Chapter 168: Frostmarket Refuge

"Frostmarket Refuge," Austin Veyron said. "We need to get there before the winter hunger becomes another throne."

The team made their way out of the Caldera beneath a gray sky. Behind them, the crater glowed a dull orange now that it had lost its red heat. The freed route keepers stood at the edge of the Caldera and watched the team reach the road. None of them waved goodbye. They simply stood there as the team turned north, the way people watch a road they have finally been allowed to choose.

The road north changed as the team made their way along it. Black rock that had once been volcanic gave way to gray mountains, and then to snow-capped ranges. With every mile, the air grew colder, until each breath burned their lungs with cold instead of heat. The splinter of the Hunger Road traveled ahead of them, barely visible through the ice that covered the road, like a faint red thread.

Halren had stayed behind at the maintenance ring with the freed route keepers. The keepers had wanted to stay, and Austin Veyron respected that about them. They had chosen to clear out the empty routes and send route facts into the network rather than travel with the team through the snowy mountains.

"They’ll know you’re coming by the time you reach Frostmarket," Halren said through the relay device, their voice thin and crackling. "And they’ll know the splinter is traveling ahead of you."

Tessa moved the map case under her coat to keep it warm as the cold wind whipped around her. She flexed her frozen fingers and spoke to the team. "The route is growing weaker the farther we travel into the cold."

Nyra kept the heart shard close to her body, as if she could warm herself with its cold blue-black glow.

"It will become a hoarding pattern once the cold takes over," Nyra told the team. "It will tell people to hoard enough for themselves and make them believe that others are stealing from them."

The team continued their journey north. At night, they huddled together to share body warmth and whatever they had to eat. The mark on Austin Veyron’s wrist kept throbbing as they traveled. DEVOUR wanted to run along the route as fast as it could. It wanted to claim all the power it could get its hands on before the splinter took over.

"Say what you want to do," Veyra told Austin Veyron as they walked through the snowdrifts. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but he could tell she was watching his mark.

"I want to run with the pull," Austin Veyron said. It was easier to admit that than it used to be. The more he practiced saying it out loud, the easier it became to control what he actually did.

"What stops you from doing that?" Veyra asked.

"Tessa will check our route on her map. Nyra will check it with her resonance, and Orena will check the ground we’re traveling on."

"The pull wants us to cross this frozen ravine," Tessa told the team, looking at the route map. "We should head west of the ravine to stay safe."

Orena knelt in the snow, took off her glove, and placed her bare hand on the ice. "If we take the direct route, two people could make it across. Eight will not."

Nyra felt the heart shard pulling her toward the west side of the ravine. "My resonance agrees with that route as well."

Austin Veyron let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. "Then we’ll take the west route."

Taking the west route added time to their journey, but it kept them alive. They were halfway along it when they saw how thin the ice over the ravine really was. No one said anything as they passed, but Austin Veyron saw Tessa let out a long breath of relief.

When the team reached the pass to the west of the ravine, the frost-hunger shades appeared.

They rose out of the ground without leaving a single footprint. They looked like people wrapped in white cloth, but their faces were empty, and their hands ended in icicle claws. Each of the frost-hunger shades held a red, frozen ration tag.

KEEP WHAT WARMS YOU.

The first shade lunged at Orena, and Rin shot an arrow through its shoulder. It broke apart, but the frost shade reassembled itself out of the blowing snow. Veyra slashed her sword through the second shade, breaking it into pieces of frost, and Sable walked up and pressed her crown shard against its red frozen ration tag. The words turned gray beneath the shard.

Another shade crept up to Austin Veyron and reached for his mark. The dark mark began to glow, and DEVOUR showed him what the shade was feeling. It was a cold hunger that didn’t want food so much as the certainty that no one could ever take its warmth away.

"What are we targeting?" Veyra asked.

Austin Veyron looked at the words on the frost-hunger shade’s red frozen tag. "We’re targeting the words keep what warms you. Not the shade itself, and not the cold around us."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said as she moved to Austin Veyron’s other side.

Austin Veyron caught the red frozen tag with his white root chain, and DEVOUR opened. The compulsion tasted like frozen fingers curled around a hidden ration bar.

KEEP WHAT WARMS YOU.

He consumed keep.

Once Austin Veyron consumed the word keep, the frost-hunger shade stopped reaching for him. It looked down at its hands and collapsed into snow. The other frost-hunger shades lost their red frozen tags and collapsed into snow as well.

The team stood there for a moment, until the wind picked up and cleared enough for them to see Frostmarket below.

