Chapter 1: Wrongfully Exiled to the Uttercold
The first thing Monroe knew about the Uttercold -- the northernmost provinces of the Empire, not the frigid portal to a watery hell -- was that it was the most desolate place he had ever visited. He'd experienced cold, gone outside to feed the horses and broken the ice on their water troughs, cleared snow to make easier paths to the outhouse, that sort of thing. Here, though, the cold had a mind of its own. It froze its way through his thick woolens like a dagger of ice, and his lips were quivering with cold by the time he made it to the dockmaster's building, a clapboard hovel with an official gilded imperial sign on it. He knocked politely, aware of the bindings on the sign, and waited for an official to answer the door and let him in, rather than try the handle himself and risk the imperial curse. The face that greeted him was an honest one, if plain and clearly healing from frostbite. He was human, with a handlebar mustache in horrible need of a trim (there were beef dr...