“Zenia!” Tazya’s voice was a raw tearing sound in the suffocating dark. Her hands, still smeared with tar from their earlier work, moved blindly over her sister’s face, finding the slick, coppery liquid that covered Zenia’s chin and neck. The sound of Zenia’s breathing was a shallow, desperate rasp, each gasp catching in her throat with a wet gurgle. The frost settling through the floor seemed to draw the last life straight out of Zenia's small frame. She was burning with fever, yet shivering uncontrollably. They needed heat. Now.
“Havel! Matches!” Tazya demanded, her voice tight with panic. She could hear Havel fumbling near the cold hearth, the scrape of his heavy boots on the uneven floorboards. Sulfur flared, then a yellow point of fire took hold, illuminating Havel’s strained features. He held a stub of tallow, its yellow ring barely reaching the corners of the room. By its meager glow, the sight of Zenia’s stained nightgown was stark and horrifying.
“She needs a doctor,” Havel stated, his tone rough and stripped of restraint. “And fuel. She’ll freeze before the morning.”
“Doctors are for those with credits, Havel. We have none left. The ration board won’t authorize a home visit for ‘minor coughs’ like hers,” Tazya countered, pulling Zenia closer, trying to impart some of her own rapidly draining body heat. Zenia whimpered, her teeth chattering.
“Then we buy it,” Havel said, his gaze fixed on Zenia. “Coal. Black market. Whatever it takes.”
Tazya hesitated. The black market district, known as the Skulkways, was a tangle of alleys run by gangs and watched by bribed Civic Guards. But the alternative was watching Zenia fade. “Alright,” she conceded, tucking her chin into her collar. “We go now.”
They wrapped Zenia in every spare blanket they owned, tucking her into Havel’s cot, the most sheltered spot in the drafty house. Havel set the burning tallow on the small shelf near the cot, the weak flame barely grazing the grimy plaster. “Stay awake, Zenia,” Tazya whispered, pressing a cold compress to her sister’s forehead. “We’ll be back soon. With coal.”
The Skulkways were a sensory assault. The air hung thick with the stench of unwashed bodies, stale cooking oil, and unidentifiable chemicals. Darkness pooled deep between the sparse gas fixtures, turning every alcove into an alcove of silhouettes. People huddled in doorways, their eyes sharp and hungry, assessing every passerby. Havel moved with a quiet, watchful intensity, his hand never far from his side, a silent promise of violence to anyone who dared approach too close.
They found a fuel seller tucked away in a grimy lean-to off Vesker’s oldest thoroughfare, the Grimetide. He was a heavy man with grease-combed hair and a smile plated in yellow metal. Sacks of black anthracite were stacked behind him, smelling of shale and machine oil.
“Looking for heat, little bird?” The man's stare traveled down Tazya's throat. His voice was a greasy purr. “Coal’s expensive these days. Supply’s… tight. Especially for the good stuff.”
“How much for a full sled?” Havel asked, his voice low and even, ignoring the bait. He stepped slightly in front of Tazya, subtly shielding her.
The dealer looked Havel up and down, then shifted back to Tazya with appraisal. “For you, my friend, it’ll be a stack of civic notes so tall it’d block out the sun. But for your pretty… companion? Perhaps we can arrange a different kind of payment.” His smile widened, revealing more gold.
Tazya’s stomach twisted. She felt Havel go rigid at her shoulder. “We’ll pay the notes,” Tazya stated, her voice flat, ignoring the suggestion. “Just name your price.”
He gave a wet, rattling snicker. “Oh, I don’t think you heard me, little bird. For such a generous helping of the finest black gold, I require… a personal transaction. A few hours of your… undivided attention. Consider it a discount.” He winked, his gaze openly predatory.
Before Tazya could even form a response, Havel moved. It was a blur of motion, silent and deadly. In one lunge, Havel pinned the merchant against the lean-to's rough planks, fingers locked around his windpipe and boots scraping the mud. Gold showed against bruised lips as the dealer clawed at Havel’s forearm, choking. Havel’s eyes were cold, devoid of any discernible humanity, fixed on the struggling man with an intent that promised brutal finality. The piles of coal rattled ominously.
