmly and stayed.

"Welcome." The voice came from somewhere in the room, soft and impossibly far away. "You are warm, which is unusual on a night like this."

She slapped the letter down on the counter between his hands.

"Aren came here once. He traded with you for his sister’s salt."

"I remember him." The smooth face tilted toward the letter. "He was very good at bargaining. Are you?"

"I don’t even know where he is, only north. And even if I find him, I’m a Hearthwarden, Rarity B, from the lower city, who blesses one clay charm a week." Her voice cracked, and she let it. "When he ran onto that sand, I stood behind the rope and watched, and I couldn’t do anything. Nobody could. I’m never doing that again."

"So you do not want to know where he is."

"I want to be strong enough that it doesn’t matter where he is."

Then the long fingers lifted ever so slightly from the counter, the gesture of a trader who has just heard a number he likes.

"A class cannot be bought, but a class can be fed. Yours is small because it has never been given anything worth burning." The empty face lowered toward her. "I can give it something: Rarity S. The hearth becomes a pyre."

Mira’s heart was slamming against her ribs. "And the price?"

"Not tonight, for I am patient." His voice was strangely gentle. "The first time you use what I give you, you will pay: everything you remember of the thing you hold tightest, every memory of it, from the first to the last. They all come to me."

"The thing I hold tightest," Mira repeated.

"I do not choose it; you already have." The smooth face tilted toward the letter. "You know perfectly well what it is. Everyone who stands where you are standing knows."

Mira looked down at the seven lines.

The docks, when they were eight, and a skinny boy sharing his fried fish because she had lost hers in the river. Homework copied under a table, a clay charm she had made him crumbling in his hand in the Training Rift, the empty box: all of it would go. She would find him, and look at his face, and see a stranger.

"If I never use it," she said slowly, "I keep him."

"Then you are a B-rank girl with a terribly expensive secret." The merchant’s hands settled back onto the counter. "Most people never use it, though a few do."

Mira picked up the letter. Her fingers were shaking so badly that she nearly tore it.

Then, deliberately, she put it back down.

"Do it."

"Say it properly, if you please. I like things said properly."

"I accept your price." She leaned across the counter, right up to that empty face, and her voice came out low and steady and furious. "Now give me the fire."

The merchant laughed, a soft sound like wind through a keyhole.

"Brave," he murmured, "or very foolish. They are so often the same."

He laid one long pale hand flat on her chest, over her heart.

It burned fiercely, a white heat that went in through her breastbone and spread through her ribs and down her arms into her palms. She heard herself cry out. The letter on the counter curled at the edges and began to smoke, and she snatched it up and held it tightly against her chest, and the heat went on and on until she was sure she would catch fire from the inside.

Then, suddenly, it stopped.

Mira was on her knees on the floorboards, and her hands were glowing. They weren’t orange anymore, but white, with gold at the edges, like the heart of a fire nobody could ever put out.

"Hearthwarden, Rarity B, no longer," the merchant pronounced softly above her. The smooth face looked down at her. "Pyrewarden, Rarity S. Your old dome will still answer you, and it costs nothing. The new one is under it, waiting. You will know it when you reach for it." He paused. "And so will I."

Mira got up, and her hands faded back to skin.

"North," the merchant added, almost kindly. "Past the iron wall, in the city of the Iron Throne. He wears a white face now, and another name, and very soon he will walk into a lake that has killed better men than him. That one is free." The empty face turned toward the window. "Something in that lake is counting. It has almost finished."

Mira walked out without saying thank you, and when she turned around, there was only moss and stone.

She stood under the lamp at the corner of Salt Lane in the falling snow and unfolded the letter. The edges were singed brown now, but the words were still there.

I’m sorry. I know. You told me I’m always sorry, and you were right.

She remembered saying it: the low wall of the training yard, the bruise on her cheek, his face. She remembered all of it, every second, and she held on to it so desperately that it hurt.

Somewhere under her ribs, under the warm orange dome she had carried her whole life, something white and enormous lay curled up, waiting for her to call it.

"Fine," Mira whispered. "Then I’ll find you before I need it."

She buttoned the letter back inside her shirt and turned north.