Princess Belle Vadant stood at the open door of the fur-lined hall and watched the first great snow bury the trail. Her baby-blue braid froze stiff against her coat. Three winters ago the Yukon clans had split apart over a dead chieftain and old grudges. Belle meant to call them back under one banner before this freeze killed them in their scattered camps. But she did not know where a single clan had gone. If she rode out blind, the cold would take her first. "You can't find them by walking," said Choba behind her. She pulled the door shut and stamped the snow off her boots. Choba was not Belle's blood, but they had grown up sharing one bed and one bowl, closer than sisters. She set a hand on Belle's shoulder. "You'll freeze stubborn and proud, and we'll bury you half a day from home." "Then tell me who knows the camps," Belle said. Choba led her to the two elders by the fire. Elder Mother Mara leaned on her carved stick and smiled like she already knew the question. Beside her sat Mother Itsla, the tribe's historian, turning a strip of knotted cord through her small brown hands. "The clans do not leave a map," Itsla said. "They leave a trail of favors and debts. I remember every one." She lifted the cord. Each knot marked a season, a trade, a marriage. "When a clan moves, they move toward kin and toward food. I know their kin. I know the valleys that still hold game in deep winter." Mara tapped her stick on the floor. "And I know the stories. Every clan sings where it will shelter when the world turns white. Listen to the old songs and you hear the place names hidden inside." Belle knelt between them. "Then help me. Mark it. All of it." They worked through the night. Itsla read her knots aloud. Mara answered with songs, naming three sheltered valleys to the north, a frozen lake camp to the east, and a high pass where the largest clan always wintered. Belle scraped each place onto a hide with charcoal. Evangela crouched close, feeding the fire and whispering the names back so they would not be lost. The map grew real under Belle's hand. By dawn she had it. Five camps. Five routes. Not a blind march anymore, but a chain of known places with shelter and game between them. Belle rolled the hide and tucked it in her coat. "I leave at first light tomorrow." Itsla caught her wrist. Her small face did not smile. "You have the map now. But the high pass clan is the one that broke the banner. They killed the last chieftain's envoy. Reach them, and you still must survive them." Belle looked at the rolled hide against her chest. The cold would not kill her now. The clan at the end of the trail still might.