Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch

  That’s all I can do. Stay out of the way, make sure I don’t bring trouble to people who have already suffered so much until I can do—what?

  Soldiers tossed the man’s body away hours ago, leaving a bloody splotch of dirt next to the platform entrance. I walk through it, staring at the dried blood, feeling the boy’s eyes on me, just another body in Spring’s arsenal of workers. Like the man who fell to his death, a vessel the soldiers destroy for sport.

  Dizzy thirst makes me trip, but I keep walking. Just one more step, Meira. Just one more.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  23

  WE WORK UNTIL nightfall.

  As the sun drops over Abril’s walls, a bell sounds, pulling the Winterians down the ramps. We drop our holsters in a pile and leave the unused rocks for tomorrow’s work. The wall is a bit taller now, but feeling accomplished for building this city is as likely as feeling indebted for the measly stew we’re given upon our return to camp.

  I slurp mine down along with a mug of water and scurry away before someone can punish me for getting nourishment now too. When was my last meal? Breakfast in Bithai before the battle? Whenever it was, it was too long ago, and my stomach isn’t pleased with the surge of nutrients.

  “You’re still here!” Nessa cries when I duck inside. She leans forward from her seat between Conall and Garrigan, her brothers too busy over their own bowls to care that I survived the day. “Did you get food? Do you need more?” She lifts her bowl of half-eaten stew up to me.

  A spurt of laughter catches in my throat. She’s sacrificing her food for me, when I probably ate more in Bithai than she’s eaten in her entire life.

  I slide to the ground, back scraping along the wall. “Keep it. I’m fine.”

  Conall’s face flashes with the briefest show of surprise. He expected me to take food from her, someone much worse off than I’ve ever been? I stare back at him. Did I come off as selfish, or did he just assume that’s how I’d be?

  I shift in the dirt, my stomach clenching even more uncomfortably around the stew. I probably did come off as selfish. That’s what I’ve been all along, isn’t it? Selfishly not wanting to be a marriage pawn, even if Winter needed the ally. Selfishly wanting to go on missions, even if someone stronger and faster and more skilled than me could have done the job better.

  Before I can answer whatever question Nessa just asked, my eyelids sink down, pulled by the weight of all those rocks I lugged up the ramps today. Somewhere distant, Nessa whispers to her brothers and other Winterians murmur cautious conversations masked by night.

  She’s here, another refugee. And she survived the first day.

  I survived today. Others did not.

  Days pass of this. Days of up and down the ramps, of hastily eaten stew, of falling asleep as Nessa and her brothers watch me warily from the other side of the cage. Some nights Nessa talks to me, asks questions about my life. I tell her what I can until Conall’s glare becomes physically painful, then I stop, curl into a ball in the corner, and try to sleep. Try, because their voices always keep me awake.

  “You shouldn’t get attached,” Conall chastises so often his words are branded on my mind.

  “I don’t care. You should see if you’re still capable of getting attached to anyone,” Nessa shoots back.

  I’m not sure who I agree with. Conall, that no one should get too attached to me, because who knows how long I’ll live, or Nessa, that it doesn’t matter. The repetition of work and misery makes it impossible to do more than poke at these ideas feebly.

  Until my ninth night here.

  A knot of terror locks itself in my throat, tasting like blood. I burst awake, a nightmare black as death chasing every bit of sleep from my body. There’s something here, with us, in this room. Something dark and horrible and—

  Nessa jumps up from where she crouches in front of me, dust puffing around her boots. “You’re dreaming!”

  I fly back, body slamming into the cage’s wall. Nessa swings around on her knees while her brothers stand back, eyeing me as if I chanted in my sleep.

  “We are Winter,” Conall states.

  I frown. “What?”

  He smiles. It’s faint, beaten down by a lifetime of torture. “Get up.”

  Nessa stands, offering me her hand. I take it, afraid to put too much weight on her frail bones.