“Havel, stop!” Tazya grabbed Havel’s arm, her voice sharp. His arm was like iron. She could feel the coiled tension in his body, the absolute, unyielding rage. He was going to kill him. And if he did, they’d never get the coal. They’d be implicated. “Havel! Think of Zenia!”
The name, Zenia, seemed to pierce through Havel’s red haze. His grip slackened fractionally, just enough for Borran to gasp a ragged breath, his feet scrabbling for purchase. But Havel didn’t release him. His knuckles were white.
She had to intervene before Havel finished it or the man gasped for help. She took a stride into the center of the stall, projecting her words toward the onlookers huddled along the thoroughfare. “Borran Lyev, owner of ‘Lyev’s Lump’ on the Grimetide, known for acquiring coal from the Ministry’s abandoned Krell Mines,” she stated, her voice clear and carrying. Her eyes fixed on Borran’s terrified, bulging ones. “Your ledger, which I’m sure is very meticulously kept, fails to mention the five hundredweight of grade-A anthracite you offloaded to the Chief Overseer of the Vesker Steel Foundry last month. Nor does it detail the three-thousand-mark kickback you paid to Inspector Faelan to ignore your falsified manifest reports for the last quarter. Shall I continue? Or would you prefer to explain these… discrepancies… to the Municipal Tax Board, once I’ve made a formal complaint?”
The dealer wheezed, his jaw sagging. He cut his eyes across the alley, taking in the loiterers pausing to listen. His face, still mottled from Havel’s grip, paled further. He knew exactly what Tazya was implying, and the extent of her knowledge was chilling.
Havel let go, dropping the merchant into the slag to cough in frantic spasms. His eyes, when they met Tazya’s, were stripped of all their earlier bravado. “A sled… a full sled…” he croaked, scrambling to his feet, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. “For free. Just… forget what you know.”
“Consider it forgotten, once the sled is at Canal House 43,” Tazya replied, her voice cold and devoid of any triumph. “And don’t think of shorting us. I’ll know.”
Gasping, the man pointed toward a sturdy timber sled resting by the timber wall. “Take it. It’s all there.” He looked on silently as Havel hoisted the heavy sacks onto the runners.
The journey back was grueling. The sled was heavy, the cold relentless, but the thought of Zenia gave them strength. They arrived at Canal House 43, exhausted and shivering, to find Zenia propped up in bed, looking marginally better, a faint flush on her cheeks. The tallow wick was drowning in its own grease, and the room tasted of rust.
“The radio,” Zenia whispered, a strange intensity in her eyes. “I fixed it. It worked.” She gestured to the small, clunky military radio, now sitting on the floor beside her cot. A tangle of wires snaked from its chassis to an improvised antenna made from a bent coat hanger, reaching up towards the cracked ceiling.
Tazya grabbed the bedpost. “Zenia! I told you not to touch that. The registry will hang us. Inspector Vance—”
“No, Tazya, listen,” Zenia interrupted, leaning forward on one elbow. “It matters more than that. I found a frequency… it’s a rebel broadcast, I think. They’re talking about the Ministry. The official rationing quotas they publicize… they’re lies. There’s enough. More than enough. The Ministry is hoarding the surplus. They’re starving us on purpose to keep the districts compliant.”
Tazya stared, horrified. The thought was monstrous, yet it explained so much. The perpetual scarcity, the desperate struggles. But Zenia wasn’t finished. Her gaze stayed pinned to Tazya, wet with reflection from the guttering wick.
“And… and there was another message,” Zenia stammered, her voice dropping to a panicked whisper. “Encoded. I recognized the frequency signature. It was a civic channel, but scrambled. I ran it through the decryption cycle. It’s for Vance. Our Vance. He’s leading a localized raid. Tonight. They’re coming for Canal House 43. They’re looking for unlicensed receivers.”