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.
“Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry for them?” Jón asked Blood-Axe one day.
“Not at all,” he replied. “If the dark-dwellers don’t like how we do things here, they’re free to leave town.”
And indeed, some of them did, but there were many who could not, and they grew more and more desperate as the freeze hardened and their appeals were ignored. Eventually, desperation soured into anger. The dark-dwellers, as the farmers who lived on the sunny side of town had taken to calling them, threw hard looks at Jón as they passed him in the street. He didn’t feel safe walking through Egilsstaðir alone, and in addition to the guards he employed to watch over his money, he hired several more to follow him wherever he went. The additional security was expensive, so to compensate he raised the price of light, and an even larger swath of town was thrown into darkness. Blood-Axe bought the sun they could no longer afford and used it to light his many stables and even the bottom of his well.
“Why on earth do you need light inside your well?” Jón asked him.
“So I can see how much water I have without going to the trouble of lowering the bucket,” Blood-Axe said.
That night an old woman on the dark side of town froze to death in her bed.
The demonstrations grew larger. The crowds got angrier. A man was overheard plotting to burn down the elders’ town hall, and was hanged.
An emergency meeting was called between the farmers’ union, the elders, and Jón Jónsson.
“We can’t go on like this,” said Bjarni Bjarnason. “Something has to be done.”
“Jón Jónsson will have to lower the price of his sunlight, that’s what,” said Blood-Axe. “It’s the only thing that will mollify the dark-dwellers.”
“That isn’t fair!” Jón protested. “No, the town is going to have to subsidize more light for those who can’t afford it. Then they’ll stop demonstrating and threatening me, and I won’t have to employ so many bodyguards, and I’ll be able to drop the price.”
“Why should we give all that light away for free?” said one of the farmers. “What have the dark-dwellers done to deserve our charity, other than threaten to burn down the town hall?”
“I say we kick them all out,” suggested Blood-Axe.
Bjarni shook his head. “If you turn them out of their homes, they might come back seeking revenge.”
“Put them in prison, then,” said the fishmonger. “All of them.”
“Too expensive,” said an elder.
“Kick them out and build a wall around the town,” said Blood-Axe.
“That would be like putting ourselves in prison,” said the fishmonger. “Why don’t we just kill them instead? Save us all a lot of money and trouble.”
“Don’t be absurd!” said Blood-Axe. “Who would we sell our vegetables to?”
After much discussion it was decided that, whether he liked it or not, Jón would have to lower his prices until things in Egilsstaðir calmed down.
Jón was furious. “You can all choke on a herring!” he shouted, and stormed out.
Blood-Axe chased him outside. “Be reasonable!” he called after Jón.
Jón didn’t look back. His six bodyguards escorted him home. He told them he didn’t want any visitors, locked himself in his house, and paced from room to room, angry and brooding. He was reminded of how he’d felt as a boy when the taxing authority seized his inheritance and left him penniless. Why should he pay for the mistakes of others? It was the farmers who’d been reckless and greedy, not him! Not only was he being forced to slash his profits, but he was risking his safety to do it—after all, it was Jón Jónsson, not the farmers or elders, who had to venture into the dark section every week to strip away their dawning sun. How long before an attempt was made on his life? Even a dozen bodyguards couldn’t guarantee his safety.
He decided then and there that he was leaving. He would take his long-delayed holiday to Rome, and sod the rest. See how well they managed without him!
He began to pack at once. He’d only tossed a few shirts into a case when there was a loud clap behind him and he spun around, startled, to find Tyr standing at the foot of his bed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“Away from here,” Jón said. “And don’t bother trying to talk me out of it this time. The risk is no longer worth the reward. I quit!”
“I thought you wanted to be the richest man in all of Iceland,” said Tyr.
“I am the richest man in all of Iceland, and what good has it done me? I work like a dog, I have no time to enjoy my money, and half this town wishes I were dead. I’m leaving first thing in the morning! Scratch that”—he tossed a pair of pants into his case—“I’m leaving tonight!”
“What about all your money?” asked Tyr, nodding toward a trunk in the corner that was overflowing with gold coins.
Jón stopped what he was doing and looked at the trunk. “I’m, er, taking that too, of course,” he said, and Tyr watched in amusement as Jón tried to drag it toward the door. He’d only gotten a few feet before he had to stop to catch his breath.
“Fine,” Jón panted, “point taken. I’ll take as much as I can carry and hide the rest. But I’m still leaving tonight!”