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.

The lid came up and a pale face stared back at her. A child, curled in the crate with blankets and a water flask, eyes wide with terror. There were three more crates on the sled. Vesna's stomach turned to ice. She wasn't hauling cargo. She was hauling people.

Vesna heard shouting below. Doru's buyers had come up the trail early, and from their words they didn't want the children safe. She had a head start and a mountain she knew better than anyone alive. She put her back into the sled and ran for the high ice they'd never dare to follow.