The cold was especially bad coming from such a warm house, and the nervous sweating he’d been doing didn’t help. It grew icy even beneath Vidar’s closed coat as he ran around the front of the house to throw himself into the nearest alley to hide if the proprietor did follow.

Bits of bloodstained sawdust were strewn about in the snow where he’d stepped. Swearing to himself, Vidar looked around, trying to orient himself. The church was nearby with a row of single-story houses hiding its base from view. It towered over Vidar ominously, like it might reach out and get him at any moment.

No one left the inn and Vidar eventually moved out into the street to hurry across. In the distance, to his right, he saw city guardsmen harassing some poor man. He didn’t stop or even slow his step, afraid it would be the same ones who’d been after him the day before.

The inn he’d exited through faced the back part of the church, so Vidar could approach and then circle around without anyone noticing. Erik, Sven, and the third boy were still hard at work, only having descended about a foot into the frozen ground.

Vidar joined them and hoisted his shovel to thrust it downward. It barely made it half an inch.

“Where did you come from?” Erik asked, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Vidar glanced at the side entrance. From where they worked, you couldn’t tell it’d been tampered with. “Nowhere. Couldn’t find a pickaxe.”

“You better help now, or we’ll tell Embla you shirked,” Sven said.

“Shirker,” the unnamed one said.

“I’m digging, aren’t I?” Vidar said, turning slightly to face the third boy. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Nils,” the boy grunted.

Vidar straightened and held his shovel in both hands. He spoke with as much authority as he could muster. “Erik. Sven. Nils. If anyone asks, I’ve been with you three all along. Understand?”

All three snickered.

About an hour later, they finally broke through the frozen top layer of the ground, which significantly sped their progress. Some time after that, one of the old men brought them bowls with some hot, dark stew with unidentifiable bits in them.

Vidar peered down into the bowl, swallowed hard to push the nausea down, then held it out. “I’m not hungry.”

The boys fought over it but ended up dividing the contents into their respective bowls. He was famished, to tell the truth, but couldn’t make himself eat anything the church provided. Not after what he’d seen inside its walls.

Once they’d finished eating, that same man returned for the bowls. By the time they were finished, Vidar was simultaneously as cold and as warm as he’d ever been. His clothes were drenched in sweat underneath his coat. His limbs ached and the palms of his hands were on fire.

Gasping for breath once they’d clambered out of the hole, Vidar asked, “What now?”

“They’ll bring out the dead folk,” Erik said, pointing.

Both old men were rounding the church, heading for the side entrance. They stopped by the door and looked confused, talking to one another and searching in the snow. Looking for the padlock, Vidar guessed.

Then one of them shrugged and opened the door. He soon reemerged, pulling the cart.

“Did you tamper with the padlock?” he asked, looking straight at Vidar after placing the cart right in front of the freshly dug hole.

“W-what?” Vidar asked, his whole body shivering from the cold creeping in through his coat.

“The padlock is gone.”

Vidar looked up at the old man with his best innocent expression. “I’ve been digging.”

He pursed his lips and looked to the other boys. “Is the one boy telling the truth?”

“Mhm,” all three said.

“Then you won’t mind us taking a peek at your pockets?”

“You don’t trust me?” Vidar asked, looking from one old man to the other.

They looked at each other, then both turned to Vidar.

“No.”

“Not at all.”

Vidar sighed and raised his hands above his head, consenting to the search. They came up empty, of course. He’d hidden the padlock in the alley next to the inn, under a pile of snow.

One of the old men still glared at him, but the other did his best to soothe his friend’s mood. “Brother Julius must have removed it. Let us drop this so we can carry on with our task.”

“Fine,” the first one grumbled.

They tipped the corpses into the hole and then left the boys with instructions to fill it back in. Vidar went to grab a shovelful of dirt and found the mounds of freshly dug soil frozen over. He sighed.

An hour later, the hole was finally filled. When the task was over, the cold hit him all the worse.

