Chapter 169: White-Fever Ritual

The cold had learned how to create hunger.

Midnight settled over Frostmarket, and the snow covering the market square began to glow.

White light pushed its way up through the cobblestones beneath the square, faint at first and then stronger, until blue shadows stretched across the snowdrifts. Deep below Frostmarket, the old ice granary had awoken. Icy frost lines spread out from it toward every food store and water barrel in the settlement, creeping beneath the frozen ground like roots looking for water. Then the bell beneath the market square chimed.

Once.

Twice.

This time, Orin didn’t need Austin Veyron’s party to tell him what to do.

"Open count on every food store!" the elder called across the square. "Everyone stays together. No one leaves by themselves. If your thoughts begin to hunger, report to the witness tent. Runners, go to the west heat line and warn the outer settlements."

Volunteers went out into the snow with lanterns and chalkboards to begin counting. People still lined up to receive food, but now everyone could see exactly how much was being handed out. Each sack and barrel was counted out loud, the numbers rising through the cold air for anyone who cared to listen. It’s hard to whisper fear when everyone knows the truth.

Austin Veyron stood on the stairs leading up to the market square. Under his glove, the black mark on his wrist pulsed in time with the white light below, as though something down there were calling to it.

The white-fever ritual knew he was there.

It showed him Frostmarket buried in snow. Every house was sealed tight, with no smoke rising from the chimneys and no food stored anywhere. No voices. No footprints. Only white silence stretching from one end of the settlement to the other. Then the ritual offered him the same deal it always did.

Devour the cold.

Then it would become his cold source.

No one would ever have to go hungry in the winter again, because he would hold all the cold.

The offer wasn’t malicious this time. There was no smirk from Vordessa and no threat hidden behind it. It offered comfort, and that was exactly what made it dangerous.

Veyra stood close beside him, her shoulder nearly brushing his. "Tell me what you want."

"I want to devour the splinter."

"What would it become?"

"My cold source."

Sable held up her crown shard, its pale light steady in the dark. "Then it would become a throne."

Nyra lifted the heart shard to show them. Its blue-black glow had deepened into a darker blue now that they were so close to the heart of winter.

"This ritual is using the heat lines to power itself," Nyra said. "Once it’s done, the heat lines will become food routes for the splinter."

Tessa opened her map case and spread the map across a crate, pinning the corners down with chunks of ice to keep the wind from taking them. Halren’s notes from the Caldera routes lay beside old maps of Frostmarket from past winters, the ink on both stiff with frost.

"There’s a defrost valve under the ice granary," Tessa said. "If we use it, we can reroute heat through the lines."

"Can it hold the pressure?" Orena asked.

"It will if we reach it before the third bell."

The ground shook under their feet, and the bell let out a long, low hum.

The third bell was coming.

They made their way down into the old cellar beneath the market square. Orin sent two locals to help with the count and stayed up top with the food line. He didn’t try to follow the party down to the granary, which Austin Veyron appreciated. Some leaders needed to be everywhere at once. Orin knew where he was needed.

"This is your way down," Orin told Austin Veyron. "The market square is our job."

"Keep it open," Austin Veyron said.

Before they headed down, Tessa handed Orin the spare relay token so the two groups could reach each other. The elder took it, nodded once, and returned to the food line.

The old cellar led them into a passageway beneath the market square. Ice covered the walls, and under the ice, old grain lines ran through the stone like frozen veins. It was so cold that it hurt to breathe, and their lanterns dimmed the farther they went, as though the dark itself were hungry for the light. Inside the grain lines, the frost shifted and gathered until it formed words.

SAVE WHAT IS YOURS.

Frost-ration constructs rose out of the ground.

They were made of ice, grain husks, and old ration tags, all bound together by the cold. Their mouths hung open, blowing frozen air into the passage, and each of them held a white bowl of frost with traces of red around the rim. They walked with heavy, deliberate steps, as if they knew exactly what they had come to collect.

Rin’s arrow struck one of the constructs, and it fell apart. Almost at once, it began to re-form out of the ice beneath Veyra’s feet. Veyra struck the ground with her sword, and the pieces flew into the heat line. Once they hit the line, they stopped moving and became nothing but ice.

Orena caught one of the ration tags the constructs breathed out of their mouths on the tip of her spear. Sable pressed her crown shard against the tag, and the words faded to gray.

Austin Veyron saw the phrase the construct was using on him.

SAVE WHAT IS YOURS.

The phrase didn’t tell anyone to steal from others. It told them that others stealing from them was dangerous. It made everyone want to take from each other just to keep from going hungry, until every neighbor looked like a thief.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The save-what-is-yours phrase. Not the ice. Not the food. Not the heat they carry."

"Witnessed," Veyra replied.

"Witnessed," Sable replied.

