Harvesting the Ember Blooms Before Frost

Tavin Vale stood on the cold stone lip above the lower market and watched dawn crawl over the terrace city. Vey was stacked in shelves of worked rock, each level catching a different draft, each alley carrying a different smell: hot bean paste from the cook stalls, sweet grain steam from the bakers, sharp ash from the kiln houses, wet wool from the dye vats, and the faint green warmth that always clung to ember blooms after a good night. The blooms were the reason people tolerated the climb. They were not flowers in any soft sense. Their thick petals held heat inside a waxy core, and when opened at the right hour they could warm a room, feed a furnace bed, or dry a year's worth of cloth. That made them food, fuel, and currency at once, which meant everybody smiled at them in public and counted them in private. A translucent panel hung in Tavin's sight as he checked the order assigned to his work crew. [Status: Tavin Vale / Refiner Rank 3] [Heat Sense 2] [Sift 1] [Quench 1] [Daily Order: Deliver 18 crates of ember blooms to the North Exchange before dusk] He had seventeen. He had counted twice. He counted again with the expression of a man hoping numbers would confess to a mistake out of shame. They did not. A boot scuffed behind him. Pella Wren, hauling a crate rope over one shoulder and wearing a grin that had never met a difficult day it couldn't annoy, leaned in and looked at the tally slate. 'You have the face of a man betrayed by vegetables,' Pella said. 'These are not vegetables.' 'Worse then. At least vegetables know how to stay humble.' Tavin snorted despite himself and adjusted the rope on his back. Below them, a woman sold thick ring loaves stuffed with onion paste and pepper greens, and workers lined up with clay cups of bitter tea to keep their hands steady against the cold. Every morning the city did this little dance of hunger and heat, pretending the frost was only a seasonal inconvenience. Tavin had long since learned that it was never only seasonal. His jaw tightened as he looked toward the upper terraces, where buyers waited in clean coats and warm gloves and expected lower people to produce miracles on schedule. 'Move,' he said. 'If we miss the first cart, Kest will shave the price and smile while doing it.' 'He smiles like a tax knife,' Pella said, but he climbed after Tavin all the same, and together they pushed into the wind.