CHAPTER NINETEEN
C HAPTER N INETEEN
“Dawsyn!”
Hands pull aside her coat. They press firmly against her chest.
“Dawsyn. Wake up! ”
“What happened to her?”
“ Dawsyn!”
She blinks, the outline of a familiar face hovers above her. Rough hands hold her waist.
“Yennes?” Dawsyn asks Ryon. But it is not Ryon who answers.
“She’s fine,” Hector says from somewhere over Ryon’s shoulder.
Ryon’s answering growl, however, contradicts the word fine . “What the fuck were you doing, Dawsyn?” he says, shaking her slightly.
Dawsyn sits. Pushes his hands away. She feels unsteady. Bleary. “Saving her.”
“Bleeding yourself dry,” Ryon corrects. “As surely as Yennes was.”
“She was dying,” Dawsyn utters. She is unsure if he hears.
Ryon growls again, standing and then lifting Dawsyn onto her feet easily. “And many more might yet die,” he states. “Should I expect that you will sacrifice yourself to save them all?”
Dawsyn does not answer. In truth, her mind is still blanketed by that numbing haze, but she hears his question and thinks: Of course. Of course I will.
Perhaps her silence says enough. Ryon grips her face in his hand, and though his tone is rough, his fingers are controlled. They lock her jaw in place. “We’ve a lot to talk about, you and me,” he says, so low and dangerous, it makes her shiver. “But if you care for me at all, you will consider what it might do to me, should you burn yourself out.”
Rattled, she nods. She wonders if she has ever submitted so quickly to another.
“Mother help me,” he mumbles to himself, eyes leaving her face. He drops his hold and stalks away from her, leaving her to stare at Hector’s outline.
And behind him, the form of another rising.
“Yennes?”
The woman’s lips move, but the words she mouths are soundless.
Dawsyn sags, her lips stretching into a grin.
“She is well,” Hector says, his hand around Yennes’ elbow, ensuring she remains steady. “What happened?”
“Yerdos,” Dawsyn answers coarsely. “Yerdos had her.”
Hector frowns. “The hawk?”
It makes Dawsyn laugh, however wearily.
Yennes weeps quietly and when Hector holds a torch a little closer Dawsyn sees the woman’s clothes are drenched in red.
She goes to her, wrapping her own shaky arms around the woman’s frame. “All is well,” Dawsyn breaths, relief washing through her. “The Chasm should know it can’t have you that easily.”
Yennes’ splutters a weak laugh and for a moment she buries her face into Dawsyn’s shoulder.
An unfamiliar sense of pride fills Dawsyn, to have succeeded, to have accomplished this much.
Yennes’ pulls away and her lips fight to form words. “I’m sorry,” she manages.
“Your mind wasn’t your own,” Dawsyn says, more gently than she knew herself capable.
“The voices… they have lived with me. All this time.” When Yennes opens her eyes again, Dawsyn can almost see the ghosts in them, lurking beneath the surface, tormenting Yennes long after she left the Chasm, and reclaiming her when she appeared within it once more.
Dawsyn thinks of the slithering whispers that plagued her own mind for just a few days and cannot imagine the torture of it making a home there, year after year. Dawsyn thinks of the iskra within Yennes’ blood, keeping Yerdos and her madness at bay.
“They won’t speak to you anymore,” Dawsyn tells her, brushing her cheek with the pad of her thumb. “You’ll banish them.”
She tells Yennes about Moroz and how they will use it to rid them all of infection.
Yennes smiles at her as Dawsyn speaks. It is despondent, and does not hold for long, but Dawsyn is calmed by it. Once more, she feels the awakening of true hope. Despite her waned magic, she feels, for the first time, powerful enough to defeat this Chasm and deliver each one of them to its end.
Surely it exists. Some innate knowledge tells her so, and if these obstacles were made to keep them from finding it then they will lay them to waste.
“Yennes, you and I can cure the rest, we must–”
But her words are swallowed by the sudden uproar of voices, shouting from the south. Dawsyn stands abruptly, reaching for her ax.
Hector pulls forth a dagger and stares in the same direction – into the interminable darkness that roars back to them. A collection of angry shouts and the contact of flesh.
