Chapter 16: The Deep Frost

The guildmaster signed Gabe's contract at dawn, and he swore he would find his forty people before Brett's sale ended at midnight on Day 12.

By noon he had found nothing, and the cold got worse.

I was standing at the wall with the pen still wet when the sky went dark in a new way.

[Deep Frost. Temperature falling to eighty below. Duration: twelve hours.]

Dee dropped her ladle.

"Eighty," she said. "It was sixty on Day 7."

"The system lied about the first one, too," Gabe said. "It never warned us."

By then the planks to the east were already full.

Three thousand Ironwall players came across them in single file, wrapped in blankets.

They carried their sick on their backs.

Behind them came strangers I had never seen.

They had heard about the Hearth Queen from the chat.

They stopped at the edge of the gold wall and did not ask for anything.

They only looked.

I looked back.

I had never been looked at by so many people who needed me.

"One warm log per player," I said, and my voice cracked. "Fifty logs for each one. If you can't pay, say so now. You can pay me back."

A man in front started to cry.

I went to work.

I took a log from the first pair of hands.

I poured Ember Points into it until it glowed, and I gave it back.

I did it again.

Gabe stood at my right and handed me logs.

Dee stood at my left and took the payment.

The guildmaster stood at the plank and counted heads.

I lost count at four hundred.

My palms burned, and my breath came in white clouds, and the numbers on my panel went down and down.

[Ember Points: 31.]

[Ember Points: 9.]

[Ember Points: 2.]

"Lacey," Gabe said. "That's enough."

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