Frostmarket was made up of several buildings covered in snow. Narrow roads ran between them, walled off with packed snow taller than a person. Smoke rose from the buildings, but not nearly enough to keep anyone warm. Long icicles hung from the rooftops, and a line of people stood outside one of the buildings. Two groups were arguing over a cart full of grain.

"We counted the sacks of grain!" one man yelled. "There isn’t enough to feed all of our people!"

"There is if you stop stealing from our stores in the north!" a woman yelled back.

The splinter had gotten to Frostmarket before the team. Austin Veyron could feel it in the air around them, a cold, quiet pressure like the moment before a storm breaks.

The team made their way down to Frostmarket with caution. They entered the town with their weapons in plain sight of everyone who lived there. The townspeople didn’t like seeing armed outsiders, but they paused their argument when Nyra showed them her heart shard.

An old man with a gray beard, wrapped in a heavy fur coat that had seen better winters, stepped down from the storehouse stairs. "Who are you?"

"We’re following the hunger route to Frostmarket," Austin Veyron replied. "We aren’t here to steal your food."

"That’s what all of them say when they’re trying to take someone else’s food," the man replied.

Tessa walked up to the man and opened her map case. "We don’t want your food. We want to see which routes are open on your map." She spoke to him the same way she would speak to anyone else who worked with numbers.

The man studied Tessa, then the seal on Ceryn’s record sheet. "My name is Orin," he told the team. "The routes froze three days ago, when the grain from the north stopped coming. Since then, people have been waking up in the middle of the night to check on their food."

"Where is the route that’s freezing?" Nyra asked.

"Under the market," Orin said, looking down at the ground beneath his feet as he spoke.

Before the team could ask any more questions, the line outside the storehouse turned violent. A young woman ran up to the grain cart and grabbed a sack, and everyone around her began grabbing at the grain as well. The team watched as the line outside the storehouse came close to turning into a brawl.

Austin Veyron saw red frost creeping across the cart’s grain tags.

HOARD BEFORE THE WHITE DARK.

The splinter was using the supply route itself to reach the people of Frostmarket.

"Target," Austin Veyron told the team. "The hoarding compulsion on the cart’s grain tags. Not the grain, and not the people of Frostmarket."

Veyra and Sable both stood at his side. "Witnessed," they said together.

Austin Veyron placed his root chain on the red frozen tags, and DEVOUR opened. The compulsion tasted like a locked cellar with snow burying the door.

HOARD BEFORE THE WHITE DARK.

He consumed hoard.

The red frost turned to water and dripped off the cart’s tags.

The young woman let go of the sack of grain she was holding and looked at everyone around her. "I was afraid my little brother would freeze to death," she said, tears in her eyes that froze almost as soon as they fell.

A man she had shoved while grabbing the grain reached out and helped steady her. "My family too," he told her.

Orin walked over to the cart and saw that the grain tags were clean. "We still don’t have enough food for our people."

"Maybe not," Austin Veyron said. "The fear is real. But the compulsion was making it worse than it is."

Tessa set her map case on top of one of the crates by the storehouse and opened up the route maps. "The route to the north is blocked, but Halren says the old fire road can carry a supply signal if you have runners who can travel along it."

Some of the townspeople walked over to see what Tessa was showing them.

"We have runners," Orin told the team. Three of the younger people standing in line straightened up a little taller.

"Then pick your runners and your count keepers," Veyra told them. "We can help you with the ice granary, but the food line is something you need to control."

The townspeople began talking to each other about who they wanted as runners and count keepers. One of them took out a slate and began writing down names. Another went to fetch the old fire-road map from the storehouse. They still weren’t calm, and they weren’t out of danger, but they were no longer being controlled by the red tags.

Nyra had been silent the whole time, checking the ground around them. Now she looked toward the middle of the frozen market, and her heart shard began to glow white-blue.

"The splinter is under us," Nyra told the team. "It’s made its way into the old ice granary, and it’s building a cold version of the Hunger Road."

Orin’s face changed, and the townspeople looked at each other nervously. "If the ice granary opens, the hunger will travel along the frozen routes to every one of our storehouses."

A bell rang from somewhere beneath the market. The sound echoed through the snow, and then it rang one more time.

Everyone in Frostmarket stopped what they were doing and listened to the sound coming from below them.

"That’s the white-fever rite," Orin told the team. "It starts at midnight."

Austin Veyron looked at the snow that covered the market and knew that the splinter of the Hunger Road was waiting for them underneath it. His mark pulsed on his wrist in time with the bell ringing below. Veyra stood a little closer to him as the cold continued to spread its hunger through Frostmarket.