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.