Chapter 5: The First Snow

The first snow came on the twenty-ninth day. Serephine watched it from the doorway of the storehouse — now complete, packed with the dried and preserved harvest from the Flats' surprising soil, which had turned out to be far more forgiving than it looked. Around it, a ring of fifteen small houses, rough but solid, their roofs already whitening. Not enough for everyone. But enough for the children. Enough for the physicians. Enough for the elders. The rest of her people had found their own solutions — doubled up in houses, built insulated lean-tos between structures, gathered around communal fires with a matter-of-factness that made her proud. Elarion appeared beside her, wrapped in two cloaks. "The rider from Valdis arrived an hour ago while you were supervising the last roof." "What did the council say?" "They said —" he paused, and she could see him organizing his surprise into something dignified — "they said the Eastern Flats have more life in them than in the last four decades combined, and that Lord Varek wishes to convene formal treaty discussions in the spring." Serephine closed her eyes for a moment. Spring was four months away. Four months of winter, of careful rationing, of keeping a hundred and twelve people alive and warm and hopeful. It would be hard. Some days would be desperate. But she had an aquifer and a storehouse and fifteen houses and a people who had already survived the impossible once. "Tell the rider we accept," she said. The snow continued to fall, soft and indifferent, covering the new ash kingdom in white. For the first time since Emberfall, Serephine allowed herself to believe it might stay.