Aien thrusted and Kaye ducked, her arm swinging down and up, one foot firmly pnted on the ground. Still sheathed, the dagger struck his cvicle with a thud and Kaye threw herself back with a push of the same foot that had supported the attack.

  “There,” Aien said, pointing, “that was better.”

  She nodded and straightened her posture. Aien was thrusting higher than he normally would for her sake, but that would have been a nasty cut if this were a fight, and she had leaped out of his range before he could backhand swing at her.

  Turning, Aien reached for a waterskin, signaling the end of the lesson. He did not seem to be as instinctive of a fighter as Loho was, and though he always practiced by himself more than Kaye thought he should, leaving him exhausted enough to always be the first to sleep; Aien turned calmer when she asked for a lesson, talking about the fundamentals like someone that was repeating what his teachers taught him — his father or grandfather, she presumed — the importance of edge alignment, of knowing the bde’s length without having to think about it, of knowing where that length could reach in a circle around you and how far the circle would extend with a step and of course, of practicing swings and stabs and thrusts. She understood why dummies were so common now. They got you used to the idea of having someone standing there, a target for the attack instead of just air, and the resistance of something sending a shock through your whole body when it caught against the bde. Trees were too hard and would damage the edge, rocks even more so, and the underbrush around them was too short and fragile, so Kaye only had the air and Aien, and they were still practicing with both bdes sheathed when she needed to simute attacks.

  Thirst sated and sweat dripping from their faces, they rested and ate their fill of hard biscuits soaked in the juices of the cactus-like pnt before making for the road again.

  There was no need to scout like they had done back in the wastes, so the group paced close together, the only constant being Loho in the front. They had shared the road with plenty of travelers coming down from Tohohon in the past two days, but there was no one else in sight now and the road was veering east, like how Loho said it would. They continued north, towards a less-clear path not trodded by wagon wheels.

  In the distance, the canyon was already in sight. Fissures separated the cliffs, snaking westward as far as Kaye could see, fractioning the nd into desote peaks. The gorge they headed towards seemed to be among the thinnest, both sides of the cliff were much closer than Kaye expected. Whoever had built the bridge had done so at the canyon’s edge. It led to a pteau that would divert their rout east for a while, but from what Kaye could glimpse they wouldn’t need to cross any other bridges. Loho had said there was another bridge four days west, and judging from the expanse, that one had to lead into the canyon instead of around it.

  No wonder the Morrish were decimated here.

  “Ah, I wish I had come this way,” Uruoro said, walking by Kaye’s side.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Hogog by her other side. “This will look good in that diary of yours.”

  Kaye nodded. She was already imagining the rough strokes, though she could never fully realize the sight in front of her. She decided she would take the st shift when night came, to work on the drawing when the first rays of sunlight illuminated the ndscape. It would have to be the view from wherever they ended camping, but that wouldn’t make it any less breathtaking.

  “And here I thought there was nothing but desert around us,” even Aien seemed to have found it beautiful.

  Perhaps, Kaye thought, you had also only seen pictures of the world, before this. Maybe even less than I did.

  The bridge was how Kaye expected. Wooden and suspended, it spanned something between twenty to thirty meters, held together by several ropes each half as thick as her forearms, connecting the two cliffs.

  Loho stepped onto it with familiarity, each hand resting gently on the ropes. The bridge swayed, but not much.

  Uruoro was next, staring down without an ounce of fear in his eyes before Loho was halfway through his passage. Kaye would be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit anxious, but she had stood over cliffs in the Nanur nds and hadn’t panicked. It will pass soon, just trudge through it.

  After Uruoro was Hogog, who grasped at the ropes and took each step with care.

  Kaye looked down on her first step to ensure she had good footing, a part of her expecting a sudden gust of wind to rock the bridge as soon as she stepped away from solid ground. She looked up and walked.

  Kaye frowned. She hadn’t seen Aien crossing, but there were four people on the other side. Loho turned to the newcomer the same instant that Hogog started the other way, east.

  Kaye halted. Not just one, but a few, leaving their hiding spots behind rocks, coming from the west and making for the bridge. Unmasked. A sword was high in the air, swinging for the rope bridges.

  She was right. Aien hadn’t crossed.

  “Kaye!” his voice rang from behind her, and she turned and dashed towards it in a heartbeat.

  Aien had his sword in hand, bde held horizontally in front of him, warning the figures not to come closer. Four, Kaye counted in an instant. Our backs are to the—

  The unmasked moved forward, two closer from the left, two a step behind from the right. Kaye’s hand approached her bow, and in the next moment she realized there would be no time to draw it.

  Aien stepped to meet the two from the left. “This way!” he shouted.

  Kaye unsheathed her long dagger and followed, catching a glimpse of the other two approaching. She’d have time for a single attack before they reached.

  Sword raised, Aien parried another bde, batting it aside. Kaye had no choice but to throw herself at the approaching unmasked before he got to Aien.

  Her parry was messy, not enough support behind her stance as she was running, and the bde thrusted dangerously close to her shoulder, but then Aien had forced his opponent to step back with a ssh of his own, and the man in front of Kaye distracted himself for a mere instant, gncing to his right.

  Kaye shambled past him, found her footing and was through, sshing across a waist as she did so.

  When she turned, Aien’s opponent was stepping back with a screech, a gash on his upper arm. The other two were but a step behind, and Aien seemed to have guessed, for he made a mad run for it.

  A sword caught him on the side, but not enough to halt his stride. Aien turned when he reached Kaye’s side, assumed his fighting stance again. The wound had been shallow.

  Her eyes locked with the man who tried to kill her. When his eyes widened with realization, Kaye’s dagger was already tinkling against the rock and she had a knee on the ground. Bow and arrow were out in the spam of a breath, and she shot when he was still two paces away. It caught him dead in the stomach.

