At first, prices were low enough that nearly everyone could afford sunlight, though Jón heard a lot of complaints from poorer folk that this new expense was stretching their wallets thin, despite the subsidies. But as the long, gray winter set in, the rich farmers decided they liked warm sunshine and lots of it, and found that if they used enough, falling snow wouldn’t stick to the ground and they could even go outside in thin shirts and short pants. It was like winter wasn’t even happening! Delighted, they proceeded to buy so much sunlight that they drove up the price, and suddenly there were people in Egilsstaðir who couldn’t afford any sun at all.

The town was profoundly changed. Previously, it hadn’t been easy to tell who in Egilsstaðir had money and who didn’t. Its modest and practical houses all looked more or less the same (except for Jón’s), and people didn’t dress in a flashy way even if they had the means. But now the divide was plain as day—quite literally. The wealthy side of town was bathed in bright sun, while the poor side was entombed in a permanent midnight. Temperatures were so balmy on the light side that it seemed as if winter had skipped it altogether, and the farmers and their families frolicked outdoors much of the day, playing summertime games like skull toss and goat flip. On the dark side, though, winter had doubled down: snow piled high on roofs and it grew so cold that people had to keep their hearth-fires burning all night or risk freezing to death in their sleep. After a few weeks, the sun-starved poor began to suffer from frostbite and chronic lethargy. Desperate denizens of the dark side were found lingering near the yards of the wealthy, trying to soak in rays that strayed into the public road. The daring ones went farther, sneaking onto private property to pilfer sun on the sly. The elders declared sun theft a crime, deputized a police force to crack down on it, and many were jailed, dragged away shouting that the sun belonged to everyone. Poor citizens with suntans were hauled in for questioning, and those who could not adequately explain their skin tone were jailed, too.

The poor did not suffer these indignities quietly. They complained to the elders. They demonstrated in front of the town hall. They marched in front of the jail. But the farmers had no interest in giving up their new creature comforts nor their winter-less winters. They were convinced that it was their right to use as much sunlight as they could afford to, and the elders, who were being supplied with sunlight at a great discount, took their side.

Privately, Jón Jónsson had mixed feelings about the situation. Things were certainly going well for him—his personal fortunes were soaring—but it wasn’t so long ago that he himself would have been too poor to buy sunlight. He didn’t really believe what he’d said about how the poor deserved to be poor and the rich deserved anything they could get their hands on—that had been Tyr’s line—but he was amazed at how readily Blood-Axe and his friends had adopted it, and how they could allow one principle to replace every other moral impulse.