Chapter 28: The Winter Trade

The heavy iron bolt on the counting-house door didn’t just slide; it shrieked, a high-pitched metal-on-metal scream that sliced through the pre-dawn silence of Cypress Bend. Silas didn’t flinch. He kept his gloved hand on the lever, forcing the mechanism to obey until the door gave way to the biting river fog. Outside, the world was a study in bruised purples and charcoal greys, the kind of cold that didn't just sit on the skin but burrowed into the marrow to see what it could steal.

"The ice is thick enough," a voice rasped from the shadows of the eaves. 

It was Gable, the master of the docks, his beard frosted with a rime of frozen breath. He didn't move toward the light spilling from Silas’s lantern. He stayed in the dark, a silhouette of wool and leather.

Silas stepped out, the heels of his boots crunching on the frost-shattered gravel. "Thick enough to hold the sledges, or thick enough to hold the shame?"

"In Cypress Bend, they're the same weight," Gable replied, finally stepping forward. He carried a ledger bound in cracked pigskin. "The first of the High Winter shipments is staged. Eight hundred crates of the refined 'Blue Salt.' If we move before the sun hits the ridge, the runners won't stick."

Silas looked toward the river. The Cypress didn't flow anymore; it had become a jagged, immobile spine of white and translucent glass. Underneath that surface, the current still moved, dark and lethal, but for the next forty days, the river was no longer a waterway. It was a highway. This was the Winter Trade—the season where the legality of Cypress Bend's exports blurred into the white-out of the storms. Here, the economy wasn't measured in gold coins but in the calories burned to move weight over frozen waste.

"Elias is at the trailhead?" Silas asked, his voice tight.

"With twenty men and sixty dogs. All of them hungry, Silas. Not just for meat. For the payout."

Silas nodded and turned back into the counting-house to grab his coat. It was a heavy, floor-length garment of wolf-pelt and oiled canvas, its weight a physical burden he welcomed. On the desk lay the manifest. It was a lie, of course. It listed grain, tallow, and timber. It didn't mention the stabilized magitek components or the concentrated salt-shards that powered the industrial heaters in the southern spires—the things men killed for when the mercury dropped.

He dipped a quill, the ink sluggish and thick in the cold, and scratched his signature at the bottom of the page. The scratch of the nib felt like a confession.

"Let’s go," Silas said. "If the ice groans, we don't stop. You tell the men. If a sledge goes through, they cut the lines. We don't lose the dogs for the sake of the stone."

They hiked down to the basin where the river widened into an expanse known as the Flats. The air here was even colder, trapped by the high, granite bluffs that gave the town its name. The sledges were ghost-shapes in the fog, long and low, packed so tightly the tarpaulins were strained to the point of tearing. The dogs—huge, thick-furred hybrids with eyes like pale marbles—were eerily quiet. They knew the work. They leaned into their harnesses, their claws clicking rhythmically against the ice.

Elias stood at the front of the line. He was younger than Silas, with a face that hadn't yet been completely eroded by the trade, though the permanent squint near his eyes suggested it wouldn't be long. He was checking the tension on a lead line, his fingers moving with a frantic, desperate dexterity.

"Silas," Elias said, not looking up. "The wind is coming from the north-northeast. It’s a killing wind. We shouldn't be out there."

"The buyers aren't paid to care about the wind, Elias. They’re paid to receive the salt before the mountain passes freeze solid," Silas said, stepping onto the ice. He felt the vibration through his soles—a low, subsonic thrumming. The river was alive, trapped under its own skin. "The trade is the only reason this town eats until spring. You want to tell the families in the Bend that we’re skipping the Winter Trade because your ears are cold?"

Elias stiffened. He yanked the knot tight and finally looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. "It’s not the cold. It’s the weight. We’re over-loading. The ice is four inches thinner than last year. I measured it at the bend of the elbow."

"Then we run the sledges twenty yards apart," Silas commanded. "And we don't bunch up at the narrows. Gable, get the second team moving. I’m riding with Elias."

"You don't need to be out there," Gable whispered, catching Silas’s arm. "You're the mind, Silas. Not the muscle."

Silas pulled his arm away, the frost on his sleeve crackling. "Today, I'm the collateral. If I'm on the ice, the men know I believe it'll hold. Even if I'm lying."

