The settlement threw the best feast it could afford and a good deal more besides.
Fire pits went up the length of the main lane, and over them turned meat nobody had touched since the wave, salted stores dragged out of cellars people had been rationing for a season.
The ale came out by the barrel. Trestle boards ran end to end down the street, packed with miners and their families and half the highland farms within a day's ride, all of them eating like men who had decided the future could pay for itself.
The fiddler had found three friends. There was dancing on the packed snow, badly and with enormous commitment. Somebody's grandmother had cornered Moses against a wall and was interrogating the enormous half-demon about his eating habits, and Moses, to his eternal credit, was answering her seriously.
