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Clenching her fists, Dawsyn paces her steps. “What do you want, Splitter?”

“Come now. Ain’t a need for cruel nicknames.”

“There wasn’t a need to split Old Percy’s skull in half either, but the rumour goes you did it on principle.”

Nevrak clicks his tongue. “I was a younger lad then. And Old Percy had made a few unsavoury passes toward my lady. Not to mention a rather crude groping in the middle of a Drop. Who would I be if I’d let it slide?”

Dawsyn considers for a moment, remembering the disturbing stare of Old Percy and how it had clung to one’s skin. Her guardian, Briar, had always forbade her from walking by the man’s cabin.

She shrugs, ceding the point. “Fair enough, Nevrak, we’ll call it a term of endearment. What do you want?” He coughs again, and the wet sound of the hacks sound woefully familiar. Dawsyn is at once transported to her cabin on the Ledge, where her grandmother would wake them nightly with uncontrolled gasps and spluttering. “You have lung sickness,” she says plainly to the man, watching his beard tremble with the force of his breaths. Even in the weak light she can see his eyes watering, the purple veins stark on his forehead.

He nods. “So it seems. Neither here nor there, if you want the truth. I’ve already lost my wife, my daughters. Only Wes remains now, and he’s full grown. I only need to see him reach safety. I have strength enough for that.”

Dawsyn recalls the shapes of two little girls wrapped in furs, lying in the snow, their father and brother protecting their bodies through the night. Here is a man who, like Dawsyn, committed atrocities on the Ledge in the name of protection. And who, like Dawsyn, only means to fulfil obligation. A man of the Ledge, cornered into a character he was forced to adopt, if only to survive long enough to see his son freed.

It is why she could not simply disappear into the folds of the valley and be content with her own freedom. It is why she is here in this godforsaken place, leading the unwilling to somewhere that might balance their bad fortune of being born on the Ledge.

“What we all want to know, Sabar, is how long this journey will take?” Nevrak asks now. “You surely have some inkling.”

Dawsyn swallows. She cannot simply refrain from answering. “A few days.”

“Not very precise.”

“Precision is difficult to achieve with a hundred or more people in tow, Splitter,” Dawsyn intones. “Our pace is not as steady as I’d hoped.”

“There are many that are weary already,” he continues. “What do you mean to do if some fall behind?”

“No one will fall behind. There are enough strong backs among us that we can carry who we must, should it come to that.”

Nevrak scoffs. “A fool’s errand.”

Dawsyn turns toward him. “And what do you suggest we do?”

“Leave them,” he says simply, his stare piercing. “Leave the weak to their unfortunate fate and let those strong enough forge ahead.”

It is the answer Dawsyn suspected he’d give. She tsks at him. “And you speak to me of being cruel?”

“Whatiscruel is burdening those who stand a chance of surviving this grave you’ve thrown us into.”

“Thrown you into?” Dawsyn repeats, ice creeping onto her tongue, seeping into her voice. “Do you wish to return to the Ledge already, Nevrak?” She says it like a promise. A threat. “Would you prefer that you had not followed me into this Chasm? Are there others that would like safe passage back onto that fucking shelf?”

Nevrak’s eyes narrow. “I want reassurance that you’re prepared to do what is necessary. It will come to pass either way, princess.”

The moniker makes her jaw clench, and she tastes blood on her tongue. He means to use it to demean her, to lessen her, but it brings other questions to Dawsyn’s mind. They are long overdue for the asking.

“While we’re being painfully honest, Nevrak. I have a few questions of my own.”

“Make your ask then, girl. Ain’t nothing else for us to do down here.”

Dawsyn steps carefully over a sharp boulder, then continues. “How old were you when you were brought to the Ledge?”

Nevrak pauses before answering. “Who’s to say I was not born there?”

“You seem the right age for it,” she says. “It does not take a genius.”

Again, Nevrak hesitates to answer. “A boy,” he says, “seven… or eight, perhaps. I’ve long since stopped counting years as they pass. I was old enough to be afraid. Old enough that I’ve retained the memory of the cold when it first grabbed me.”

The cold is not alive,Dawsyn hears in her mind. The voice of her grandmother. And yet the people of the Ledge only ever speak of the cold as though it were a sentient thing.