The journey began with a single, sharp crack—not the ice breaking, but the snap of Elias’s whip over the heads of the lead dogs. The team surged. The sledge, loaded with three tons of contraband and "luxury" goods, lurched forward with a groan of wooden runners. 

For the first hour, there was no sound but the rhythmic *hush-hush* of the wood on ice and the panting of the dogs. The fog began to thin as they moved further from the town, revealing the terrifying vastness of the frozen river. To their left and right, the pine trees stood like frozen sentinels, laden with snow so heavy the branches looked like broken limbs.

Silas sat atop the primary crate, his hand gripped on the lashed rope. He watched the ice. It was a map of stress—white fractures veining through the deep blue-black. Every time a runner passed over a crack, a sound like a distant gunshot echoed across the valley. 

"The economy of a frozen town is a precarious thing, isn't it?" Elias shouted over the wind. He was standing on the back runners, shifting his weight to balance the sledge. 

"It’s not precarious," Silas yelled back. "It’s honest. In the summer, you can hide debt. You can promise harvests that might not come. In the winter, you either have the heat or you don't. You either move the weight or you starve. There’s no speculation in a blizzard."

"Is that why you’re pushing us?" Elias asked. "Because you're afraid of the starving?"

Silas looked back. Far behind them, the lanterns of the second and third teams flickered like dying stars in the mist. "I’m pushing us because I know what happens when the trade stops. My father watched the Bend go quiet in the Great Freeze of '92. People didn't just die of the cold, Elias. They died of the silence. They stopped talking to their neighbors. They started looking at each other's woodpiles like they were piles of gold. This trade—this dirty, dangerous, illegal trade—is the noise that keeps us alive."

Suddenly, the lead dog gave a sharp, panicked yip. 

"Whoa!" Elias hauled back on the lines. 

The sledge drifted, sliding sideways as the dogs scrambled for purchase. Silas leaped off, his boots sliding before he dropped to a knee to stabilize himself. 

"What is it?" Silas demanded.

Elias pointed. Ahead, the ice wasn't white or blue. It was grey. A wide patch of "rot ice," where the thermal springs beneath the riverbed had bubbled up, thinning the shelf from the bottom up. It looked like a bruised eye in the middle of the river.

"We have to go around," Elias said, his voice trembling. "The bank is too steep for the sledges. We have to backtrack two miles to the last crossing."

Silas looked at the sky. A heavy, bruised curtain of clouds was sweeping in from the peaks. The North-Northeast wind Elias had warned about was picking up, carrying the scent of a true white-out. 

"We don't have two hours for a backtrack," Silas said. He walked toward the grey ice. 

"Silas, get back!"

Silas ignored him. He knelt at the edge of the rot, pulling a small iron spike from his belt. He tapped the ice. It didn't ring. It thudded. It was mush—honeycombed and saturated. But it was only a twenty-foot stretch. 

"If we hit it with speed," Silas said, turning back, "the momentum will carry the sledge over. We just need the dogs to keep their footing."

"You're insane," Elias said. "The weight will bottom out the moment the runners hit that mush."

"Not if we unlash the top crates. We'll carry them across by hand, one by one, to lighten the load. Then we run the sledge empty across the rot, re-load on the other side."

"By hand?" Elias looked at the massive crates. "Silas, each of those is a hundred pounds of dead weight. The ice won't hold a man standing still, let alone a man carrying a load."

"Then we don't stand still," Silas said. He walked back to the sledge and began unknotting the ropes. "Tell the second team to hold back. We go first. If I make it, they follow my tracks. If I don't... Gable knows what to do with the ledgers."

The first crate was cold enough to burn through Silas’s gloves. He heaved it onto his shoulder, the corner digging into his collarbone. He took a breath, the air so cold it felt like swallowing glass, and started to run.

He didn't look down. He focused on a jagged rock on the far bank. *Left, right, left, right.* The sound beneath his feet was sickening—the sound of a wet sponge being squeezed. He felt the ice give, just a fraction of an inch, with every step. 

*Don't stop. To stop is to die.*

His lungs were screaming. The weight of the salt-shard crate felt like a living thing, trying to pull him down into the dark. He reached the far side, his boots hitting the solid, white ice with a jarring impact. He didn't stop until he was five yards clear, slamming the crate down onto the surface. 

He turned back, gasping, his chest heaving. 

Elias was staring at him, his face pale. 

"Your turn," Silas choked out. "And tell the others. One by one. Fast. No pausing."

