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Dawsyn gives her head a shake, clearing the noise as Yennes comes into view. The woman peers up at Dawsyn for a moment before looking away. “I’ve seen to as many as I can tonight. I’m afraid I can do no more.” Her voice quavers as she speaks.

Dawsyn watches Yennes’ fingers grip and regrip her cloak with restless urgency, her hands always revealing her discomfort, and Dawsyn is suddenly struck by a thought, a niggling suspicion. “Do you hear them?” she asks abruptly.

Yennes seems to shrivel. She shakes her head, not in refute, but rather as a warning.Do not speak of it,she seems to say.Please.

Dawsyn recalls again Yennes’ mutterings in a voice not quite her own.Two paths, both are filled. Two paths, both are filled.

Filled with what?Dawsyn had asked her in the cove.Tell me.

I cannot begin to describe,Yennes had hedged.

Try. Please.

A… presence,she had said.The presence of something… most sinister.

Dawsyn had breathed a sigh of relief.A presence is easily ignored.

Not these,Yennes had said, her eyes closing against something imaginary.These won’t be ignored.

Dawsyn feels the tightening in her chest again, something weighing her down, and she coughs. She splutters without drawing breath, until all the air is expelled from her lungs and Yennes has to grip her arms to keep her upright.

“How many did you come across with the same infection?” Yennes asks her now, patting her back ineffectually.

Dawsyn is doubled over, panting raggedly with her hands pressed to her knees. Her ax lies before her, discarded. “In…fection?”

“Yes. The coughing. The fever.”

“Ten, though I hear many more.” And indeed, the Chasm’s silence is splintered over and over again by splutters from every direction.

“I saw to six of them,” Yennes says with a sigh. “Though I couldn’t clear their chests completely. It is difficult to cure an unknown sickness.”

“Where has it come from?”

“I suspect it is the water. Though it could be the air, or a virus carried here from the Ledge. Or… something more insidious altogether.”

“You mean a presence within the Chasm?”

Yennes doesn’t answer. For whatever reason, the woman does not give voice to what they both so obviously hear, what they both feel.

“If there were something here that wished for our demise, there are far quicker ways than the spread of a cough,” Dawsyn says quietly. She is well aware of the women nearby who might be listening.

“Then, we must consider some kind of contaminant.”

Dawsyn curses. “How are we to continue if the water cannot be drunk?”

“I do not know, but we have exhausted our food stores this night, Dawsyn.”

“Yes, I know.”

“A day faster than we had planned for.”

“Iknow,”Dawsyn repeats.

“You cannot take away water as well,”

“I am well aware.”

“And yet, it seems we’ve come no closer to–”