  “Back!” Kaye shouted, loosing another arrow she didn’t take the time to aim.

  It flew harmlessly through the air, but it made them retreat. Kaye kicked her own dagger back, turned and run the opposite direction, retrieving her weapon while at it. Aien followed. From the corner of her eye, Kaye saw figures moving on the other side of the cliff and a missing bridge.

  “They’re not Headhunters,” Aien said, and it sounded like a protest.

  “There’s more coming.” Kaye could hear them, though she didn’t know how many, approaching from behind them. Footsteps and voices.

  Aien was right, they were not Headhunters. They were unmasked. Young, dingy and skinny. None of them were fighters, or at least not good ones.

  That could only mean one thing. If the Headhunters are here, they are on the other side of the cliff.

  Kaye slowed down to sheathe her dagger. “We have to help the others.”

  “The bridge is down.”

  “I have a bow.”

  Turning, she saw that the men were following, all apart from one another in a rough line. Four again, and she wasn’t seeing any of the hurt ones.

  She loosed an arrow, missed. The next arrow pnted itself deeply into a thigh, bringing the man down and shrieking as he rolled with his forward momentum. He had barely fallen when another one appeared to fill his space.

  They don’t know what they are doing, Kaye thought as they ran again. With enough time, she could kill all of them, but each step was taking them farther away from the bridge.

  Jade masks fshed in her mind. The two Loho hadn’t fought. Cozo and Udar.

  She came to a halt once again.

  “What now?”

  “We can’t just run,” Kaye’s voice came out sharper than she had intended, frustration seeping through it.

  She took the time to aim another two shots. The fools were still following, another one hurt and one, she thought, dead.

  They could only keep at it for so long, and Aien was tiring himself out without fighting. Kaye didn’t have the time to count her arrows, and though she had others in her backpack, she doubted she’d have the chance of reaching for them after the quiver was empty.

  Ten paces behind us, Kaye thought, measuring the pursuers’ pace in her mind. We won’t get any further.

  Whirling around, arrow loaded, Kaye searched for a target.

  High up, a single figure was disappearing from sight. Two bodies littered the rocky ascent.

  Breathing harshly, Kaye went on her knees to rest. Aien sheathed his sword and scouted around.

  “That’s not… all of them,” he spoke between breaths, “they can be waiting… on the top.”

  She nodded her agreement, but they had to get to the other side, no matter how.

  Soon after and far from rested, they headed straight north. Kaye took the time to refill her quiver, thinking that some of the arrows had fallen as she ran. It hadn’t been a long chase and she didn’t remember firing that many times.

  “Keep an eye behind us. I’ll look,” Kaye said as she approached the cliff’s edge, staying low.

  Over the other side of the cliff, there was nothing but a clear blue sky in view. She climbed west, but only for a while. It wasn’t enough for the colpsed bridge to come into view.

  Head pounding, fear swirling in her mind, Kaye made her way back to Aien.

  He was staring at her. She shook her head. Nothing. There weren’t even any sounds. If they were still fighting, then they were too far away to be heard.

  Kaye shook her head once again, this time to herself.

  “Four days west there is another bridge, and I need to find a way to look at the other side.

  “They won’t let us approach the colpsed bridge for at least a few days.”

  “I know, we have to make the long way around, south then west, only briefly crossing the road. I know, but I have to take a look at the other side.”

  For a long, drawn-out moment, Aien stared at her.

  “You think those two Headhunters are on the other side,” said Aien.

  “They could be,” Kaye said, though she didn’t want to voice it. As if keeping it to her thoughts could change anything. “There can be even more on the other side. They hired these men as mercenaries. Loho isn’t fully healed, and a duel isn’t the same as a battle.”

  If we had stepped on the bridge a little ter, maybe we would all be dead by now.

  Aien scowled, “And they keep going on about Headhunter honor.”

  “That map would’ve been useful now,” Aien said, a little ter after they had rested.

  Kaye nodded, standing up. If the unmasked were still around, they were staying by the road, and Kaye saw no signs of them. She stared at every potential hiding spot, every curve in the rocky paths around them.

  After confirming that the few arrows she had missed were useless, all splintered against the soil, Kaye found herself searching the other side of the cliff, but again there was nothing. Kaye and Aien then put as much distance between them and the road as was possible, in case the unmasked were waiting for reinforcements to gather. They stopped when they were too tired to continue. The chase had sapped away a lot of their strength.

  She couldn’t help but think about what had happened on the other side. Loho was with them, she knew, but there were also more unmasked on the other side and, perhaps, masked as well.

  Kaye clenched her fists at the rage that swelled up from within. In her mind she had gone back to Rair’s pce, to the tangle of despair she felt. It had been wild enough that she didn’t stop to think that, despite it being against her wishes, she had killed people. That hadn’t stopped happening since then. The interval between each kill just varied.

  It had been a mistake to stay so long in Neru-Aran. She should have denied Loho his duel and dragged Gima out of the city kicking and screaming…

  They know about Gima.

  Kaye kicked a stick as she turned to walk back to Aien, but the way it rolled stole her attention. It was another arrow. Somehow, she had missed one.

  She realized with a start it couldn’t be hers. She was by the cliff’s edge, and the arrowhead pointed away from it. None of her shots had been anywhere near that direction.

  Crouching, Kaye inspected it. It looked like one of her arrows — a Nagra arrow, shot from the other side. When she picked it up, she noticed that words had been poorly and hurriedly engraved in the shaft.

  Alive. East.

  Kaye stared beyond the ravine, for the third time seeing nothing but rock and sky.