The next hour was a blur of agonizing labor. The men of the first team, inspired by Silas’s recklessness or perhaps simply too terrified to argue, began the relay. It was a grim dance. A man would shoulder a crate, sprint across the grey, mushy death, and collapse on the other side while the next man went. 

One man, a tall, thin laborer named Kael, stumbled halfway across. The ice groaned—a deep, tectonic sound that seemed to vibrate the very air. Kael froze. 

"Don't stop, Kael!" Silas roared from the far bank. "Move!"

"It’s cracking!" Kael screamed, his eyes wide. 

"Run, you coward!" Silas stepped back toward the edge. "Run or I’ll come out there and throw you in myself!"

Kael found some reserve of primal terror. He lunged forward, discarding the crate just as the ice beneath him disintegrated. He flailed, his arms catching the edge of the solid shelf as the crate vanished into the black water with a dull *glug*. 

Silas and Elias reached out, grabbing Kael’s coat and hauling him up, dripping and shivering, onto the safe ice. 

The crate was gone. Thousands of marks worth of refined salt, lost to the river. 

"The cargo..." Kael wheezed, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. 

"Forget the cargo," Silas said, pulling the man to his feet. "You’re alive. Get to the sledge. We have work to do."

They managed to get the empty sledge across next, the dogs sensing the danger and sprinting with a fervor that nearly tipped the rig. When the last crate was re-lashed and the second team had successfully navigated a wider berth around the rot, Silas stood at the edge of the line, looking back at the hole they’d left in the river. 

The water was already beginning to skin over with new ice, hiding the trap once more. 

"We lost a crate," Elias said, coming up beside him. He offered Silas a flask of cheap, burning brandy. "The investors... they’re going to want that out of our hides."

Silas took a long pull of the brandy. It felt like a torch being lowered into his stomach. "Let them try. We moved seven hundred and ninety-nine crates through a rot-field in the middle of a gale. If they want the last one, they can dive for it."

He looked at his hands. They were shaking. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold that felt more permanent than the seasons. 

"Is it worth it, Silas?" Elias asked softly. "Every winter, we play this game. We risk the men, the dogs, and the town’s soul for a manifest of lies. Does it ever end?"

Silas looked toward the horizon. The first hint of dawn was breaking—a thin, pale line of yellow that looked like a scar across the grey sky. 

"It ends when the world stops needing what we have," Silas said. "And the world is always cold, Elias. Somewhere, someone is always shivering, and they will pay anything to feel the heat. We are the merchants of that heat. That’s the only law that matters."

He climbed back onto the sledge, his joints creaking like the ice. 

"Move them out!" he shouted. "We're behind schedule!"

The sledges began to move again, a long, dark line of desperate commerce winding its way through the white silence. They were three miles from the drop-off point, a derelict logging camp where the southern wagons would be waiting with their armored guards and their bags of coin. 

As they rounded the final bend of the Cypress, the wind died down for a moment, and the sound of the town’s morning bell drifted over the frozen woods. It was a thin, tinny sound, barely audible, but it served as a reminder. 

Back in Cypress Bend, the fires were being lit in the hearths. Children were waking up in warm beds. The shops were opening. All of it—the warmth, the food, the very breath of the town—depended on the men on the ice. It was a brutal, balance-sheet existence, where a man’s life was weighed against a crate of salt, and the ice was the only auditor that caught every mistake.

Silas reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, jagged piece of the blue salt that had chipped off during the crossing. It glowed with a faint, inner light, a captured spark of something unnatural. He squeezed it until it cut into his palm, the pain a sharp reminder that he was still among the living.

"Almost there," Elias muttered, more to himself than to Silas.

But Silas wasn't looking at the destination. He was looking at the dogs, their muscles bunching and stretching, their breath coming in rhythmic puffs of steam. He was looking at the way the light caught the ice, turning the river into a path of diamonds and glass. 

It was beautiful, in the way a sharpened blade is beautiful.

The logging camp came into view—a collection of ruined shacks and a sturdy stone pier. Figures moved among the buildings, holding torches that flared orange against the dawn. The southern buyers. They were early. 

"Guns up," Elias signaled to the men. 

The Winter Trade was never over until the money changed hands, and even then, the walk home was long. Silas stood up on the sledge, his hand resting on the hilt of the knife at his belt. He felt the cold settle into a familiar weight around his shoulders.

