Iron Winter

something crack in his chest, more horrific pain in his mouth that might be a dislocated jaw. And the cold dug into him, aiding his enemies. What little energy he had drained away, and he started to grow limp, blood filming over his eyes.

They pulled at his clothes, stripping him of his good coat, his waterproof leather trousers, his boots. Even his mittens went. These were Northlander citizens, he thought, as he was. Maybe he knew them. They might have been customers. Friends. Even relatives. And what would come next, when they had divided up his clothes? The taking of human flesh for the lack of alternatives is actually a logical outcome of our situation. He’d said that himself, in some polite forum in the Wall, or his shop. Drinking nettle tea. Not me. Not me.

When they had stripped him to his grimy underwear they pulled away. The cold of the snow against his bare skin was intense. He rolled, tried to stand in the deep snow, fell forward. Hands grasped after him, but they were still squabbling over his clothes, and he got away. The snow was deep, and as he tried to run his legs sank into it. He lunged forward and fell into a deep drift, the snow bright around him. Still he thought he heard their voices. He burrowed, bare hands working at the snow — by the mothers it was cold — he dug his way into the snow as a mole would dig into the earth. On and on, the snow compacting around him, heavy and dark, until his strength was all gone.

He gave up and lay quietly, breathing raggedly, pain flaring, encased in the snow. He could see nothing. Hear nothing. He lay still. Even their voices were gone now. The snow, pressed up against his bare, wet skin and packed all around him, seemed to suck away his heat. It occurred to him he must be only a few paces from the front door of his own shop.

The shivering began. He pulled his limbs to him, arms against chest, legs up, a child in this womb of ice, his whole body shuddering. He hadn’t been able to see if Xree had got away. Even if she had got into the shop the others might have followed her. But Ayto would have stopped them. Ayto was strong, resourceful. She would be safe with him. .

Perhaps he fainted, or slept.

The shivering had stopped. The pain in his chest and mouth was still there, but distant, somehow separate from himself. And his hands — he couldn’t feel his fingers, his toes. He tried to move them; there was no response.

The pain ebbed further. It wasn’t uncomfortable. He wished he was able to tell Doctor Ontin that; it would console his patients. It wasn’t painful if you just gave in to the cold. Ah, but Ontin had fled before the winter locked in, fled south to Carthage, where Rina had gone. .

There was ice in his mouth. Actually inside it. And on his eyes, he thought, he could no longer close them.

He listened to the deep, slowing beat of his heart, beat, beat. He thought he heard Rina, calling to him, and his children, Nelo and Alxa. And they became the three little mothers in their shrine deep in his house, his proud house with the linen shop that fronted right on to the Wall Way. Time to sleep now, whispered the little mothers. Time to sleep.

47

Snug in the old cistern, Crimm tried not to doze off during the day. But there was nothing else to do for long hours. It was so comfortable to lie back, he could hear the soft snores of the others around him. .

He forced himself to sit up. Something was wrong. What?

It was dark. Too dark for the middle of the day. The cistern was lit only by the glow of the fire in the hearth. There should be light coming down the air vent. There was not. His chest dragged as he tried to breathe. The air felt stuffy, thick, even more redolent of fishy farts than usual.

He got to his feet. He felt even worse when he stood up. He made his way across the room towards the vent, treading on people in the dark, and they squirmed and moaned and growled insults at him. Nobody woke fully. It wasn’t usual for everybody to be asleep. There was generally some brat or other squalling. Something wrong. He got to the air vent and peered up. Nothing but darkness, but, directly underneath it, water puddled. The vent was blocked, by snow or ice probably. It could have happened naturally. Maybe the snow had covered over the whole Wall by now.

Or somebody could have bunged up the vent with snowy handfuls on purpose. Ever since they’d lost Xree and Thaxa a few days ago — they’d seen traces of the struggle in the snow — they’d been aware of being hunted. This would be a good way to flush them out, he thought, to stop off the air they breathed. He wished he’d thought of it.

Where was Ayto? Ayto, a difficult man to work with, but a clear thinker if you gave him the chance, he was the one who had come up with the idea of using this cistern, this fortress for the winter. . Ayto went missing a lot, though. Off on self-imposed missions, into the darkness of the Wall. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes with others. Often he came back bloodied. Once he came back wearing a man’s face, like a bloody cap on his head. Crimm had made him hide it before he scared the children and women. But Crimm never asked him what he was doing out there. He was doing what needed to be done, he always had, and Crimm trusted him that far.

The world greyed. He held onto the door, stood straight, shook his head. He could figure it out with Ayto. But Ayto had gone. Now he remembered. This time he’d picked one of the blocked doors at the back of the warehouse, smashed it in, discovered a corridor, and gone looking to see where it led.

Seeking another way out. Now Crimm needed a way out too. He had no better idea but to follow Ayto.

He lit a candle at the fire, and made for the back of the warehouse.

The door Ayto had opened was ajar. Crimm pushed it wide. Beyond was a dark corridor, bitterly cold, the growstone slick with ice. But already the air was a bit fresher.

He needed a coat. To get his coat meant crossing the room again, and he wasn’t sure he’d make it without passing out. There was a heap of blankets by the door, good alpaca wool shipped very expensively across the Western Ocean to Thaxa’s shop. He grabbed one, draped it over his shoulders, and walked down the corridor. Thinking more clearly, he tried to establish a sense of direction. He was heading deeper into the Wall, away from the land-facing side, towards the ocean face. He didn’t know how thick the Wall was here.

He came to the end of the corridor, and a choice of doors, to left, right, straight on. Which way would Ayto go? There was a mark on the door straight ahead, a few concentric squiggles. Ayto’s signature. This way then.

Another corridor, doors branching off, and then a fork, a narrower tunnel off to the right, a broader way straight on. Another scribble: straight on.

The latest corridor opened out into a larger chamber. It was warm, lit by a single oil lamp — and there was a stink of corruption that made Crimm recoil. Blankets and bodies on the floor, a kind of liquid mess.

Nobody moving. He was tempted to back out immediately, just shut the door. But there was an Ayto mark on the far wall; this was the way he had come, and evidently out through a door on the far side.

Crimm forced himself to follow, crossing the floor, trying not to touch the dead, their filthy blankets and clothes. Everything was covered with dried-up shit and vomit. Somebody had had the same idea he and Ayto had, to ride out the winter in the belly of the Wall. But one or more of them had come in here sick, and it had spread between the people, and got onto their clothes and their blankets and spread even more. It would have been much worse in here, he thought, if not for the cold, the lack of flies to attack the bodies.

The room itself was smarter than Thaxa’s cistern — smaller, the walls better cut, presumably older. Halfway along the wall there was a kind of shrine, cut into the growstone, supporting two urns, side by side. Writing was neatly etched into plaster around the alcove with the urns, and Crimm, despite the bodies all around him, lifted his candle to see. These were the remains of Milaqa and Qirum, he read. Doomed by love and ambition. . Milaqa was a heroine as great as Ana or Prokyid, but none must ever know the truth of their story. . Milaqa. He remembered something about that name. The Black Crime. Oddly, in a room full of corpses, the etched words made him shiver. The Wall was very big and very old and none knew all its secrets. He hurried on.

Beyond the far door was a corridor, then another door marked with Ayto’s sign, and still another corridor. He was heading almost directly away from the Wall’s landward face, as far as he could tell. Ayto had been