Chapter 171: Winter Share

They had one night to stop it.

By the time morning came, the valley beneath the Ice Crown was crowded with people.

Shelter crews came down on sleds and on foot, and some arrived in smaller groups covered in frost. Others walked down the mountain in long dark lines that cut across the snow, carrying children and the sick on their backs. Winter couriers moved through the crowds handing out more tokens. Every token was warm despite the snow, warm enough that someone would grab onto it without thinking. Every token stood for a bowl of food in the morning, a winter road open for travel, and the Ice Crown’s shelter from starvation.

Kaelith made her way through the valley with Austin Veyron’s crew, stopping to speak with the shelter leaders she knew. Some smiled at her when she approached. Others just stared at the tokens they had been given and looked away, embarrassed by how badly they wanted to keep them. Austin Veyron understood why they acted that way. He knew what it felt like to have an empty stomach and to pick through rubble for anything to eat. He knew how powerful the words "you will be fed" could sound.

"Don’t tell them to give away their tokens," Kaelith reminded the team.

"We haven’t," Austin Veyron said.

"Good. If you’re telling them they can be free but have nothing to eat, you’re not doing anything to help them."

Tessa held the northern ledgers they had found, bundled tight against her chest. Ceryn carried the clean routes they had copied over and double-checked. Nyra had the heart shard tucked away under her jacket, but whenever the tokens came near her, it began to shine blue through her coat.

"We stand for the people, not for a throne," Veyra said, watching the crowd instead of the fortress balcony.

The sky began to lighten over the eastern ridgelines. As it did, Austin Veyron started to see just how many people were coming down the mountain. There were more than he had counted from the ridge the night before. Whole villages were sending their people down into the valley, and every one of them wanted the same thing.

When the sun rose, Ysara stood on top of the Ice Crown’s gate.

She wore silver armor and a crown made of ice. When the sunlight struck the crown, it sparkled across the entire valley. Her pale splinter floated over her shoulder in the shape of a thin ice shard. Behind her stood the Share Court, wearing white masks and holding blue books of records. They all stood perfectly straight and never once looked down at the people.

"To the people of the north," Ysara called. "For ten winters, the Ice Crown has provided you with safe winter roads while others ignored you. Today, the Winter Share is open to all. Take your token, and you will receive food, clear roads to travel on, and the protection of the Ice Crown."

The people didn’t respond to her words. The only sound in the valley was the wind moving across the snow.

A child near the front of the crowd held up their token. "So my mom gets soup?"

Ysara’s face softened. "Yes."

Austin Veyron felt his heart drop when he heard her say it. The child’s face had lit up like a lantern, and the mother standing behind them had covered her mouth with both hands.

This was what they were offering the people.

Food.

Tessa climbed on top of a sled and held up one of the blue pages from the northern ledgers. "These tokens come with a survival debt."

Every member of the Share Court turned to face her.

"That is false," one of them said.

Kaelith stepped up beside Tessa. "I carried medicine across the glacier pass, and your collectors told me I owed a debt because the road I traveled belonged to the Crown. Show us the full ledger."

Ceryn held up the routes they had found and read off the amounts of food at each location. Frostmarket, the glacier camps, and the Crown’s own storerooms together held enough food to get through the first three weeks of winter, as long as there were public records of how it was being shared. But the tokens had a survival debt hidden inside them. Once accepted, they would bind every person who took one to the Crown’s winter roads as a debtor.

"The north needs someone to take care of it," Ysara said. "The winter roads can’t be controlled by debate."

"No," Kaelith replied. "But you can provide for the people who travel on them."

The pale splinter began to shine brighter.

All the tokens in the valley started to glow red-white in people’s hands. A few people managed to drop theirs, but most found they couldn’t let go.

Austin Veyron felt the mark on his wrist calling to him, urging him to take over the splinter. If he did, he could devour everything that was being offered here: all the tokens, the Share Court’s records, the ice roads, and maybe even the queen herself. It would make him so powerful. But it would also turn every person in the valley into a hunger he would carry with him forever. He would be taking over exactly what Ysara was trying to do, becoming even hungrier than she was, and no one would be able to stop him.

Veyra looked at him.

"What do you want?"

"The splinter."

"What would that give you?"

"A winter road with my name on it."

Sable lifted her crown shard. "No."

The tokens began to float out of people’s hands and gathered together to build guards around the square. The guards carried shields of frost and ice spears tipped with ledger books. They left no footprints where they walked.

SURVIVAL REQUIRES THE CROWN.