The economy of the frost was simple: nothing was free, and everything had a price paid in blood or sweat. As the sledge ground to a halt at the edge of the camp, Silas prepared to collect.

The lead buyer, a man wrapped in silks that had no business being in the north, stepped forward, his eyes scanning the crates with a predatory gleam.

"You're late, Silas," the man called out, his voice smooth and dangerous.

Silas stepped off the sledge, the ice beneath his boots finally solid, finally silent. He didn't smile. He didn't offer a greeting. He simply pointed to the crates.

"The ice didn't want to let them go," Silas said, his voice as hard as the river. "You're lucky we're here at all."

The buyer smiled, a flash of white teeth in a dark face. "Well then. Let's see if the quality matches the drama of the journey."

As the men began to unlash the cargo, Silas turned to look back the way they had come. The tracks of the sledges were already being filled by the drifting snow, erasing their passage as if they had never been there at all. In an hour, the river would look untouched—a perfect, white lie covering the struggle of the morning.

But the weight in Silas’s pocket remained, a heavy, jagged piece of the trade that he would carry back to the Bend, a token of the survival they bought and sold every year when the water turned to stone.

Silas watched the transaction with a hollow intensity, his mind already calculating the grain shipments they'd buy with the proceeds, the repairs for the docks, the pensions for the widows. It was a cycle as old as the mountains, a grim tally of life and loss.

"Everything's here," the buyer said, signaling his guards to begin loading the wagons. "Except for one. The manifest says eight hundred."

Silas didn't blink. He stepped closer to the buyer, let the man see the frostbite nipping at his cheeks and the cold fire in his eyes.

"The river took its tax," Silas said. "You want to argue with the Cypress, you're welcome to go back and find it."

The buyer hesitated, the silence stretching between them like a tightening wire. Finally, he chuckled and tipped his hat. "I think I'll take your word for it, Silas. I've never been much of a swimmer."

The gold was transferred in heavy, clinking leather bags. It was cold to the touch, just like everything else. Silas handed the bags to Gable, who immediately began counting.

"We’re done here," Silas said, turning his back on the southern wagons. "Elias, turn the dogs. We move while we still have the light."

The return journey was faster, the sledges light and the dogs eager for the kennels. But as they crossed back over the elbow of the river, Silas kept his eyes on the spot where the rot ice had been. 

He thought he saw a flash of blue beneath the surface—the lost crate, sinking slowly into the silt of the riverbed, a permanent deposit in the bank of the Cypress.

By the time the spires of Cypress Bend rose out of the afternoon mist, Silas was slumped against the railing of the sledge, his eyes closed. He wasn't sleeping; he was listening to the sound of the runners.

*Hush. Hush. Hush.*

The sound of a town staying alive. The sound of a trade that never ended.

As they pulled into the main square, the townspeople gathered, their faces etched with a mixture of relief and greed. They saw the bags in Gable’s hands. They saw the exhaustion in the men’s eyes.

Silas climbed down from the sledge, his legs buckling for a moment before he caught himself. He looked at the crowd, at the children with their red noses and the old men with their thin coats.

"We have the coin!" Gable shouted, holding a bag aloft.

A cheer went up, a thin, brittle sound that the wind tore away almost instantly. 

Silas didn't cheer. He walked past the crowd, toward the counting-house, his boots heavy on the packed snow. He had the ledgers to update. He had the next shipment to plan. He had the winter to survive.

He reached the door of the counting-house and paused, his hand on the iron bolt. He looked back at the river, a white ribbon winding away into the grey heart of the world.

The ice was thick enough for now, but he knew the truth of it. Beneath the surface, the current was always waiting, always hungry, always ready to collect its due.

He slammed the bolt home, the sound echoing through the square like a gavel.

The Winter Trade was closed. For today.

Silas sat at his desk, the silence of the room pressing in on him. He pulled the shard of salt from his pocket and set it on the wood. It hummed, a low, vibrant sound that seemed to push back the shadows. He watched it until the sun went down, a lonely spark in a cold, dark room, the only profit that truly mattered.

Outside, the first flakes of a new storm began to fall, burying the tracks, burying the blood, burying the Bend in a fresh layer of white, silent debt. Silas picked up his quill, his fingers finally warm enough to move, and began to write the first line of the new year’s ledger.

The winter wasn't an obstacle. It was the only partner he had left.