  Conall and Garrigan move to the back corner of our cage, the part blanketed in the darkest shadows of late night. The camp is quiet in the exhaustion of a day’s work, the closest soldier the one who walks along the barbed fence.

  I move to the cage’s door, my fingers wrapping around the iron bars. The lock that holds us in is as big as my palm, thick and old, and I touch the back of my braid absently. I don’t have any lock picks there. Would I pick it, though, if I could? I haven’t done anything to escape in the week I’ve been here. I can’t decide if it’s worth the risk—to myself and to everyone around me.

  It’s so quiet now, so still I can almost forget everything else. No whips or shouts of pain or hollow faces coiled with impending death. Just black sky and stars and—

  Something creaks behind me and I spin around.

  A door.

  Garrigan pulls it up out of the ground, dust and rocks tumbling off the old planks of wood. Below it, dropping into the earth, a hollow tunnel falls into darkness.

  “What is that?” I breathe.

  Nessa looks at me over her shoulder. “They want to meet you.”

  Conall steps up to the hole first and plummets into the blackness. A thump tells me he didn’t fall far, and sure enough, two hands shoot back up for Nessa. She drops forward and vanishes into the dark, and only Garrigan remains with me.

  “Where does it lead?”

  He motions to the hole and offers a weak shrug. “You’ll be fine,” he promises. In his eyes is a perfect blend of Nessa’s hope and Conall’s sternness. Garrigan is the glue that keeps them from tearing one another apart.

  I slide across the ground. My boots nudge dirt into the tunnel, a blackness so complete I can only feel Conall staring up at me, can’t find his eyes or his outline.

  Two hands reach for me. “Come.”

  I exhale and fall forward, letting his thick hands catch me and set me on a dirt floor. The door thunks shut above us and Garrigan smoothes dirt back over it, the quiet swishing of pebbles on wood the only noise.

  Fingers find mine, but they’re not Conall’s. This hand is delicate, cold, like a porcelain doll come to life. Nessa leads me to the side of the hall and presses my hand flat on the rock, jagged edges of dirt and thick boulders protruding in awkward bumps. Should I—

  I stop. There’s something on the wall, uneven ruts filling almost every smooth space.

  “What is it?” I put both hands to the rock and follow the carvings. They’re everywhere, twisting down and up, shooting over the low ceiling and darting across the floor.

  Nessa fumbles with something beside me and a quick scraping noise brings a flicker of fire to life. She lifts the candle, her pale face glowing yellow in the light.

  Conall watches us from the perimeter of the candle’s light, his disapproving glower a heavy weight. “We don’t have time.”

  “Hush,” Nessa tells him. “She needs to see it. And it’s good for us to see it too.”

  That makes him quiet, and his eyes dart to the walls around us, his expression relaxing ever so slightly. I exhale, my own tense muscles unwinding.

  “They’re memories,” Nessa continues, her eyes on the ceiling. “Memories of Winter.”

  Thousands of words curl around this narrow hall, filling the rocks with jagged sentences, stretching all the way down to a door at the end.

  One paragraph has been etched in black stone, the words worn with age.

  My daughter’s name was Jemmia. She wanted to go to Yakim to attend Lord Aldred Universit
y. She was nineteen.

  Another is carved into the rock itself.

  On the first day of proper winter, every Winterian would gather for a festival in their town’s market. We would eat frozen strawberries and ground ice flavored with wine to celebrate winter’s birth the world over.

  More and more:

  Havena Green worked at the Tadil Mine in the Klaryn Mountains.

  My father died a soldier, fighting on the front lines when Spring attacked. His name was Trevor Longsfield and his wife was Georgia Longsfield.

  All Winterians are cradled in bowls of snow on the fifth day after their birth. I’ve never seen a Winterian baby cry during this ritual—in fact, they seem to enjoy it.

  Winterian wedding ceremonies are held during the first morning snow. The bride and groom drink from a cup of water, and the water that remains is frozen in a perfect circle to represent unity. The circle is buried underneath the ceremony site.