Rin’s arrows struck the first guard’s shield and shattered it. Orena knocked another guard away from a family standing in the food line and took a stand in front of them. Veyra stood between the people and the fortress guards, cutting the guards’ weapons away from the civilians without ever harming a person.

Nyra took her stance in the middle of the square. She glowed with blue-black light as the splinter resonated around her.

"I am not your key," she said. "And hunger is not what can prove that."

The splinter weakened in her grasp. Its pale light stuttered, and for a moment the red-white glow in every token flickered with it.

Austin Veyron could see what was hidden inside the tokens. It wasn’t the food, and it wasn’t the clear roads. It was the demand that you accept the queen’s word if you wanted to survive the winter.

"Target," he said. "The survival-debt enforcement in the tokens. Not the tokens themselves. Not the food. Not the winter roads."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron laid the chain of white roots across the snow.

DEVOUR opened in front of him. The clause tasted like hot soup served with a collar around the bowl.

SURVIVAL REQUIRES THE CROWN.

He consumed requires.

The tokens fell to the ground and lost their red-white color. The frost guards broke apart and melted into the snow. Everyone looked down at their tokens. They were just normal tokens again, no longer as heavy as stone.

For a second, everyone stood still.

The child looked at their token and asked, "Can we still get soup?"

"Yes. We have food coming from the Frostmarket convoy," Kaelith told the child and their mother.

All around the valley, people began to speak to one another, quietly at first, then louder. The sound spread outward from the front of the crowd like ripples across water, until the whole valley was talking.

Tessa showed everyone the food records they had found, and Ceryn read out the food supply available to the valley. There wasn’t a lot, but it was there, and no debt was required to get it.

Many of the shelter leaders offered to help with the convoy that was on its way. Some offered sleds. Others offered to clear a path on the west road. Still more offered to carry the food supply records to the other camps. Every one of them offered something, and Austin Veyron could see the change in their body language. They stood taller, and they looked at each other more than at the balcony above them.

They weren’t an army. They were a convoy of food heading out to the people.

"You will fail and lose your people to the winter," Ysara said.

"No," Austin Veyron replied. "I don’t think you need a crown to survive the winter."

The queen’s Share Court came at them to fight.

Veyra blocked the first white mask, who tried to strike her with a ledger-book spear. She caught the clerk’s arm and wrenched the spear out of their hand. Rin shot an arrow through the second clerk’s cloak, pinning them to the sled they had been riding on. Orena leveled her spear at the third, and they backed away.

Now that the survival debt was gone, the Share Court didn’t have many followers behind them. The clerks looked at each other and waited for instructions from their queen on the balcony.

Ysara looked at the splinter.

"This isn’t over," she said. "You only stopped the sharing."

The Ice Crown’s gate opened behind her, and snow blew out of the fortress. A storm built up around the valley and began to block off the winter roads on the north side of the mountain. The splinter flew back into the fortress and settled above the queen’s throne.

Ysara went inside and closed the door on them.

The people were trapped in the valley by the ice storm. Fires died, and children were bundled up in blankets. The cold came back tenfold from the moment the storm began, and people huddled together for warmth. Snow buried the dropped tokens in seconds, and the wind howled through the valley. People had to shout to be heard by the person standing right beside them, and the far end of the camp vanished behind a white wall.

Nyra looked at the snow clouds covering every pass, and she felt the heart shard dim its blue light beneath her coat.

"She’s controlling the storm, and she’ll trap us in the Hunger Road," Nyra said.

Tessa received a message from Orin at Frostmarket through her relay token.

SUPPORT CONVOY WILL BE LATE. WEST ROAD DISAPPEARING UNDER THE SNOW.

Veyra looked at the sealed Ice Crown gate, snow already piling against it, and rested her hand on her sword hilt.

"This is a siege."

"No, it’s not," Kaelith said, pointing at the shelters gathered around the fires. "We need to stop the panic first. They want the winter to take over each camp and leave them isolated."

Orin relayed that Frostmarket was placing warming points along the west road every half mile. Ceryn distributed the food supply counts to the leaders of each camp. Kaelith made her rounds and spoke to each leader by name. Rin and Orena helped take care of the sick and the elderly, moving them to safer tents.

Austin Veyron watched the road disappear under the snow. He could feel his mark calling to him from inside the fortress, slow and patient, but he ignored it and focused on his team helping the valley. Every one of them had found work to do without waiting to be told, and watching them steadied him more than any power could.

"No, it’s not," he said. "We’re rescuing the north before it starves."