The jagged path of disconnected ledges descends at a sixty-degree angle, forcing me into a crabbed combination of walking sideways and hugging the wall of the mountain, my view limited to the craggy dirt facing me. Even worse, frost dusts some of the stones, slicking the handholds I rely on for balance. I never was a good hiker, even after doing the topside fieldwork for my masterate. Instead, I relied on my sturdy leather boots to keep me from slipping and the better instinct of my professor to pick and keep a path.

Luckily, I brought the same boots and Sean seems strangely confident making his way down the mountainside. Either he's more familiar with this type of terrain or his natural cockiness is leading us down to our doom. Surely the latter if he wants to meet up with marauders. He's betting our survival on people who make a living by preying off topsiders, and idiot me is following him. Again.

A frozen chunk of rock breaks under my foot, and I cling to the mountainside, cheek pressed against stone, breaths hard. My heartbeat thumps in my ears as the pebbles I dislodged rattle down the slope.

Sean glances over. He's upright, as if staring a hundred feet down a mountain with nothing to hold onto is as comfortable as walking down a flight of stairs. "You know, this would be easier for you if you walked like a normal person."

"Easier for me to fall, maybe." I'm still afraid to move, not sure I can trust my footing anymore. In front me, a spider crawls down the rocks, a thread of web anchoring it. "Why didn't we bring rope?"

"Rope's heavy, and you're making a bigger deal of this than it is, Riveirre. There's a stable spot about five inches to your left. Keep up." Then he's ten feet further down, hopping ledge to ledge with the surety and disgruntled frown of a mountain goat.

I grit my teeth. "Thanks, Sean," I grumble, glancing down at this supposed spot.

The world swirls beneath my feet as my eyes take in the distant ground. The tops of the trees look like moss floating in a pond, and the group we're trying to reach is further down still, a tessellation formed of carts and colors. Nausea creeps over me, and I sway, simultaneously weightless and terrified of gravity.

Sean's voice breaks through my floaty hysteria. "Don't look down, Riveirre."

Irritated with myself, I snap my head back up. The vertigo that flooded my body drains away to leave behind a knot of dread. "Not exactly new advice, Sean."

"If it's so obvious, how come you weren't following it?"

"How exactly am I supposed to find whatever spot you mentioned without looking down?"

Annoyance edges his voice. "Feel for it. You act like you've never been topside before, Riveirre."

"Two full months! And two visits before that. That's more than most undergrounders." I've just never enjoyed this part of it.

"Well, then, you must be an expert. A whole two months. I deeply apologize for critiquing your mastery."

Irritation overriding fear, I peek down to scowl at him.

I gasp. He's mid-air, trenchcoat flaring out. His feet connect with a ledge in a solid landing, knees bending to absorb the impact. He steps onto the next shelf. "Hurry up, or the plague's going to have died out before we even manage to catch up with the Traders."

I swallow, hoping I'll be able to ease down that jump. Show-off.

Gingerly, I reach out with my foot for the hold Sean mentioned. It's a few inches too far, and my burning arm stretches for a close, snow-dusted stone. My muscles are tense, probably more than they should be. Though the incline is at a diagonal, it might as well be straight down for all I'm concerned.

Closer now, I tiptoe for the foothold. My toes slide into a pocket of stone, testing it. Satisfied it'll hold my weight, I ease over.

Now to do that about a thousand more times.

I look for something to distract myself. "Did you just say these people are traders? I thought you called them marauders earlier."

"You bought that?" he calls up. "And they're not just any old 'traders.' They're the Traders. Like, the people. How do you not recognize them?"

"Wait. You lied to me?" Angry, I glance down at him and instantly regret it. Tightening my grip, I focus on lowering myself to the next ledge.

"Yes, and you bought it. Good recap. Now—how come you don't know who they are?"

My toes brush the landing, and I make sure my feet are flat before releasing my handholds. "I've never even heard of them."

That's misleading. I do vaguely recollect them from my High Valley History and Theories of the Outerlands class, but I spent most of my time in there working on Advanced Cellular Structures homework. Anything not related to scientific advance was a footnote in my education. If I was to keep up with the science courses my mother expected me to take, I didn't have time to waste on every random name and date.

"They come to the topside towns regularly," he explains. "This group should be headed south, down to the valley villages for winter." He trails off, and I suppress the urge to examine the group in question again.

Feeling for the next foothold, I ask, "Why?"

"You're going to have to be more specific than 'why,' Riveirre."

A short, exasperated breath escapes me. My hand brushes a rock, and a shower of scree tumbles past, startling me. I stay silent for a minute, concentrating on following Sean down.

It doesn't take him long to lose his patience. "Well?"

"Well what, Sean?"

"Aren't you going to ask your question?"

"I'm focusing on the task at hand. Don't you think that's a little more important than our conversation?"

His steps pause as if waiting for me to catch up. "Can't move your mouth and your feet at the same time, Riveirre?"

