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“You live here?” Dawsyn asks.

Yennes nods. “Dawsyn, can I speak with y–”

“Fucking Queens coming after us again!Again!” Esra whirls about, finding a stone on the ground and hurling it into the water. “Mark me, Baltisse, your cabin will be burning rubble by now.”

Salem groans. “Quit yer howlin’, Es.”

“Youquit it, old man!”

“Come ’ere. I can still kick with me good foot.”

Baltisse twitches her hand, and Esra and Salem fall suspiciously quiet, their lips tightly pressed. “Mother above, you imbeciles. Stop it.”

“To the… east?” Ryon murmurs.

“Yes,” Yennes answers.

“What is that?” Tasheem asks, pointing to the channel of water that disappears into the gap of the mountain.

Yennes’s hands flitter together before her. “I wanted to show Dawsyn–”

“The Boulder Gate does not reach this far around the mountain’s base,” Tasheem remarks, her voice far louder than the older woman’s. “Though there would be no need for one here, I’d suppose. No human could possibly climb this face.”

“Are we safe from the guard, here?” Ryon asks, his eyes shifting between the mage and Yennes.

Baltisse nods. “Even if they knew where we were, we would be difficult to reach. There is no bridge over the river to the west.”

Rivdan speaks next. “Can we find Salem a place to rest in your home, Yennes? His foot should be bandaged.”

“Bandaged?” Salem splutters. “The mage can bloody well heal me. The amount o’ wine she’s swiped from me stores these pas’ years.”

“Small compensation for the absolute drivel I’ve been subjected to while drinking it. And that’s when you’re sober.”

Ryon groans tiredly. “Fucking idiots. Baltisse, be useful and mend Salem’s foot here, would you? Save us the trouble of carrying him.”

“I’ll carry him,” Esra murmurs darkly.

“Get the fuck away from me, Es,” Salem warns. “I told yeh I wouldcutthose wandering hands off if they groped me arse again.”

“I wasn’t so much planning on groping as I was murdering. I am saving any future groping for backsides far more favourable.” Esra winks toward Hector, who blushes.

The arguments continue, irritation flaring amongst them, but Dawsyn barely notices. Her attention, instead, is given wholly to that channel – the place where the mountain is cut in two. She watches the water flow in and out of the wide gap, lapping up the rock face.

Dawsyn’s feet take her toward it, away from the others. Several strides along the shoreline, the bickering behind her becomes faint. She stares.

She feels it when Yennes comes to join her, though the woman keeps a careful distance, always uncertain. Always unsure.

“Is that…?” Dawsyn asks, though the name hitches her tongue. She swallows it instead.

“The Chasm,” Yennes finishes, and it feels like a foot against Dawsyn’s throat. “It’s the Chasm’s end.”

Dawsyn is stunned to stillness.The Chasm is unending, said Briar, said Valma, said the people of the Ledge.Bottomless.

As though she is possessed of the same mind tricks as the mage, Yennes shakes her head gently. “It is not endless,” she says. “Everything must end, Dawsyn. I rather think it suitable that the Chasm end here.”

Dawsyn thinks of the questions Yennes avoided, the admissions that seemed unlikely. King Vasteel had once told Dawsyn that not a single selected human had taken to the slopes and reached the bottom.

“This is how you escaped,” Dawsyn murmurs, her voice skittled by wind and ocean mist. “You walked through the chasm, all the way to its end.”