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Ryon nods. “Indeed. Adrik has earnt a slow death.”

There’s a knot in Dawsyn’s gut that has little to do with the danger ahead. It grows tighter when she thinks of the loose threads still to be cut. When they leave tomorrow, they leave knowing that Adrik is seizing his empire, the Queens still wear their stolen crowns, and that somewhere, in some dark corner, lurks Vasteel, biding his time.

Like sores that she ought not pick at, though they are difficult to ignore.

There is one thought, however, that staves off her turmoil. The people of Terrsaw were once content to let her live and die on the Ledge. Maybe it is fitting that she untwines her fortune from theirs.

The people on the Ledge will be saved tomorrow, and the rest can flounder.

Ryon and Dawsyn remain on the shores of Terrsaw, his fingers tracing hers, until the sky is anaemic and starless. When they rise, it’s with the willingness to forge ahead. Again. Together.

They will fly through the Chasm. It will guide them back to the Ledge.

The Chasm’s walls will provide the cover they need to arrive unnoticed, but they will stay near the top to keep track of their whereabouts. It took Yennes five days to reach the Chasm’s end on foot. Ryon believes he can approximate the time back, retracing Yennes’s path in the sky. Less than a day.

Dawsyn stares at the Chasm’s end, the steep walls of the mountain stretching endlessly skyward. It spits the sea from its mouth, back out to the depths, where Garjum fights the tide.

“I couldn’t swim,” says a soft voice from behind her. Dawsyn turns to find Yennes dressed in hardier garb. She has replaced her thin shawls with heavy, hooded fur, leather breeches, and boots. She looks like a Ledge woman. “When I finally reached the Chasm’s end, all that water rushed in to meet my feet and I could see the ocean. But I knew I couldn’t swim. It stretched on endlessly. The water rushed through and out again, over and over and I stood paralysed with fear. I couldn’t see beyond the walls, and I was born up there, on the Ledge. I had no perception of Terrsaw. I thought the water might stretch on all sides, forever. I considered if it were better to simply stay there in the Chasm.”

“But you didn’t,” Dawsyn reminds Yennes. So often it seems that the woman’s mind has carried her back to a place she fears.

Yennes startles. Blinks. “No, I didn’t. I decided I would rather die than stay in that Chasm,” she says, adjusting the strap on her shoulder. The satchel on her back must be heavy with the waterskins and food within. “I let the water carry me out, and as soon as I was beyond the mountain, Terrsaw was there, waiting. I almost drowned, swimming to shore. But the waves spat me out.”

Dawsyn sighs heavily. “Valma Sabar would have said the Mother had plans for you.”

“If that is true, then I have disappointed Her thus far, I’m afraid.”

But Dawsyn sees the fear in each spasm of her fingers, the determined set of her jaw, and thinks differently. “Perhaps they are yet to be realised.”

“Perhaps,” Yennes concedes. “But I must tell you, Dawsyn Sabar, if the Chasm does not spit me out on the other side on this journey, I will forfeit any plan the Mother might hold for me.”

Two paths. Both are filled,says an insistent voice. It sticks to the forefront of Dawsyn’s mind. The iskra in Dawsyn, the magic that seems more in tune to threat, uncoils with growing disquiet. Dawsyn ignores it. “Whatever lurks in the Chasm,” she says, “will be no match for us.”

“Dawsyn?” calls a man’s voice, one she could pick blindfolded. Hector is striding toward where she and Yennes stand on the shore, his arms laden with Esra’s black market weapons.

Yennes nods to Dawsyn and takes her leave, striding along her beach one last time.

Hector jostles the steel. “Take your pick,” he says, rattling the swords enticingly.

“None for me,” Dawsyn tells him, reaching over her shoulder and grasping the neck of her ax. She brings it forward, blade first, and turns it in her hand until the woodgrain slides through her fingers and the handle settles in her palm. The oldest ritual her body remembers.

“You are so strangely attached to those things.” Hector scowls. “Take a sword, Dawsyn. We both know what will meet us up there.” He juts his chin to the mountain as he speaks, his features sharp.

She can taste the bitter bite in his tone. There are a thousand healed cuts on his skin that still ooze his resentment. “We don’t know that it will turn to battle, Hector. Perhaps with you and I returning once more, they will be persuaded.”

Hector huffs. “Or perhaps they will chase us into the Chasm themselves.”

“Fear is dangerous,” Dawsyn says. “Our people are not violent bychoice.”

“But they are violent, all the same,” Hector says bluntly. “I know you feel… obligated,” he says carefully, as though he weighs each word. “Loyal, even. But if they do not come, Dawsyn. If they won’t listen–”

“Then I will come back again,” Dawsyn says forcefully. “I will come back over and over, if I must. Those people are not resources for Glacians. They are not the bargaining chips of queens. They aren’t cattle, or currency, or a fucking lesser class of human. They are simplytrapped. They act as the trapped do.” Dawsyn pauses to draw breath. She is surprised at the vigour coating the words. “Weacted as trapped creatures do,” she reminds him. “And we have earnt our liberation.”

Hector watches her for a moment, then nods in a resigned way. “Most of those people would have watched you and I starve to death, Dawsyn. I’m just asking you to remember it before you throw your neck on a blade for them.”

“You don’t need to accompany–”

“Yes, I do,” he says simply. “You and I were never more than friends. Companions. But you’re a part of me. And I’m a part of you.” He does not meet her eye as he says it, readjusting the weapons in his arms. “We are family. Where you go, I go,” he says, and turns his back on her.