“For fuck’s sake,” Hector growls. “How can they possibly muster the energy to fight now?”
“Dawsyn!” someone calls. Salem’s voice, searching for her in the gloom.
Dawsyn takes the torch from Hector and hastens forward. Toward the clamour. “ Salem? ”
“Dawsyn!” And then he appears, grabbing her arm and tugging her forward. “It’s tha’ son o’ a bitch,” he yells. “The Splitter.”
Her stomach plummets. The sounds of fighting continue. “Nevrak.”
“He’s gathered a mob,” Salem huffs, stumbling over debris. “Ryon’s holdin’ ’em off!”
Dawsyn lets the ax handle slide into her trembling hand until her fingers find the worn grooves at its end. She leaves Salem behind her and follows the light shining from several torches ahead, barely illuminating the scuffle before them.
“I SAY WE WASTE THE GLACIANS!”
The bellow is met by a hearty roar of assent. Fists rise in the air.
Dawsyn pushes through to see Nevrak standing in the middle of the mob, his forearm locked around Tasheem’s throat. She winces, holding her injured leg aloft. Her calf dangles sickeningly, no doubt re-broken.
Nevrak holds a knife beneath her eye, the tip caressing the side of her nose. The small crowd of men clear a circle for him, and each have weapons drawn. Their faces are ruddy with hatred. They stare at Tasheem hungrily.
Ryon and Rivdan are the only ones standing between the mob and Nevrak. Dawsyn can see the few who have tried to pass and failed. They stagger stupidly with cut lips and swelling eyes.
Dawsyn counts twenty or so men, all heeding to Nevrak’s call.
“We’ve lived beneath the press of their talons long enough, haven’t we?” Nevrak calls to them, and they respond with resounding assent.
“Call your men off, Nevrak,” Ryon says quietly, though his wrist turns his sword over and its glint is as menacing as his stare. “I do not wish to make them walk without their limbs.”
Nevrak spits onto the ground. “We ain’t sheep to be herded! We’ve let ourselves be led down this merry path, when you Glacians could’ve flown us out at any time!”
“Mesrich, kill this idiot,” Tasheem spits. Her hands pull on the constricting arm around her neck. “Before I do.”
“Oh, ho! You see, lads! I say, this path ain’t leading us to Terrsaw. No kingdom of the free. There ain’t no field of whores waiting to ravish us all on the other side!”
The men laugh, riled and vengeful.
“No. I’d wager that the only thing we’ll find at the end of this fucking path, is another corner to confine us to! ANOTHER FUCKING PRISON TO TRAP US IN!”
“Enough,” Dawsyn says. She steps into the circle. Turns her back on the watching crowd.
Ryon moves slightly to guard her. “Easy,” he murmurs. She can feel his adrenaline as she passes.
She faces Nevrak. “Don’t be a fool, Splitter.”
Nevrak pins her with a glare so hateful, she almost feels its touch digging into her skin. “A fool?” he says, that maddened veneer sheathing him once more. “I turned a fool the day I let your mongrels drop me into this fucking hell hole!”
“And I’ll not let you leave it, if you don’t put down your blade,” Dawsyn says. They are so close to the end. So close. She can feel it. She won’t allow Nevrak to impede it.
“Ha!” Nevrak barks. “You Sabars always did have more arrogance than was good for you. We’ve let it guide us far enough, girl. You ain’t in charge anymore.”
“No? And I suppose you’ll be taking my place?”
“You’re damn right,” Nevrak growls, steam rising from his lips. He pulls Tasheem tighter. “And unless these bats fly us over that edge up there,” he juts his chin to the sky above, “I’ll be leaving their useless carcasses here, among the other fools unfortunate enough to have listened to your lies.”
“I’ll ask it nicely once more, Ryon,” Tasheem huffs. “Kill this imbecile.”
Ryon eyes Tasheem in silent warning. “All of us were injured, Nevrak. We will be lucky to rescue ourselves from this Chasm.”
“Another fucking lie, no doubt!”
His supporters shout their agreeance.