The priest returned and the old men followed. Vidar and the three boys had to stand there in the biting cold while the priest recited some incomprehensible chant about life, death, and sacrifice. Vidar knew the church and rituals were like ink and paper, natural companions, but he’d always imagined it as sitting on their knees with their faces to the empty sky, praying for their wingless angels to return. Human sacrifice, or whatever he’d seen, was not that. He needed to tell someone, but who could he even mention it to? No one would believe him. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care.

With the ritual finally completed, the four of them were dismissed. Even the boys looked overcome with the cold now, their blue lips shivering and their faces set in grim determination as they rushed through the streets.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“W-where are we going?” Vidar asked, glancing this way and that. People were milling about everywhere, most of them wearing thick coats, hats, and gloves to keep themselves warm. This was a nicer district, and it showed in the quality of garments worn by those around them.

Erik forced out a single word, hunching over like it pained him greatly. “Fire.”

They passed a group of young boys harassed by city guards. Vidar watched as one of the boys took a gauntleted fist in his stomach. It doubled him over and the boy puked red. The guardsman glanced in Vidar’s direction and Vidar hurriedly looked away. He didn’t want any trouble. Not now.

As they traversed the increasingly more run-down streets, obviously heading back into Rat Town, fewer and fewer shops were open. The people braving the cold did not do so in thick coats and headwear, but with tattered shoes and sometimes even bare feet. They were in the poor neighborhoods now.

Dark was already upon them and figures skulked in alleyways, watching. Vidar pulled his coat closer with numb fingers. He’d long since lost the feeling in his toes.

Then they were at the barnlike building where they’d eaten before seeing Embla. The doors flew open and the incredible warmth was like walking into a wall. Boisterous sound filled his ears and the smell of food made his stomach rumble and twist upon itself, equally nauseous and starved.

Someone called out his name, but he only had eyes for the fire. It burned merrily atop the raised stone platform in the middle of the room, blazing hot. Vidar held out his hands to the fire, their blue pallor a stark contrast to the orange, red, and yellow flames dancing in his vision. Then someone pulled him back.

“Careful,” Ida said.

Vidar pulled his arm free, returning his hand to its place as near the fire as he dared.

“It’s not good for you to stand so close. I’ve seen a boy lose the ability to use his hands,” Ida said, pointing to Erik, Sven, and Nils. They’d seated themselves on a bench near the wall, almost as far from the fire as they could go.

“Really?” Vidar asked, pulling his hands back. They were throbbing. Come to think of it, almost his entire body was. The warmth stung his eyes and the pain in his toes, as feeling returned to them, was almost too much to bear.

Hobbling over to the nearest bench, Vidar sat with a groan. The room had quieted when they entered but was now back to its raucousness.

Ida stood before him. “Want me to get you some food?”

“Water, please,” Vidar said. His throat was parched all of a sudden, his tongue like dry paper in his mouth.

While Ida gathered a plate for him, Siv approached with timid steps. She held something out before her, proffering it to Vidar.

“What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

She waved it in front of his face and let out a small grunt.

He took it. A wool hat, rough-spun with several small imperfections and holes. Vidar put it on. It just about covered his ears.

“For me?”

She nodded, smiling brilliantly.

The change in temperature must have done something to his eyes, because they started stinging. He wiped at them with the sleeve of his coat. “Thank you.”

Ida set a bowl in his lap and handed over a cup of water. “How’re your hands?”

“Painful,” he said, looking up at her.

She hunched down to look closely at his fingers, turning her head this way and that as she hummed. “No spots. You’ll be fine.”

“Spots?”

“If you’re out in the cold long enough, you can get these dark spots. That’s not good.”

“Oh,” he said, taking a sip of water. It was warm, almost like tea water without the tea.

Ida stood and winked at him. “So don’t fall asleep outside.”

“No chance of that ever happening. I’m never going outside for that long in this cold again!” he proclaimed, raising his voice and spilling a little of the warm tea into his bowl of stew.

