Gathering Windglass at Dusk

Kest Spire woke the way it always did, with shutters banging against stone, kettles hissing over blue braziers, and a wind so constant it seemed to have lived there longer than the people. Tarin Vale sat at the long kitchen table with her gloves drying beside a bowl of bean porridge gone half-cold, watching the lower terraces brighten one level at a time. Below the windows, market runners were already shouting prices for rope, kiln coal, and the first woven sacks of the season. Windglass season made everyone louder. It had a way of doing that. A good seam could warm a home, keep the water pumps alive, and buy a week of decent bread; a bad harvest could leave half the spire rubbing their hands over cold ash and pretending they were not worried.

Iven dropped onto the bench across from her with the grace of a person who had never once believed gravity was a personal insult. He set down his bowl, looked into it, and made a face of theatrical betrayal. — Is this breakfast or mortar? he asked.

— If you want sweeter, Tarin said, you can go lick the storage wall.

— I asked because I care about the future of the household, not because I am dramatic.

— You are dramatic because you are alive, came Sella Brune’s dry voice from the doorway.

Sella stepped inside carrying a coil of line over one shoulder and a bundle of hooks in the crook of her arm. She was older than Tarin by enough years to have climbed routes that no longer existed, and she wore that fact the way some people wore medals: without interest in impressing anyone. She set the bundle on the table, glanced at Iven’s untouched porridge, and snorted.

— Eat, she said. You will need strength before the ridge starts trying to remove your sense of balance.

The settlement was already preparing for the first lift of the day. Women in soot-dark aprons were laying out dried herb cakes for the crews, children were chalking the stair edges with bright marks to show which steps had iced over during the night, and the boiler keepers were loading fuel briquettes into carts with the solemn faces of surgeons. Tarin dipped a spoon into her bowl, mostly because the food was there and partly because her stomach had stopped trusting optimism years ago. Windglass prices had fallen twice this season. Everyone could feel it. No one wanted to say it too loudly, as if the mountain might take offense.

Iven leaned forward, lowering his voice with exaggerated secrecy. — Tell me you still have a plan that does not end with us eating root mash until winter.

— My plan, Tarin said, is to bring back enough glass to keep your brotherly speeches short.

— Cruel, he said. Deeply cruel.

Sella took her bowl, stood over the stove, and added a pinch of black salt to it with the solemnity of a priestess. — Today, she said, we cut clean, we take what the ridge offers, and we come home with our hands attached. Anything more ambitious than that is how people become cautionary tales.

Tarin did not answer at once. Outside, the wind threw a spray of dust against the panes, and for a moment the whole room looked gauzed in pale grit. It was the kind of morning that promised trouble without the decency to name it. She tightened the strap on her wrist brace, swallowed the last of the porridge, and rose from the table. The season had begun whether she liked it or not. The mountain would be waiting.

The gear shed smelled of waxed rope, oiled metal, damp leather, and the bitter resin used to keep climbers from freezing at the fingertips. Tarin moved through the clutter with practiced speed, checking every hook and knot by touch. She ran the line through her hands, feeling for frays, then tugged each anchor ring until it rang clean against the workbench. Beside her, Iven was packing as if he meant to cross a continent instead of climb a ridge that had been used, argued over, and sworn at by generations. He had tied extra cloth around one boot, stuffed a spare shirt into his bag, and somehow found room for a tin cup with a dent in it the shape of a gull.

— You are not camping for a month, Tarin said.

— Preparation is not a crime.

— It is when it makes you slower.

He grinned and held up a small leather pouch. — Mother said to bring the pepper seed packet. For luck.

— Mother says many things.

— She also says you look like a kicked furnace when you are worried.

Tarin snatched the pouch, checked the contents, and tied it to the inside of her harness where it would not rattle. The townsfolk believed in all sorts of small habits before a harvest. Some burned fennel in their boots. Some tapped the first rung three times. The line workers swore by a mouthful of bitter tea and a kiss to the stone threshold, which Tarin considered a private matter best kept off public notice. Today the crews had gathered a jar of pickled bean stems for the upper break, because no one trusted an empty stomach near a hundred feet of bad weather.

Sella entered last, as if she had been waiting for the room to become properly serious before allowing herself in. She inspected Tarin’s harness, paused at the reinforced shoulder straps, and gave a short nod. — Good. You remembered the stiff brace.

— I remember my own bones, Tarin said.

— Do you? Sella replied. Because last season you treated your ribs like they were optional.

Iven barked a laugh into his sleeve. Tarin ignored him and checked the map board nailed to the wall. It was not a map in the grand, elegant sense of the word, just a weather-scuffed slab with chalk marks showing the safest cuts, the old slips, and the narrow shelf where the first seam usually formed. The route had thinned every year. The ridge was not giving up its windglass in the same broad veins anymore. It came in smaller, sharper patches that took more time and cost more sweat to reach.

— We go early, Sella said. Storm front should hold until afternoon. Should.

— Should is a generous word, Tarin muttered.

Sella’s mouth twitched. — It is the only word we get.

Iven slung his bag over one shoulder and nearly overbalanced. Tarin reached out without thinking, caught the strap, and steadied him by the elbow. He blinked at her, then laughed softly.

— See? he said. You do care.

— I care about not having to carry you down.

— Still care.

That was the trouble with Iven. He made stubbornness sound like a compliment. Tarin let go, turned back to the bench, and tucked the last hook into her sleeve. Outside, the bell for first ascent rang across the lower terraces, not a solemn sound but a brisk one, like a foreman clearing his throat. Tarin took one breath, then another, and followed the others into the wind.