  A duchess of Ventralli visited once and complained that Jannuari’s frigid air made our kingdom unbearable. Her butler promptly responded, “My lady, Spring has been trying to change Winter’s chill for centuries. I doubt you can do it faster than them.”

  My eyes swim with words in black stone and carved into the wall, words curved around impenetrable boulders and faded with age. All of them soaking into me, spiraling around in the flickering candlelight. I’ve heard some of these traditions before in Sir’s lectures—frozen berries and celebrating the first day of proper winter. But the rest, babies in bowls of snow, each individual history …

  I wish I had known this. I wish I had had these words with me every moment of my life.

  “When Angra attacked, he burned everything, archives and histories and books. So we decided to record our history in the tunnels.” Nessa cradles the candle in her palm, the light casting an ethereal glow around her body.

  “Tunnels?” I look at her, my forehead pinching.

  “When they made the Abril work camp,” she says, “they did so on an existing slum in the center of the city. Winterians built it, though—Spring soldiers just supervised. Lots of the original buildings had basements, cellars that we left intact. They became tunnels for us, a secret world the Spring soldiers didn’t know about. All the tunnels lead—”

  “Out?”

  As soon as I ask it, I hear my own mistake. If the tunnels lead out, no one would be here at all. I look away from Nessa and Conall before either can respond.

  Nessa steps up beside me, her fingers going to an etching where she traces the first letter. “These tunnels offer their own type of escape. Conall and Garrigan taught me to read by these memories. It’s important to read them,” she tells me, and Conall, who looks a little less annoyed. “Just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” I ask, but I already know.

  When Nessa speaks again, her voice is sad. “Just in case no one who remembers survives.”

  I turn away so she can’t see the tears brimming my eyes. Because when a sixteen-year-old boy becomes Winter’s king, and there are no records to show him Winter’s history, we will have to rely on our people’s fading memories to show us what to do.

  Those seem like trivial problems, though. Problems we would be grateful to have, normal issues about the competency of rulers and the succession of traditions. Not like whether our people will even survive to have traditions.

  I run my hand along one etching, wishing I knew which person had written what, and that I could memorize these words so I could tell Mather all of this. Were he and I placed in bowls of snow when we were five days old?

  One last etching catches me, the letters coated in dust.

  Someday we will be more than words in the dark.

  It’s hard to walk under these etchings, but Nessa takes my hand and pulls me forward. Clearly this isn’t our destination. How can something be more important than this? I want to stay down here, memorize every single word until I can’t think or feel or breathe anything else—

  But we reach the door, a few sad pieces of old wood nailed together, and Conall swings it open, showing me something that is infinitely more important than words in the dark.

  People in the light.

  Nessa blows out her candle and I squint in the sudden brightness, one hand up to shield my eyes. She pulls me through and Conall throws the door against the tunnel, closing us inside a great circular room carved into the earth, rocks poking out of the walls and floor and ceiling, too big or cumbersome to move during construction. Candles stand in clumps of long-melted wax, mountains of creamy white that flicker with orange peaks. They’re everywhere, filling every crevice, giving the room a delicate glow. More doors lead out all around the walls, like the room is the center of a wheel and the tunnels are spokes. From those doors, spilling in and filling up the cavernous room, are more Winterians.

  “Ow.” Nessa pulls at my hand. My fingers have dug into her fragile arm for support.

  “Sorry.” I jerk away. “What is this place?”

  “We carved this room to connect to all the remaining basements and cellars.” Conall answers instead of Nessa, his deep voice stoic and hard. “We’re in the middle of Abril, too far to tunnel out under the city itself, so this seemed like the best alternative. Had to keep busy during sixteen years of imprisonment somehow.”

  I swallow. “Why are we here?”

  He flashes a tight glare at me. “You survived the first week; they want to meet you. However stupid it is to have so many people down here at once.” He pauses as he reevaluates my question. “But the better question is, why are you here?”

