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“But you’ve already surmised as much, haven’t you?” Ruby interjects, and Alvira’s skin prickles with irritation. “You haven’t come here to raid the Mecca. You’ve come because you fear Ryon. You betrayed him, after all.”

Adrik drops Cressida, and she topples to the ground gracelessly. Alvira goes to her side immediately, sickened by the bruises already blooming along her throat.

“Ryon betrays his very nature,” Adrik growls, though the droop in his shoulders diminishes the menace. “He betraysme,and I will savour the day I wring the life from him. As for the girl…” And here, Adrik’s eyes turn impossibly paler. White and ghostly. A creature most unnatural. “I will drink the life from her. She is but a human. She will taste the same as all the others. I will pitch her slackened body into the Chasm after I’ve reaped all essence from her core, and never think of her insignificant name again.”

Adrik pounds his fist to the table, and it gives way, caving in the middle. All three women startle.

“Find them,” he says, his chest heaving. “Send word when it is done. You have until the change of season. By then,” Adrik pauses, sneering, “it will be growing cooler here in your kingdom. I might find the land beyond the Boulder Gate more to my liking.”

“The hostile season comes in a week,” Alvira states. “It may take longer to track down the–”

“Send word,” Adrik repeats. “Or we will cross the Boulder Gate.” He nods to the henchmen who flank him, smiling most cruelly. “And we will help ourselves to as many as we can carry.”

The silence that descends the room upon the Glacian’s departure is deafening. It drowns out the rebels in the Mecca. It rings in the Queen’s ears, pulses violently in her brain.

“She did it,” Cressida exhales, her voice no more than a whisper. “She freed the Ledge.”

Alvira does not reply. Her mind is a loop, echoing the same question back to her.How?HOW?

She squeezes her eyes shut. The day she has always feared, coming to pass. Worse still, that it passes at the hands of a Sabar. She can envision her now, toting her barbaric ax, wreaking havoc upon whatever she touches.

“You have no idea where they are,” Ruby says levelly. Her tone is neutral, a simple statement of fact. “And we have a mere week to find them.”

Alvira has never reduced herself to physical violence, but the snake tempts her. “We?” she says acidly, cocking her head to the side. “No.You.”

Ruby swallows, finally humbled.

“Youhave a week to find them. A week to prove yourself worthy of continued existence. And should you fail,” Alvira’s voice finally gives way, quivering in the wake of each word, “then you will climb over that Boulder Gate and deliver the message yourself.”

CHAPTERNINE

“An interesting conversation you were having,” Nevrak says, his nose not two inches from Dawsyn’s. “What was it the witch said? The part about the water?”

Dawsyn does not take her eyes from his, though her mind races. Her hand goes to her back reflexively, and it is only then that she remembers she discarded her ax on the ground, somewhere behind her. Never in her life has she been so complacent. The thought rattles her. “I’m not likely to impart the private conversations I have with my friends, Splitter,” she mutters with a confidence she does not feel. “Eavesdropping is for children.”

Nevrak does not speak for several moments, does not move. He simply appraises her, his eyes travelling the planes of her face. It is intrusive, and damning.

Then his lips part, having calculated the exact thing Dawsyn hoped he wouldn’t. “You’ll tell me,” he says lowly, carefully, “or I will sound a warning to this entire Chasm. What was it you said to the witch? ‘It will not serve to spread panic.’”

Defeated, Dawsyn exhales, closing her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, Nevrak is nodding to his side, gesturing her to follow him somewhere more secluded, though the people around them seem too weary to wake and overhear.

They clamber around people, their hands to the Chasm wall, letting it guide them. They leave everyone else behind, too far away to listen.

“Despite what you may think of me,” Nevrak begins, “I have the very same desires as you. We all do. We wish to find our way to safety. If you cannot do that, then you’ve deceived us all.”

If you knew the truth,Dawsyn thinks,you would split me where I stand.

“What is wrong with the water, Sabar?” he asks forcefully.

She sighs. How she longs to sleep. “I do not know that thereisanything wrongwith it.”

“I heard–”

“You heard conjecture,” Dawsyn interrupts. “We suspect the spread of infection among us. There are many who seem to be falling ill. It is there for anyone to see.”

Nevrak looks over Dawsyn’s shoulder, likely listening to the echoing coughs with new understanding.

“Yennes and I are aiding as many as we can, but we must know what the illness is if we are to fight it. We were simply deliberating the infection’s origin.”