The blizzard howled against the outer gates, a white fury trying to reclaim the fortress. But inside the lower bailey, the mood was electric.
The heavy timber doors groaned open, letting in a swirl of snow and twenty exhausted, ice-crusted knights. But no one looked at the snow. Every eye was fixed on the sleds they dragged behind them.
Three massive shapes, covered in shaggy, frost-matted wool. Yaks.
They were mountainous beasts, easily a thousand pounds each. Steam rose from their carcasses in the cold air.
"Meat!" a child screamed.
It started as a ripple and turned into a roar. The refugees—men who had been hollow-eyed ghosts just two days ago, women who had hidden their children under rags—surged forward. They didn't cheer like a crowd at a tourney; they cheered like starving people seeing salvation.
Captain Hareth pulled off his fog-free goggles, his face red with cold but splitting into a grin. He looked at me and saluted.
"The goggles held, My Lord," he shouted over the wind. "We walked right up to them. They never saw us coming until the spears were set."
"Get them downstairs," I ordered, my breath pluming in the air. "We don't freeze the meat. We roast it."
The Dungeon Biosphere—formerly a torture chamber, now the heart of Boreas—was unrecognizable.
The "Hypocaust" system was fully operational. The clay pipes running under the dirt floor radiated a steady, gentle heat that seeped through the soles of boots and warmed the bones. High above, the ice-window and mirror array caught the last of the afternoon light, casting a diffused, cathedral-like glow over the cavern.
But tonight, the air didn't smell of damp earth. It smelled of roasting fat and woodsmoke from the spit-roasts set up near the ventilation draft.
Three yaks provided an immense amount of protein. The soldiers moved through the crowd, slicing thick slabs of seared meat and handing them to the citizens. There was no hoarding. The sheer abundance of the kill had suppressed the panic instinct.
I stood on a raised stone platform—the base of an old pillory—and watched them eat. Grease stained their chins. Color was returning to pale cheeks.
"Listen to me!" I called out.
The cavern went silent. Hundreds of faces turned toward me. They looked at my black teeth, my pale skin, and the severe black clothes. They didn't see a monster anymore. They saw the Provider.
"Look at the meat in your hands," I said, my voice carrying in the acoustics of the stone room. "Taste it."
I pointed to the knights standing by the fire, looking proud in their armor.
"You think the knights fed you tonight?" I asked.
The crowd murmured confused agreement.
"You are wrong," I stated.
I pointed to a group of children sitting near the front, their faces smeared with gravy.
"You fed yourselves."
I gestured to the shiny bronze shield hanging near the light shaft.
"Those children polished the mirrors that lit this room. That light let us build the furnace."
I pointed to the blacksmiths in the back.
"The smiths built the furnace that melted the sand. The sand became the glass. The glass became the goggles."
I looked at the knights.
"The goggles allowed the knights to see in the blizzard. Without the glass, the knights are blind. Without the furnace, there is no glass. Without the coal-carriers and the mirror-polishers, there is no furnace."
I stepped down, walking into the crowd. I placed a hand on the shoulder of a stunned old man who had spent the day carrying clay for the pipes.
"This is a system," I told them. "A machine. The knight swings the sword, but the citizen aims the blow. There are no passengers in Boreas. We are all gears. And tonight, the gears turn."
I raised a cup of water—we had no wine, and I wouldn't drink it if we did.
"To the Machine," I said.
"To the Machine!" the crowd roared back, raising their meat and cups.
Elara stood in the shadows, watching me. She wasn't eating. She was smiling, a look of terrifying pride on her face.
"You have them," she whispered as I passed her. "They would march into hell if you told them there was coal there."
"Not hell," I corrected, wiping grease from my hands. "Just the mines. And we go tomorrow."
The adrenaline of the day faded, leaving behind the heavy fatigue of management. My legs ached. My borrowed liver was still processing the remnants of the arsenic, leaving me prone to sudden exhaustion.
I walked down the corridor to the officer's quarters. It was a converted cell, but we had cleaned it. A heavy rug covered the stone floor, and a proper bed had been salvaged from the upper keep.
I opened the door, expecting cold solitude.
Instead, the room was warm.
Elara was already there. She lay under the heavy fur blankets, her massive form taking up two-thirds of the mattress. She was reading a book by the light of a glow-stone—a crude phosphorescent rock Tessa had found in the mines.
She looked up, her dark eyes softening.
"The bed was cold," she said simply. "I am warming it. Efficiency."
I didn't argue. I didn't have the energy to argue, and logically, she was correct. Her body mass was a thermal battery.
I stripped off my boots and outer tunic and climbed in.
It was like sinking into a heated cloud. Her skin was soft, radiating a steady, comforting warmth. I turned onto my side, pressing my back against her front. She shifted, her arm—heavy and solid—draping over my waist, pulling me flush against her.
It wasn't sexual. It was structural. She was a retaining wall against the world.
"You spoke well," she murmured into my hair. "My father used fear. You use logic. It is... stranger. But it works."
I closed my eyes, the tension leaving my shoulders. "Fear causes friction. Logic reduces drag."
The door creaked open.
I tensed, but Elara didn't move.
Lena slipped into the room. She was wearing her night shift, clutching a dagger that looked ridiculously large in her small hand.
"My Lord," she whispered. "I... I checked the perimeter. But the spies... if they escaped..."
"The spies are at the bottom of a gorge, Lena," I mumbled, half-asleep. "Go to bed."
"I cannot sleep alone," she said, her voice trembling with a practiced fragility. "The shadows move. And... I have guarded you every night since the poison. It is my protocol."
She didn't wait for permission. She blew out the glow-stone and scrambled onto the other side of the bed.
I felt the mattress dip. A smaller, sharper warmth pressed against my chest.
I froze, waiting for the explosion. I was sandwiched between a Princess and a Maid. In any other court, this was a scandal. In a harem novel, this was the climax.
But here?
Elara shifted slightly, making room. She didn't growl. She didn't shove Lena off.
"She is small," Elara murmured sleepily, tightening her hold on me. "She does not displace much heat. And she checks the food for poison."
"She is an asset," I agreed groggily.
Lena wiggled until her head was tucked under my chin, her dagger under the pillow. Elara was a warm mountain behind me. Lena was a vigilant heater in front of me.
I was insulated. Protected.
"Optimization," I whispered to the dark.
For the first time since waking up in this poisoned body, my heart rate dropped to a perfectly resting rhythm. I didn't dream of chemical plants or black water. I slept.