The afternoon sun was sliding down behind the jagged tooth of the western ridge. That turned the limestone cliffs above Alderfast to bruised shades of copper, amber, and violet. Outside the communal seed store, the air kept the pleasant, stored warmth of the eight-foot iron-shale heat-wall. He smelled of dry onion skins, crushed savory, and rich, damp compost. Down along the terraced lanes, the evening sounds of the valley were settling into their familiar rhythm. The steady, cold clatter of spring water running through hollowed cedar water chutes, the muffled clink of iron hoes being wiped clean against wooden bench slats, and the thin drift of cedar smoke rising from cottage chimneys into the still mountain bowl.
Kezra Venn stood with her palms resting flat against the rough capstones of the seed-store terrace wall. The question she had spoken moments before still hung between them in the cooling air, startling in its sheer boldness:
“When I reach Horizon, why couldn’t I exchange Alderfast’s garden terraces straight into the scrubland beside Kilnstep, where Mother could see everything saved at once?”
For nearly an hour, ever since eating her midday bread on the sorting-yard rim, the daydream had felt almost holy in its elegant perfection. A single Horizon-rank parcel measured one thousand and twenty-four paces on every side—more than half a mile across—plunging five hundred and twelve paces down into the bedrock crust. That huge cubic volume was more than large enough to encompass all sixty nested terrace shelves, the seed vault…