“Think it through, Splitter,” Dawsyn says, stepping carefully to the side. She can spy one of the armed men stalking closer to her in her periphery, where he thinks she will not see. “What you claim makes no sense. You are delirious. Hungry. Heart sore.”
“YOU’RE FUCKING RIGHT I’M HEART SORE!” he bellows, spittle showering over Tasheem’s shoulder. “My whole fucking family is gone!” Nevrak scrunches his eyes shut a moment, as though he can squeeze the pain out. “And I ain’t dying on a ledge, or in a hole, or corralled into some trap like an animal! I’m getting out of here. We all are. NOW!”
“You’ll either journey down the path, or you’ll die here. Those are your choices.”
“Nay,” Nevrak pants, then nods subtly to someone over Dawsyn’s shoulder. “I’ll choose neither.”
The man with the ice-pick lunges toward her, his footing so unsure, Dawsyn hardly has to move to fell him. In one swift action, she slides her inside foot back and throws her elbow around in an arc. It connects with the side of the man’s head, and he wails as he falls to Dawsyn’s feet, his ear already bleeding. It will likely ring for a week.
“Don’t,” Dawsyn says, holding her ax aloft on her other side, where another has stepped forward with his blade raised. The man halts in his spot. He eyes her ax warily.
“ Fuck ,” Nevrak mutters, his breaths coming faster. “Tell your friend to take me above, Sabar!” He moves the blade to Tasheem’s throat, nicking her skin with the tip. “TELL HER!”
“Tasheem is injured. She could not take you even if she were inclined.”
“You forsake her then! You’d rather I kill your Glacian pet, then let me leave?”
“It’s not her death I worry for,” Dawsyn says. “It’s yours.”
“I’ve got a knife to her neck, Sabar. I’d say she’s closer to meeting the Mother than I.”
“I assure you,” Ryon sighs. “That’s not the case. Last chance, Nevrak.”
“YOU AIN’T IN CHARGE NO MORE!” Nevrak bellows and the others shout in raucous assent. “We’re taking our own way out now and if this spawn of the devil won’t fly us out, she is of no use to us!”
More cheers. Nevrak throws his head back in apparent rapturous victory, howling maniacally.
Tasheem, however, only looks sullen. “Now?”
Ryon shakes his head in dismay. But then squares his shoulders. “Now.”
It is over within moments. Tasheem thrusts her head back hard enough that the resounding crack of Nevrak’s nose reverberates. She twists his wrist and the man’s blade clatters to the ground. His lips and neck are slick with blood by the time he topples, eyes dazed, jaw slack.
Tasheem hisses a stream of old language, none of it recognisable to Dawsyn and surely none of it refined. She holds her wasted leg aloft, her face scrunched in pain. “He broke my fucking leg, Dawsyn,” Tash mutters. Shaking her head. “Attacked me from behind with an ice-pick.”
“So I see,” Dawsyn says. But her attention returns to the mob before them. Twenty or so men, now holding their weapons with less conviction. Some are backing away.
“You’re a murderous fucking devil,” one says to Tasheem, hocking a gob of spit onto her boot. But he too retreats.
“He isn’t dead,” Tash says viciously. “Yet.”
As though in answer, Nevrak groans.
“Enough of this,” Dawsyn calls loudly, so that all can hear. “We will reach the end this day! I am sure of it.”
“And how many will we lose in the hours before?” another calls, a woman this time.
Dawsyn will not let that old weight fall heavy on her shoulders again. She won’t let it wane the light she feels. “Yennes and I will see to the sick,” she says. “We can help them.”
“You can’t!” someone says from the gloom. “Your remedies only go so far!”
“We’ve found the cure,” Dawsyn calls, refusing to be talked over. “We will attend to those–”
But her words are strangled, for the necklace at her chest suddenly grows shockingly hot. It pulses against her skin, in time with her racing heartbeat.
She grabs at it through her clothing, then looks over at Ryon.
“What–?” she mutters, confused. But Ryon is not gripping his knuckles in the way Dawsyn expects him to.
He looks back at her, concern clouding his face. “Malishka?”
Dawsyn does not answer. While the necklace heats her skin, her focus resides on Ryon’s hand and the bare fingers that host no ring – magicked or otherwise.