A Door of Snow

Brann wrapped the fragment before its glow could reach the shutters. He pushed it into Mara’s tool satchel beside her punch and measuring cord.

“Go through the charcoal hatch. Find Sella at the river mill. Tell her the orchard has woken.”

“You’re coming.”

“I’m giving an apprentice instructions.” His voice roughened. “For once, obey before arguing.”

The knock came at their door. Mara had never heard Brann’s breathing so clearly. He pressed something else into her hand: his smallest hammer, the one with a pearwood handle polished by three generations of thumbs.

“Metal tells you what it can bear,” he said. “People deserve the same courtesy.”

She crawled beneath the charcoal bins as he opened the front door. Through the floorboards she heard a woman introduce herself as Assessor Vey. Her voice was pleasant, almost apologetic.

“A warmth was reported here.”

“Then your reporter has a better imagination than my customers.”

Mara eased the hatch outward. Snow poured down her collar. She emerged behind the workshop, where the millrace ran under ice, and pulled the hatch shut without letting its iron catch ring.

“Your apprentice?” Vey asked inside.

“Buying coal.”

“There is none for sale.”

“That explains why she’s taking so long.”

Mara almost laughed. The sound caught painfully in her throat. She crawled behind stacked wheels until the back wall hid her, then ran.

At the bridge, an elderly man was trying to lift a woman who had fallen beside an overturned handcart. Mara stopped. Her satchel throbbed against her hip, impatient as a second heart. The mill lay only three streets away.

She helped them anyway. The woman’s ankle had twisted; together they settled her on the cart. Mara tied a broken trace with her measuring cord and watched them roll toward the shelter in the guildhall.

By then white-coated riders occupied the bridge.

She ducked into the river reeds. One rider turned his head, following her footprints. Mara lay flat and held her breath while snow settled across her hair.

A hand reached from a drain beneath the bridge and caught her wrist.

“Orchard?” whispered a boy with a chipped front tooth.

She stared at him.

“Say yes,” he urged. “I’m getting frost in my ears.”