Vesna Kruger hadn't set foot on Ember Pass since the avalanche took four clients and her guiding license. Now she stood at the trailhead in borrowed crampons, breath fogging, while a man named Doru loaded heavy crates onto her sled by lantern light. "Don't open them," he said, and pressed a thick roll of banknotes into her glove. "Get them over the pass by dawn. No questions." The money was more than she'd made in two years. She tightened the sled straps and looked up at the dark mountain.

Vesna couldn't help it. Halfway up the first slope, out of Doru's sight, she knelt by the sled and pried up a corner of the nearest crate lid with her knife. Whatever was inside, she wanted to know what she was risking her neck for.

Inside the crate, packed in sawdust, lay stacks of forged passports and bundles of foreign cash. People-smuggling papers. Vesna swore under her breath. She was hauling someone's whole escape across the border, and Doru had paid her to never know it.