Austin Veyron placed the white root chain on the frost in the construct’s bowl.

DEVOUR opened. The save-what-is-yours phrase tasted like being trapped in a pantry with no food.

SAVE WHAT IS YOURS.

He consumed yours.

The construct fell apart and became frost that melted into the heat line. All the other constructs dropped their bowls of frost and crumbled to the ground as well. Nyra guided the melting frost down the stairs behind them so it couldn’t refreeze and trap them below.

They made it to the ice granary.

It was bigger than Frostmarket’s entire market square above. The room was circular and filled with ice silos that held all of the town’s food, rising into the dark like the pillars of some forgotten temple. Frost covered every pillar, and their footsteps echoed when they walked across the floor. In the middle of the granary stood a glass cistern with the white splinter of the Hunger Road frozen inside it.

Every heat line that ran through Frostmarket connected to the splinter, and each one was streaked red and white.

Tessa looked over Halren’s notes and compared them to the valves on the wall. "The valve we need is under the cistern. We’ll need to relieve some of the pressure from the keepers above first."

"There are no keepers," Ceryn said.

Nyra pointed to the cistern. "It’s creating route keepers out of all the count keepers above."

"If we break the cistern without diverting it first, the white fever will spread to the market," Tessa said.

"I can keep the resonance on the splinter still," Nyra said. "It won’t be able to spread while we work on the valve."

"Do you want to do that?" Austin Veyron asked.

"Yes."

She walked into the frost and wrapped her arms around the cistern. Austin Veyron felt the urge to stop her, but he knew it wasn’t his decision to make. It had never been his decision to make.

The splinter began pushing frost against her as she held it still. It showed Austin Veyron images of winter with no food to eat: empty bowls, frozen doors, and children curled together for warmth beneath blankets far too thin.

He almost reached for the splinter, but Veyra caught his arm and pulled him back.

"I’m here," he told her.

Orena and Rin slid under the cistern to reach the valve, their elbows scraping across the ice. They found it covered in frost, with a phrase etched across it in white.

WARMTH FOLLOWS WORTH.

Tessa kept looking through everything they had on how the valve worked, her finger tracing the faded lines. "It’s not going to turn with that phrase on it."

Austin Veyron saw the phrase for what it was. It was a smaller version of the rule Kharvek had used when rationing food: the heat source decided who deserved warmth.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The warmth-follows-worth phrase. Not the valve. Not the heat line. Not the market’s townspeople."

"Witnessed," Sable said.

DEVOUR opened. The warmth-follows-worth phrase tasted like warmth behind a door you couldn’t open.

WARMTH FOLLOWS WORTH.

He consumed worth.

The phrase broke in half and fell away from the valve.

Orena turned the valve, and the lines that ran through Frostmarket began to defrost.

Heat traveled down the old lines for the first time in many years. The air warmed, and they could feel it rising through the floor of the granary. Steam curled up from the grates, and the frost on the nearest pillars began to soften. Above them, the snow began to melt in thin, harmless streams, and the fever frost stopped spreading.

The splinter let out a shrill sound and pushed even more frost at Nyra.

"Break the ritual before it can find another path!" Nyra told him.

Austin Veyron walked up to the cistern and looked at the splinter inside. It was offering him winter itself. He would never have to be afraid of winter again. It offered him every cold food route in the north, and he could use all of it to keep Grand Meridian from ever freezing.

He knew what he had to do.

"Target," he said. "The cold hoarding in the splinter. Not the splinter’s energy. Not Frostmarket’s heat. Not the food it stores."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron placed the root chain on the splinter, and DEVOUR opened. The claim tasted like not having enough food to survive the winter.

HOARD THE COLD FROM WINTER.

He consumed hoard.

The cistern exploded, sending frost flying across the room. The frost poured down the newly thawed heat lines and left the granary harmlessly. The white-fever ritual was over. Heat traveled up the lines to the town above them. Austin Veyron could hear the count still going overhead, steady and unafraid, and he knew it wouldn’t cause anyone to panic now.

The splinter was still alive. It condensed into a small piece and flew out of a crack in the granary wall, heading north toward the Ice Crown.

Nyra tried to reach it with her light, but it was too fast.

"It’s heading to the Ice Crown," she told them. "The winter sovereign can use it."

The bell stopped ringing above them, and Orin’s voice came through the relay token. "We’re able to keep count, and people are no longer turning on each other."

Tessa used Halren’s notes to bring the valve back down to a normal amount of heat, then marked the ice route on her map.

"The Ice Crown is about two days’ travel north," Tessa said. "If Frostmarket wants to, they can send supplies."

Austin Veyron looked at the lines of heat running north and watched the splinter disappear beneath the snow.

The cold had wanted to use fear as a throne.

It had failed in Frostmarket, but it would look for another crown, one stronger than fear.