Part 1 · Chapters
Snow Falls on Flame City
Long before he had strength, he had learned to step forward.
When the first snowflake fell, children in the upper city reached out to welcome the wonder. Mothers in the Ash District first touched their children's cold foreheads. The same snow, falling on different rooftops, was never quite the same sight.
On the night before the Flame Festival, the bells of Flame City rang thirteen times.
They were not marking the hour. It was an alarm sounded only when the city's heart was attacked. Guards sealed the central tower, and the council summoned the army through the night. From their windows, upper-city residents watched countless torches moving, but no one knew what was missing from the tower.
Early the next morning, something white landed on Xiao Jin's nose.
He caught it in his hand. The ice crystal lingered a long time before melting.
Snow was falling on Flame City. It settled on rooftops that had been hot all year, and did not melt at once. Instead, flake by flake, it covered the red glow in which the city took such pride.
At first people cheered, thinking it a festival marvel. Soon the cheers became cries of alarm. The eternal pillar of fire in the central tower had faded to a dark red glimmer. The Heart of Fire, which sustained the warmth and power of the whole city, was gone.
The upper city activated its reserve fire crystals, and households shut their thick doors. The Ash District had no reserve energy. Cold flowed backward through the pipes. The elderly and children fell ill first, while furnace beasts grew violent as the underground heat currents went awry.
Xiao Jin turned the abandoned furnace into a temporary shelter from the cold. He sealed the windows with salvaged iron plates, gathered all the coal he could find into one fire, and had Xiao Hui repair the old bellows. Then he joined the workers guarding the street entrance, keeping the frenzied furnace beasts away.
When a red-backed furnace beast burst through the ground, Xiao Jin did not meet it head-on. He struck iron pipes in different directions, using the noise to lure the creatures away from the crowd. Then he closed the underground heat valves, letting cold air drive them back into the pipes.
He was still working at dusk when Lie Ang arrived with men to distribute a pitifully small supply of fire crystals.
“The Frost Kingdom stole the Heart of Fire,” a guard said. “There were ice crystals all over the tower. The council is preparing to declare war.”
Xiao Jin accepted a small shard of ice offered as evidence. Clear and sharp-edged, it did indeed look like something the Frost people would leave behind.
But in his palm, it gave off no cold at all.
“This isn't ice,” Xiao Jin said.
The guard scoffed. “How many times have you seen real ice?”
“Today was the first. But I know what cold feels like.”
He placed the crystal on an iron plate. No frost spread around it. Instead, a nearly invisible wisp of black mist seeped from beneath it. The tiny flame in Xiao Jin's palm suddenly bent toward the mist, as though on guard against something.
Lie Ang crouched to inspect it, frowning slightly.
“Perhaps it's leftover coal smoke.”
“There's no coal in the tower,” Xiao Jin said. “Someone wants you to think it was the Frost Kingdom.”
“The council has more evidence.”
“If every piece of evidence looks too much like the answer, maybe someone put that answer there on purpose.”
Lie Ang stood. In the distance, military horns urged him back to the city. “Without something more definite, I can't stop the march.”
Xiao Jin looked toward the shelter. Xiao Hui was wrapping their only blanket around a feverish child. One by one, the Ash District's fires were going out, while councilors in the upper city decided on war from a warm hall.
Disaster never falls evenly. It runs down through the cracks, finding first those least able to resist and least likely to be heard.
“Then I'll find it,” Xiao Jin said.
Lie Ang stopped. “Find what?”
Xiao Jin closed his hand around the ice crystal that was not cold.
“The person who really stole the Heart of Fire.”
He slipped the crystal into his pocket.
Inside the shelter, a child coughed in their sleep.
Xiao Jin turned and stepped into the snowstorm.