I scoff, but after a moment, give in. "Why do they travel between the topside towns so much?"

Even five feet below me, I can feel his smirk. "I'll give you a hint—they're the Traders."

My cheeks flame red. Buying time to form a retort, I lower myself down to the next ledge, Sean on one a few feet below.

"Wait, Rivei—!"

There's a sharp crack underneath me, rock falling away from my foot, and suddenly gravity is more than an equation I've memorized. I'm sliding, dropping, desperately scrabbling at the wall in a useless attempt to find something, anything to grab hold of. I fall past Sean, and his hand darts out, catching my jacket sleeve. Our gazes snap together. Dread and apology flood through his eyes, and mine reflect his like a pool of water. We both instinctively know the same thing.

My momentum is too much.

The leather wrenches through Sean's weak grasp. A scream tears from my lips as I skid, scraped, cut, bruised by the protruding rocks. I crash into one, and my body rebounds. I fall through the air.

My feet smash into a jutting lip of the cliff. My knees buckle, and I crumple sideways to the ground. I don't move.

Sean calls out above, and I hear him scramble down to join me. "Are you injured?"

Breathe, Leavi. My cheek is flush with the cold stone, and there's something strangely comforting about its solid stillness.

"Riveirre?"

Breathe.

His hand's on my shoulder. "Riveirre?"

I drag air into my body, then cough, frozen lungs churning back to life.

He hovers above me. "Are you okay?"

"Of course, Sean," I groan. "I fell down a cliff, and I'm fine."

"Be serious, Riveirre." Carefully, he rolls me onto my back. I stifle a moan. My body protests in a million places, but it's a dull ache rather than searing agony. Please let that mean I didn't break anything.

Sean's hands dart over me, pressing and prodding. I weakly swat him away. "Quit that!"

He draws back, and I push up, finishing the check myself. Ulna, radius, tibia, ribs... My probing fingers detect no fractures. A swipe of my forehead comes away damp, a small cut stinging.

I glance at Sean. His initial concern has melted into impatience. His foot taps, eyes following the Traders' progress. I spot the broken ledge I fell from and realize it's only fifteen feet up.

I shove to my feet, determined not to slow us down any more than I already have. Pain shoots up my left ankle, and I glance away, trying to hide my wince from Sean. My boot already acts as the best support we have at hand for a sprain.

Looking me over, he nods once. "Perhaps you can't move your mouth and feet at the same time."

My jaw drops. He's already starting back down the mountain, though.

Under my breath, I say, "You fish-gutted, guano-filled, inconsiderate—"

"Can't hear you, Riveirre," Sean calls.

"That was the point," I mutter. Gathering my nerve, I find my next hold.

* * *

The temperature drops rapidly as the sun sets over the white-topped horizon. We've made it into the valley, the cliff to the cave entrance a few miles behind us. The ground rolls with hills, and pines rise up around. Underneath the shadows of the trees' branches lie patches of unmelted snow. I shiver, pulling my jacket tighter. "Sean, I think we need to find shelter for the night."

Barely ahead of me, he shakes his head. He's hunched into his trench coat, a wary tortoise barely sticking its head out of its shell. "They're just over the next rise."

"You can't know for sure. And it could be another hour before we top it! We need to find someplace to keep from freezing to death while it's still light. We can't afford to trudge up there only to find out once it's dark that you were wrong."

He whirls back on me. "So what do you want to do, Riveirre? Miss them tomorrow when they've moved on?"

I adjust my satchel on my shoulder. "We'll catch up. They're a big group; they can't be that fast."

He barks a humorless laugh. "They pack up camp faster than I bet you packed your bag there. Traders know how to book it. If we don't catch up tonight, we won't at all." His eyes blaze a challenge, daring me to disagree. Deliberately, almost desperately, he repeats, "They're just over the next rise."

I consider him for a second. Framed by the snowy hill and setting sun, he cuts an imposing figure. A tired but confident figure. A figure willing to risk his life on his ability to memorize the topography and keep track of how far we've come.

The safest bet is to find a place to sleep, out of the wind, where we can start a fire, lay out our blankets and stay dry. But if we do that and lose these people, we might wander these mountains forever.

He's right. We need to keep moving. We'll just have to hope he's also right about where they are.

I press my lips together and nod. He offers me a curt one in return. Then we're off again.

With every foot we climb, we gain a sliver of the sun, but with every minute, we lose a slice. My feet ache, and I can feel my ankle swollen against the leather of my boot. The cold burns my fingers and bites my face. My toes are numb, and my skin stings where the rocks cut me.

When the sky finally goes black, icy knives of wind slash our skin, but we still trudge upward, always upward, one frozen foot after another, until the ground levels out, and Sean turns to me with that smug smile I hate but can find the room to love just now because he was right.

The Traders' camp is here.

The land in front of us is a world of flickering lights and colored fabrics flowing in the wind. Before, I was too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to notice the warm hubbub of voices floating from the camp, the braying of animals, the jangle of wind chimes, but now my senses drink in every detail, reveling in relief.

