It yanks the woman backward, back into the man hanging on to the ledge for dear life.
He yowls once with surprise.
And then they’re gone, all three slipped over the side.
Izabel, Venna, and I look on in silence for a minute.
Eventually, I walk over to the edge and unhook the man’s ice pick from where he left it, jolted from his grip by the weight of the woman slamming into him.
“At least now we don’t have to switch off,” I say darkly, and tuck the pick into my belt.
But even as I try to sound confident, I can’t hide the way my hands are shaking.
Three people are dead, just like that—and it could’ve just as easily been me.
CHAPTER NINE
The rest of the climb up the ice wall is sheer torture.
My face throbs from the multiple beatings it’s taken today.
My muscles are screaming at me; Venna explained before we got going again that I was probably depending too much on my strong upper body muscles, when experienced climbers draw strength from their legs and their core.
How helpful of her to share that tidbit now.
It’s probably a few more hours by the time we finally reach another resting place, but it feels like it’s been days. We’ve reached the ridgeline of the mountain, though not the true peak—that I can still see rising above us, shrouded in cloud.
The ridge is made of more than just ice, though, thankfully—a few scattered trees offer some slight shelter from the relentless wind, and we crouch next to one, inhaling pieces of hardtack ration and a few more strips of jerky from Izabel’s pack. We all carefully gauge how much water is still in our skins, then drink just a bit.
Venna and Izabel confer for a few minutes, defaulting to signing with their hands, while I let my eyes close, trying to takea few minutes of rest. When I open them, Izabel is biting her lip, and Venna’s staring down at the ground.
I crook an eyebrow at Izabel and she sighs. “It’s one thing to know that this was going to be difficult. That we would have to watch people fall to their deaths, to know justhow manypeople would be sacrificed on this climb. It’s… it’s different, knowing the numbers, and…”
I clear my throat. “Actually seeing people die?” She’s put into words exactly what I’ve been feeling.
Izabel nods and swallows, and we both stare into the distance.
I wonder how much more death Izabel and Venna will have to see—have todeal—during their quest to become Bonded.
If I weren’t so cold, and tired, and desperate for this to be done, I would probably find the view beautiful. We’re high enough that we can see the Bonded City’s spires, the castle rising up above the sprawl of roofs around it. The forest we trekked through yesterday looks like a long black smudge on the landscape; beyond the castle, more smears of black must be trees and fallow soil, broken up occasionally by the thin lines that I realize are the king’s roads south and west and east, to other fiefdoms.
The mountain we’re climbing is by far the tallest in the range, but there are other mountains stretching out to either side of us, each draped in sparkling snow and ice, starkly beautiful against the clouds.
Izabel’s hands are dancing again, responding to something Venna tells her. “She’s right of course,” Izabel says, halfway to herself.
“Like usual,” Venna retorts. I raise my eyebrows in inquiry.
“This is what it means to become Bonded,” Izabel continues. “We have to harden ourselves, have to be strong. Only the strongest deserve the Bond.”
“You guys are a special kind of crazy, you know that, right?” I shake my head, unable to fathom how someone would walk into this hellscape with eyes wide open. “I meant what I told you, I don’t want to bond. I just want to save my sister.”
The words slip out of my mouth in my exhaustion. I hadn’t shared anything with them yet about why I’m actually here. Hadn’t wanted to open the wound.
“Your sister?” Venna asks, hesitant.
I lean back into the tree, reassured by the press of the rough pine bark through my coat. “Saela.” The shape of her name scrapes against my throat and I realize I haven’t said it aloud since I left the commoner side of the city—only two days ago, though it seems like a lifetime. “She was taken. The Nabbers. That’s why I’m here, so I can save her.”
Venna and Izabel are frowning in confusion. “Nabbers?”