“We don’t like it either, you grump!” Erik yelled. “You think we get to choose?”

Vidar studied the mystery bits in his thick stew, grumbling. “Well, I’m not doing it.”

“So you’re leaving us?” Ida asked.

“He’s not going anywhere,” Torbjorn jeered. The rough older boy stood and pointed down at Vidar. “This little shit don’t have the first clue how to survive without a fat purse!”

“I did just fine before coming here!” Vidar countered, cursing his own quick mouth before he’d even finished the sentence. A beating was not what he needed, not when he still hadn’t even thawed properly.

Torbjorn, thankfully, just laughed derisively and went over to the exit. “You’ll start smelling like shit before you know it, shit goblin!”

The door opened and closed behind him.

Ida raised an eyebrow. “Embla offered you Bjorn’s old job?”

“He the one who disappeared down there?”

“Yes,” she said.

Vidar looked up at her face and saw a forlorn expression.

“You knew him?” he asked. Stupid question. Of course she knew him.

“Our little brother. Small like you, with the same bushy hair and big ears.”

Siv’s eyes glittered like she was tearing up.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Vidar said.

“He wasn’t our actual brother. It’s what we call ourselves here. We’re all brothers and sisters. You too, now that you’ve joined us, big brother.”

That effect from the heat on his eyes returned, and he rubbed at them before looking down at his food again. “Little sister,” he mumbled, taking a spoonful of hot mystery stew.

----------------------------------------

* * *

“There is nothing else,” Embla said.

“There has to be!” Vidar protested.

They’d spent another freezing night huddled together in the shack and eaten what these people called breakfast before going back to Embla’s mansion of a house. Vidar had the creeping suspicion that the days varied very little for most of his little brothers and sisters. Eat slop, grueling work, terrible sleep. They’d resigned themselves to it, and from what he’d been able to pick up from their conversations, most of these kids counted the days until they were eighteen and would be tossed out. Embla’s stipend from the Crown apparently ran out once they hit maturity. That was why Ida told him to lie about his age. He wouldn’t have been allowed in. Why they waited was beyond Vidar’s comprehension. If they wanted to leave and find a better life, they could. No one forced them to stay. He hadn’t put the question to Ida, but he figured those two girls were saving money by doing their nightly activities. That way, they’d have a nest egg once they needed to move on.

He would not resign himself to that life. There had to be more out there for him than dying of cold while digging graves for victims of the church’s terrible rituals.

“There isn’t.”

“No one needs a scribe?”

Embla’s face remained impassive. “You’re not a scribe. Are you, Vidar?”

“Sure I am!”

“Then show me your guild’s writ.”

He glanced at the others sitting around, waiting for their assignments. They were all looking between him and Embla. Torbjorn was quiet, but the grin on his face said he was enjoying this very much. He should’ve waited for everyone else to leave before having it out with this wooden pole of a woman. Curse his impatience.

Vidar gritted his teeth. “Fine, I’m not guild sanctioned. Still, I’ll work for cheap!”

“You’ll work for food and board, like all of us,” Embla said, pointing to the three boys he’d dug graves with the day before. “You may choose graves or sewers, or you may leave and let us get on with our day.”

Vidar looked from Embla to Ida, to Erik, to Torbjorn, then back to Embla. “Fine. Anything is better than being out in that cold all day, every day!”

Torbjorn snickered.

Vidar pointed at him. “Don’t you start, or you’ll regret it!”

The ruffian stepped into the middle of the room, towering over Vidar. “What did you say?”

“Torbjorn,” Embla said, the warning dangling from that single word. “You have your assignment, same as yesterday’s.”

Torbjorn lingered for a moment, then leaned in close. “Enjoy the shit, shit goblin.”

Vidar clenched his fists. He wanted nothing more than to take a swing and put the lout on his ass, but he wasn’t delusional. That was not how it would end. Instead, Vidar did nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Torbjorn hissed, turning to walk away.

Not today. But someday, Vidar promised himself.