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“Then we are most fortunate indeed.”

“Forgive me, but I cannot bring myself to celebrate.” At that, Dawsyn’s heart thuds heavily. Any capacity for optimism she once had has long since been laid to waste.

She has failed to find safe settlement.

Failed to find Ryon.

“You will see him again,” Abertha says, as though she had read her mind. She looks around as though Ryon were likely to appear from behind a tree. “Mother knows, you won’t stop until you do.”

Dawsyn says nothing. In truth, she has not considered the alternative. She knows she will search for Ryon for as long as it takes to find him. But should she find him already dead…

“You’ll find him, Dawsyn,” Abertha says again. “You are too stubborn for the fates to thwart you.”

If only it were so simple. “Will you tell me something, Abertha?”

“Bertie,” she says. “It is what my friends call me.”

“Bertie. When I found you in the Chasm, fighting off Wes–”

Abertha shudders delicately. Her shoulders tense.

“Why did you absolve him?” It had gnawed at Dawsyn all this time, that Abertha would not allow Dawsyn or Ryon to simply cut the boy down where he stood. Mother knew, they were more than willing.

Abertha sighs. “You must think less of me.”

“No,” Dawsyn says firmly. “I only wonder at your reasoning.”

Abertha ambles onward, placing one foot before the other carefully, and does not answer immediately. Dawsyn thinks she may not answer at all, before she hears the girl utter a sound of annoyance. “I stole his sisters’ clothes after they died. Notallof them,” she iterates. “But a cloak, a pair of gloves, boots. Wes caught me with them in the Chasm.” She holds up her hands now to display the hide gloves. They are crudely made, but thick. “I thought he’d kill me.”

Dawsyn waits. “But he didn’t.”

“No,” she says. “He was furious, but he had always had affection for me – even asked me to marry him last season.”

Dawsyn shakes her head. “That wasn’t affection.”

“No. And perhaps he deserved a swift death for forcing himself on me. But… when we were all scrambling for our belongings on the Ledge, I saw Wes and his father bending over the bodies of his sisters and kissing their foreheads, and my first thought was to loot their cabin while their heads were turned. So, perhaps I deserved a swift death, too.” Dawsyn watches Abertha lift her face to the sunlight filtering in through the thick brush of pine needles, contemplating them. “I suppose I’d thought us no better than each other.”

Dawsyn presses her lips together, considering her words. She has never been well-versed in words of comfort, but it seems suddenly imperative that she ease whatever burden Abertha carries. “My sister was the best thief I knew,” she says, and it turns Abertha’s attention away from the sky and whatever thoughts afflict her. “She somehow managed to fit herself within the tightest holes, through the narrowest of gaps. She was deathly quiet, too. I cannot count the times I turned to find her standing behind me, holding a blade she’d filched from my belt or my boot. Truly, she was a reckoning. It drove our mother wild.”

“Briar,” Abertha frowns, remembering. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Dawsyn affirms. “And my sister was Maya. She almost got herself bludgeoned more times than I can count.”

“But people were afraid of you,” Abertha adds. “Your grandmother, too.”

“Maya wasn’t afraid of us. Of anyone, actually. She would never have apologised for the things she thieved.”

Abertha chuckles.

“You remind me of her,” Dawsyn admits. “You are the age Maya would be now, had she lived.”

Abertha pauses before answering. “I wish I’d known her better.”

“If you had, you might have taught her some forgiveness or compassion. They are difficult to come by in our kind. Someone of such character does not deserve a swift death. They deserve freedom. Safety.” Dawsyn looks out at the endlessly undulating slopes and shakes her head bitterly. “I am sorry I could not lead you to it.”

Abertha reaches out to place her hand on Dawsyn’s shoulder. “You led me here,” she says. “And even if I should perish tomorrow, at least I stepped foot on land that was not tilted to the Chasm.”

Dawsyn feels her lips upturn despite herself. As Maya once had, Abertha has a way of forcing her to good humour.