Chapter 175: Glasswake Port

But another hunger had already reached the coast.

The group followed the debt chime north for two days across the sea ice.

The ice stretched out all around them, blue and white, with nothing to break it except the ridges where great plates of ice had collided with each other. Orena prodded the ice ahead with her spear to make sure their path was safe. At night, they camped beside the pressure ridges and listened to the ice shift and groan beneath them. Austin Veyron could still feel the wound in his shoulder where Ysara’s spear had cut him. Every night when they stopped to sleep, the cold crept into his whole body, until Veyra made him sit closer to the fire.

Frostmarket’s support convoy didn’t travel with them as far as Glasswake Port. It stayed behind in the north. Orin and Kaelith wanted to keep the paths clear now that the Ice Crown’s debts were fading. Messages arrived every day saying the west path was still clear and that there was heat and food available for everyone. Austin Veyron found himself looking forward to those messages every morning.

It was still cold up north.

But it was no longer without help.

Austin Veyron held on to that thought on the coldest nights, when the wind howled across the sea and his mark kept pulling him north. Whatever was waiting for them at Glasswake Port, the people behind them weren’t waiting for someone to come and save them. They were saving one another.

Tessa knew the path to the coast and led them with her map case tucked under her cloak. Ceryn carried port bills from earlier ships that had traveled to the Ice Crown and read through them whenever they stopped to rest. Nyra’s heart shard led them north, toward wherever the debt chime was.

The mark on Austin Veyron’s wrist led him there too.

The chime didn’t feel like a hunger engine. It felt like every time someone had helped another person and then held out a hand afterward, expecting to be paid back. It wanted to measure how much debt there was and make that debt grow. It was like a hunger, but colder and quieter than the Hunger Road had been, and that was even scarier. You could stand up to a roar. It was much harder to stand up to a debt engine.

Veyra walked alongside him as they drew closer to the port.

"Tell me."

"I want to take the debt chime."

"What would you build with it?"

"Something that would let me see every debt anyone has ever put on someone else."

Sable looked down at her shard of the broken crown. "Knowing isn’t harmful. Using what you know as a weapon is."

Austin Veyron nodded. "So we don’t take it to see every debt."

Glasswake Port came into view through the coastal fog.

The port and its buildings were built into the cliffs along its edge, and everything was covered in ice. Boats sat motionless, wrapped in ropes that had melted and frozen over again and again. The warehouses lining the shore each bore the seal of a different merchant. Hungry-looking workers unloaded grain sleds along the docks, guarded by debt patrols. Even from a distance, Austin Veyron could tell the workers were starving. None of them looked up from what they were doing. A good amount of smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses higher up the hill, but when he looked down at the docks, he saw hardly any smoke at all.

The clock tower at the center of the port looked like the spine of a debt book.

That was where the sound of the debt chime was coming from.

A boat broke through the ice channel toward them.

It belonged to the debt collectors. Three of them stood on the deck with harpoons of blue ice and black rope. Their coats were stitched together from port bills. Behind them stood a worker from the docks. He had a rope collar around his neck, and his hands were bound to the boat. His clothes were too thin for the cold, and he shivered steadily, though he tried not to show it.

"Travelers without a port bill," the lead collector called. "State your debt."

"We don’t have a debt to your port," Veyra said.

The collector smirked. "We all have debt. It just may not be known who holds it."

The worker shook his head at them, a small sign that they shouldn’t answer.

"Port fee," the collector said. "It’s either a day of labor or a debt against your future loads."

"We don’t have either to offer you," Tessa said.

"Then the Crown will accept something else of value."

The collectors threw their harpoons. Blue ropes shot across the ice. Rin’s arrow stopped the first rope from hitting Nyra. Orena used her spear to push the second one down into the water. The third harpoon landed near Austin Veyron’s feet, and frost words began to spread across the ice from its rope.

DEBT FOLLOWS THE UNPAID.

The mark on his wrist began to burn.

Austin Veyron could feel the debt trying to track him as a source. It was trying to follow the path of his Maw trace to everyone he had ever helped and tag them all as debtors.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The clause on the rope that tracks debtors. Not the debt collector. Not the worker. Not all the debt in the port."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said. ℯ

Austin Veyron touched the words on the ice.

DEVOUR opened to him. The clause tasted like a leash around someone’s neck, one they never knew was there until it started pulling.

DEBT FOLLOWS THE UNPAID.

He consumed follows.

The rope went slack.

The harpoon dropped to the ground.