  I stare at him, eyes hard, and say the only thing I can. “I should have been here all along.”

  Conall pulls back, his eyebrows lifting.

  “Is this her?”

  The voice echoes through the room, silencing the murmurings around us. All eyes are on me, and I wonder how long they’ve been staring. Probably from the moment they got here. With no soldiers to cower from, no punishment to fear, they’re free to gape and wonder and hope, so long as they’re in the confines of this haven they’ve built.

  The owner of the voice pushes through the crowd. It belongs to a woman, her old frame hunched under sixteen years of hard labor. But the moment her clear blue eyes lock on mine, she straightens, throwing off any exhaustion.

  “You,” she whispers. Her withered fingers extend when she reaches me, and she puts one hand on either side of my face. She stares at me, through me, seeing something deep behind my eyes that makes her face relax in satisfaction. “Yes,” she says. “You are Meira.”

  I pull out of her hands. “How do you know that?”

  The woman smiles. “I know everyone who escaped Angra that night. The last ones who came here told us about all of you.”

  Crystalla and Gregg. I back up as if I can get away from the pang of memory. The woman’s face is serene, calm. She still hopes for rescue too.

  The Winterians around her are not so certain. Most look like Conall, dark and angry, curious about this new visitor but not wasting energy on any hope of escape.

  The woman pushes forward. “There were originally twenty-five of you, yes? Last we heard, the number was ten.”

  She waits, and I know she wants news of the outside world, of the survivors and how many are left to lead the charge against Spring. Eight, I almost say. But no, it’s seven now. And who knows how many others died in the battle for Bithai? Dendera, maybe. Finn. Greer or Henn. Maybe Spring reached the city and even Alysson is—

  My chin falls. “Seven. Maybe fewer.”

  Quiet muttering ripples through the crowd. The number makes their frowns deepen, and I can feel their blame flare higher. How we all let them down.

  The woman lifts my chin, smiling like nothing’s changed. “The prince?”

  A bolt of agony hits me. Mather. I’ve managed not to think about him too much since I got here. His final, parting scream echoes through my mind, desperate and petrified, as he was dragged back into Bithai whil
e Herod stood over me….

  “Alive,” I whisper. “Running for his life, but alive.”

  The woman nods. She hooks her arm through mine and turns me toward the crowd, my back to Nessa and a grumbling Conall.

  “I’m Deborah,” the woman says, leading me to the center of the room. We’re surrounded by Winterians on all sides, a sea of white hair, blue eyes, and wariness mixed with some small spurts of hope. “I was the city master of Jannuari. Of the Abril Winterians left, I’m the highest-ranking.” Deborah pauses like she’s waiting for me to respond.

  I adjust my arm still hooked in hers, fingers stretching through the air. It’s warm down here, too warm, and I can feel all those eyes watching me. So I ask the only question I can. “What do you expect me to do?”

  Tell me how to save you. I don’t know what to do.

  Deborah is quiet for a moment, her face distant like she’s working through a plan in her head. She looks away from me, toward the crowd, and squeezes my hand.

  “This is Meira,” she announces. “She is one of the twenty-five who escaped Angra the night Winter fell. Living proof that his evil is not as absolute as he would have us believe.”

  I stifle a moan. It’s exactly what Sir told us. That our lives matter simply because we exist—living, breathing evidence that Winter survived. Sir would love to see this cave they built and know they created some small freedom in Angra’s prison. He’d find a way to turn their hatred into adoration and, better still, find a way to get them out of here.

  He should be with them. Him or Mather. Not me.

  “She has come to us as a beacon, like the others who passed through Abril—”

  Gregg and Crystalla probably stood in this exact spot, probably toiled at the wall. And they died. No one here knows more than that they left—that Angra took them from the camp and they never came back.

  “—a light to shine hope into our misery,” Deborah continues. “Her presence signifies an awakening, a reminder we so desperately need that we are more than Angra’s slaves!”