10 · Snow and Marks

enough room for such a border. An old woman remained between them, passing a pot from one area to the other without acknowledging the division.

Her granddaughter kept a stone in her pocket. She had taken it from her house so it would not disappear entirely. Beran asked what the house was like. The girl described a porch, three windows and an outside stair. He knew the neighbourhood.

“Your window faced west,” he said. “In the afternoon, the sun reached the table.”

The girl burst into tears. Her mother took the stone as though it were to blame. Beran asked for it and gave it back to the child.

He did not try to tell her that a home could be rebuilt anywhere. He sat beside her and drew the three windows in the snow coming through a crack.

The adults argued about going down. One man had been warned that fugitives would be arrested at the forest post. Serik offered a letter of protection. The man looked at him

with hostility.

“My contract has that mark too.”

The paladin put away his seal.

“Then I'll go to the post.”

Elyen calculated the distance. They could lose half a day. Beran pointed to snow piling against the frame. If they waited to argue more, they would lose the route.

Serik went down with two men and the girl's mother. Teren wanted to go. The paladin pointed at his leg.

“There are two children here with fevers. We don't all need to reach the same place.”

The cleric stayed.

He cleaned pots, examined the children's coughs and showed the old woman what could be done with bark from nearby trees. Ivara corrected one of her measures. She did not argue out of pride; she passed the bowl and listened. Together they prepared an infusion that smelled so foul the patients recovered enough energy to protest.

Elyen repaired a door with rope. Maera handed out food without asking anyone to promise anything in return. Neris played a tune they knew from another

region. A woman began singing different words. They compared them and discovered both had forgotten the most indecent verse. They laughed as they reconstructed it.

Serik returned at dusk. The post was occupied not by guards but by collectors wearing blue cloaks bought from soldiers. Two fled; a third agreed to change the word “tax” to “theft” when Serik showed which article would condemn him.

He brought bread, a mule and the certainty that the insignia still did things his word alone could not.

He stared at the metal while the others saddled up.

The girl's mother approached him.

“I don't like owing you this,” she said.

“You don't owe me.”

“We decide that.”

Serik nodded. He promised himself to remember that answer too when he held command again.

Maera knew two routes south, but neither served for children in the snow. Serik suggested sending a message to the Armada. No one laughed. He thought that worse.

Beran took out charcoal and corrected the woman's map.

“Go down through the

eastern wood. The stone bridge lost its arch, but there's a crossing beneath the pier. Don't wait for the thaw.”

They left some of their food. Neris gave up her spare coat. As they left, a boy asked whether gnomes sang because they could not fight.

“Sometimes we sing to remember why we're fighting,” she replied.

On the moraine, a slab of snow broke loose at head height.

The avalanche was small. It fell from a sun-warmed ledge with small stones inside. It was enough to push the cart towards the edge. Beran leapt to the wheel, and Elyen caught the mule's rein. Frightened by the noise, the animal began turning on itself.

Serik tried to pull the cart uphill. The wheel sank deeper. Ivara raised a hand to melt the snow, and Beran shouted not to warm the ground.

The mage stopped. Air trembled before her fingers and grew still again.

Maera cut the strap of the heaviest crate. It fell beside the path, broke open and let two

blankets roll towards the drop. The medicines remained in Teren's bag. Neris was under the cart, looking for somewhere to put a stone.

Four of them managed to free the wheel. The mule trembled so badly that Elyen had to cover its eyes with a cloth. He spoke close to its ear in a wordless voice. The animal stopped backing away.

Beran remained kneeling beside the rut.

“The path no longer drains beside the slope,” he said. “They put the conduit in the middle and left it uncovered.”

Warm water ran beneath the snow, undermining the path workers had to use to reach the works.

Teren retrieved a blanket caught on a ledge. The other was gone. He felt a disproportionate grief: Lina had lent it, and it still had blue stitching along the edge. Danger became concrete through those small losses, the ones he might have explained on returning if he came back without the rest.

Elyen found a route above the conduit. They would have to carry the

cart by hand. They took off their saddlebags and unloaded even what seemed insignificant. A bowl, a rope, a whetstone; the sum of objects decided whether they could save a wheel.

For the first time in her life, Neris wanted to throw away the bandurria. It weighed little, but it neither healed nor fed anyone. Beran stopped her.

“You have work too.”

He did not tell her what it meant. The gnome adjusted the strap again and pushed the cart without using the phrase as absolution.

A new palisade protected the quarry entrance. Beran pointed to cracks in the slope. They had widened them to fit a new conduit descending from the snowfields.

There were few guards. They were armed workers protecting the rations. Serik advanced without his sword and showed them the false contracts. The youngest tried to lower his bow. His chief struck his mouth.

Maera put a knife against the chief's back before he could order a shot.

“You can send us all into the abyss,” she

told him. “But you go first.”

They disarmed him without killing anyone. Teren treated the boy. Two teeth were loose, and he would not admit he had cried.

“If we open the gate, they'll cut off our supplies,” he said.

Beran looked at the conduits. A tremor rose from them, barely perceptible through their soles.

“If we don't open it, they won't need to.”

Then they all heard a blow on the other side of the rock. It was not a tool. It came three times, with the patience of someone who had already learned how long a mountain took to answer.