The Winter Road
A world by Ari Weaver
The Winter Road
The old king is dead and the lords pick the next one on midwinter day, in person, in the capital. His illegitimate daughter Keto has decided to be in the room. She makes wine for a living and swears like a carter. You're one of six people hired to get her over the mountains in nine days before the pass snows shut. One of the other five has been paid to make sure she's late.
Playing as Traveler·
The frost is still white in the shade of the vines when the rider comes up the track. He wears the regent's blue and carries a letter with a wax seal the size of a plum, and he won't get off his horse, which Keto's mother takes personally.
You're at the press house with Keto, rolling a stone lid back over the mouth of a clay jar sunk in the ground. Last year's wine is under there, eight hundred litres of it, buried to the neck to keep cool. Keto wipes her hands on her trousers, which leaves two purple stripes, and reads the letter standing up. Then she reads it again.
“They vote on midwinter day,” she says. “In the Hall of the Vine. Anyone of his blood who's standing in the room can be named. The queen's sending a clerk, there's a guide waiting at Dato's inn, and if I'm going I leave today.” She folds the letter small. “Fine, fine. Nine days to Mtvari if the pass is open, and the guide says it shuts any day now.”
Eteri has come out of the house with a pot of bean stew held against her hip. “Your father never once came up this track himself,” she says. “He sent boys on horses.”
“I know, Mama.”
Keto pushes the letter inside her shirt and holds the grey mare's bridle out to you.
“Saddle her for me, would you? And yourself something. I'm not going over a mountain with nobody but strangers.”
The vineyard1 of 3