The Price of Warmth

They left through the mill’s grain tunnel before dawn. Sella carried food, Iven carried rope, and Mara carried a lamp whose small flame made every patch of darkness seem watchful.

At the edge of town, they passed a row of houses marked with the Court’s silver seal. Heat debts, Sella explained. Families who had burned more fuel than their winter allowance were moved to public shelters; their houses remained empty, preserving the approved cold.

A child watched through one shelter window, drawing circles in her own breath.

Mara stopped beside the wall. “I could warm the stove.”

“And every assessor within a mile would know,” Sella said.

“Then why have this?” She lifted the lamp.

Sella looked at the child before answering. “That’s a question I’ve spent twenty years avoiding.”

They entered by the kitchen door. Forty people slept beneath blankets. The stove held gray ash and a single charred stick. Mara knelt and put her fingers against it, recalling the forge at breakfast, Brann’s kettle rattling, the comfortable ache in her shoulders after honest work.

Flame blossomed. Too much flame. It roared into the chimney, and frost burst from the bricks in glittering sheets.

Mara gasped. The warmth left her fingers, then her arms. She swayed against the stove.

Sella caught her before she fell. Iven shoved kindling into the fire while the waking cook stared at them.

“Small memories,” Sella said urgently. “A spark is an invitation, not an order. You tried to give it the whole forge.”

Mara’s teeth chattered. Across the room, the child from the window held out a blanket.

They stayed until the stove drew properly. The cook packed three potatoes into Sella’s bag and asked no names.

Outside, a pale line had appeared along the northern sky. Not sunrise: a narrow road of ice, forming above the fields. Riders moved upon it, their horses silent at that impossible height.

“They saw,” Iven said.

Mara could barely feel her hands. She expected Sella’s anger, but the old woman only wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“Next time,” Sella said, “you’ll leave enough warmth for yourself to walk away.”

Then they turned south, into the reeds of Merefen.