The collectors stared at their rope, not understanding what had happened. Rin shot a second arrow through the rope around the worker’s neck. Orena helped him to safety, and Veyra made her way onto the boat, balancing as easily as if she were walking on solid ground.

She knocked the debt collector’s harpoon aside and pinned him to the boat’s mast.

"Where is the debt chime?" she demanded.

The collector spat on the ice. "At the auction at midnight, in the Famine Ledger tower. You won’t get in without a bill or something to buy."

The worker looked at Austin Veyron. "I can help you get there. My name is Joren. I unload food at the north warehouses, and I know the drains that will lead you there." He was an ordinary-looking man whose hands had worked with ropes for a long time. There were lines under his eyes that showed he had been through many hard times.

"We don’t expect you to help us," Austin Veyron said.

"I know. But if I don’t, the debt will only grow. My sister works on one of the routes being sold."

Tessa looked up at the tower. "Can you get us there before midnight?"

"Yes," Joren said. "But there will be patrols around the front entrance."

Before they headed into the drains, Joren pointed toward the workers at the north warehouse. They all wore a small blue piece of bill tied around their wrists.

"That isn’t their labor pay. It’s a winter debt. The port gives them food when they’re starving, and then they owe three weeks of work for it. People don’t refuse, because they know the next winter will come."

"Are any of the food supplies shared with them?" Ceryn asked.

"Only if the merchant decides to."

Tessa wrote that down. "So the auction isn’t something new. It’s just how they already operate."

Joren didn’t quite understand what she meant, but he let it go. "Will writing it down change anything?"

Ceryn looked at the bill tied to Joren’s wrist. "Not right away. But at least we’ll know why people are starving, and how."

The debt patrols walked past them, checking for debts. One of the workers had a piece of bread hidden in her coat. The patrolman took it from her, added a new number to her bill, and kept walking. Austin Veyron hated how calm the man was while he took from the workers, as if he had done it so many times that it meant nothing to him. The worker didn’t say anything about it. She just kept moving crates, her eyes on the ground, as if she had learned long ago that arguing only made the number bigger.

"My sister is out there," Joren said, his jaw tight.

"You can stay with her if you want," Austin Veyron said.

Joren shook his head. "If they sell Frostmarket’s shipment, every port in the north will start doing this. I’ll take you to the drains."

They headed through the drains that ran beneath the port.

It smelled like fish, smoke, and old bread. Through the grates overhead, they could see workers walking above them, pushing crates with bills marked for Frostmarket. Some of the bills were only numbers. Others had frost hidden on the bottom of the crate, where no one would notice unless they were looking for it. There was so much ice in the drains that in places they had to crawl. Water dripped onto their heads from the ice above, and rats ran past them in the dark. All the while, they could hear the sounds of people working in the port overhead.

Ceryn took one of the bills from the closest crate. "Food supply for Frostmarket. It’s marked as an emergency shipment."

Tessa’s face darkened. "That’s the first lot."

The debt chime rang once again.

The lights in the warehouse flickered when it sounded.

Joren led them up through the east warehouse and into the tower, to a grated overlook where they could look down on the auction below. The buyers sat around a table made of ice, all of them wearing white masks. Merchants and members of the court had come to watch. Fires burned around the room to keep everyone warm. Servants walked among the buyers carrying food and drink, and the buyers ate without ever looking at the people serving them.

Queen Ysara stood at the far end of the room, holding the bright debt chime in her hands. She still wore her cracked crown and hadn’t bothered to fix it. She looked tired of everything, but she stood just as tall as she had at the Ice Crown.

A broker waited across from her. He wore a mask shaped like a smile, and his red coat matched it. Austin Veyron’s mark gave off a sour pulse when he saw him.

"Vordessa’s broker," Nyra whispered.

The broker rang a bell to begin the auction.

"The first lot up for auction is a claim on Frostmarket’s next emergency shipment," he announced. "Grain, heat coal, and medicine, which may be claimed by the buyer once the shipment arrives."

The table lit up with a map of Frostmarket’s routes that they all knew too well. The paths they had helped build to keep people alive were now up for sale to whoever wanted them. The west trail. The heating points. The valley beneath the Ice Crown. Every line on that map had been paid for with frostbite and sleepless nights, and these people were bidding on it over hot wine.

Beside him, Veyra’s hand settled on her sword hilt, and Nyra held the heart shard tight against her chest.

Austin Veyron felt the northern route tighten around him like a rope.

If they lost the next shipment, there would be no food for the north.