Page 52

Dawsyn stops to look up at her. “My pardons. Your uniform is misleading.”

“Shall I strip naked to show my true allegiance?”

Dawsyn smirks. “Be my guest.”

The pair stand-off, still ten paces apart, and eventually, Dawsyn chuckles and looks away. “Ryon will help to sway them. For the most part, the mixed do not care either way if those on the Ledge stay trapped. They have no need for them now, and they only seek their own freedom. They do not survive on iskra from that fucking pool.”

“And the… pure-blooded?” Ruby questions, her mind only having put together pieces of the full picture. “They took thesoulsfrom the people on the Ledge? Theiskra, as you say?”

“Yes,” Dawsyn answers. “There is a pool of strange magic that takes one’s iskra, and when consumed, it gives the drinker immortality.”

“So, these mixed-bloods… they age and die as humans do?”

“Yes. They are more human than not.”

“Then surely they will help us? They will fly over the Chasm?”

“If they are persuaded correctly, they might,” Dawsyn answers, but Ruby hears the uncertainty she means to hide. The Sabar girl is unsure of herself.

“And are they likely to listen to Ryon?”

“Yes. And, despite everything, I at least know he will help me with that.” She stares down at the lame animal in her hand. “But he is only one.”

Ruby watches Dawsyn resume her trudging up the steep terrain and reconsiders what she must have endured just to reach Terrsaw to begin with, only to feel her own conscience drag her back.

And yet her Queen, the one who swore to aide and protect her people, has never entertained a single thought of rescuing those on the Ledge. As the captain of the guardianship, Ruby knows that the topic of the Ledge people is not one welcomed in meetings of security and policy. It is only recently that this has struck Ruby as cold, and quite antithetical to the pledge of a monarch.

How long do they intend to ignore their own citizens, their fallen village?

The answer, Ruby has recently deduced, is indefinitely.

Dawsyn has frozen.

She is coiled, ankle deep in the snow below. Her head tilts to the side, braided black hair training down her back, cheeks pinkened by the cold, listening. It puts Ruby on edge.

“What–?”

“Do you hear that?” Dawsyn’s eyes trail to the left, further up the slope.

Ruby listens. She only hears the faint call of birdsong. The hollow sound of wind travelling downhill. “What is it?”

But Dawsyn doesn’t answer. Instead, she reaches for her ax, eyes locked in place.

Ruby tries to follow her gaze. Searching for whatever disturbance has turned her rigid, primed for recoil.

The mountain climbs away from them, disrupted by its foliage, and looking completely ordinary. White and glistening and unspoilt. Except… except for the faint imprints of something large that can only be seen when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Without the white glow of the daylight reflecting off the millions of shards of frost that lie on the ground, Ruby can make out the tracks. They lead a path downhill, before coming to a stop, twenty paces above them. At first, it looks to Ruby as though the tracks simply stop, right there in the middle of the slope. But when she blinks, squints, she can suddenly make out the difference in texture in the snow, the pinks of two ears. The black pupils of two watching eyes.

The animal huffs through its nose, and fog rises into the air.

“Take out your sword, Captain,” Dawsyn murmurs slowly, carefully.

Ruby barely hears her. A mountain cat creeps forward in its crouched position, almost imperceptible against the snow. But stark against its white coat, its dark eyes, wide and predatory, follow the captain’s every move.

“Ruby, take out your sword.”

Ruby’s hands shake. She reaches over her shoulder to grasp the sword handle.

“When I say so…” Dawsyn tells her. “Run.”