They really are here.

Together, we hurry forward, exhausted but excited. On the edge of the camp, a woman feeds a mule out of one hand, rubbing behind his ears with the other. Her back is turned, attention focused on the animal.

I approach her. "Excuse me, ma'am?"

She turns, startled, and her brows draw together. She spits out some question, but it sounds like gibberish.

Sean steps past me. He answers the woman, enunciation crisp enough that this time I recognize the words as the topside Common. I had to take a couple years of it in secondary school, but beyond that, I never paid it any attention. Being the language the topsiders use, I thought I'd never have any use for the simplistic, guttural tongue beyond the phrases I needed for my field studies.

The woman regards us warily and shakes her head.

Sean sighs, passing her a few stone-marks from his belt, and asks her a single-word question. She eyes the money in her palm, mouth twisted in thought. Despite her hesitation, she snaps her fist closed, shoving the marks into the folds of her clothing. She turns and leads us further into camp.

We pass tents full of curious eyes and people scurrying around, taking care of last minute business before sleep. A smile creeps to my tired lips as a pair of giggling children scamper away from their harried mother.

Our guide takes us to an elaborate tent two or three times the size of the others. A black pennant with a golden owl embroidered in the middle cracks once in the wind. The woman steps forward and hesitantly calls to someone inside. For a moment, the wind's whistle is the only sound.

A massive figure pushes back the tent flaps. Covered in thick pelts and fur boots, he fills up the full entrance of the tent. Stone beads hang all through his wild beard and hair, both of which come halfway down his chest. Between a bushy brow and a wide, crooked nose, a pair of dark eyes examines us.

Wordlessly, he shoulders into the clearing. Sean holds his ground, but I unconsciously step back. The man's eyes follow my movement, raking over my figure. I hold his gaze, refusing to be cowed. The corner of his lip twitches up before his attention shifts.

The man jerks his chin toward Sean. "Ach escherisch?" His voice is harsh, aggressive.

Sean answers the behemoth's question in his usual self-sure tone. They jab sentences back and forth like street fighters throwing punches. I'm hopelessly lost. I can understand Sean a little better than the man—his accent's not as guttural—but I'm only catching words here and there. Their tone implies a fight for dominance, but their anger is measured, like they're waiting for the right opportunity to press their attack. A couple minutes into their spar, I tap Sean's elbow, hissing, "What's going on?" He waves me away irritatedly and keeps talking.

As the man's scowl deepens, Sean argues more and more insistently. Finally, the man shakes his head. He makes a wide, disgusted gesture with his arm, dismissing Sean, and calls to a couple of men nearby. Behind me, someone grabs my arms.

Panic tightens my chest, and I thrust my elbow back, connecting with someone's stomach. My offender grunts, but his grip tightens, drawing me close.

"Let me go!"

Sean's head snaps toward me. He throws an arm in the air, yelling at the leader. With his other hand, he digs for something in his pockets.

The man holding me drags me back. I try to wrench out of his viselike grip, but he jerks me to the side and backhands me. I stagger. Still gripping my left arm, he yanks me back, dragging me away again.

"Sean!" I scream.

"Give me a minute!"

My feet kick wildly, spraying snow. I catch my captor on the shin, and he growls, digging his fingers into my flesh. He hauls me another couple feet, my resistance burdening him no more than if I were a child.

Sean thrusts an object overhead. The moss-backed compass shines through the dark. It twirls on the silver chain hanging from Sean's fist, strangely beautiful amidst the violent commotion.

The leader raises a hand, and everything stills. He walks forward, one slow, ponderous step at a time. He stops in front of Sean, putting his hand beneath the compass.

Sean lets it dangle, meeting the man's eyes. He poses a careful demand.

The leader grunts, but Sean repeats his terms.

A huff of breath escapes from the man's nostrils and fogs in the cold air. Sean holds his gaze.

The leader gives a decisive nod, and Sean drops the glowing compass into his palm. The man stands there, examining it, seemingly entranced.

Sean clears his throat. The man looks up, gesturing lazily at the brute holding me. My captor shoves me away. I spin on my heel and glare at him, and he sneers at me. Brushing off his furs, he saunters to the leader's side. At the edge of the group, the woman who brought us here hurries away.

As I turn, Sean grabs hold of my elbow. I jerk from his grip. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Shut up and go along with it," he hisses.

Taking my arm again, he marches me off. We head back the direction we came, attracting odd looks, but Sean offers me not a word of explanation. Finally, he stops in front of the tent with the lady's mule outside. Now, the animal has bundles piled on his back instead of just his blanket. I stare, confused for a moment, until I see the woman come out with an armful of belongings.

She pauses momentarily to glare at Sean but places her load on her animal. She gestures at the tent angrily, as though to say, It's all yours. Happy?

Paying her no attention, Sean pulls me into the structure. Inside the thick hide walls, it's noticeably warmer. He releases me.

I turn on him. "Explain."

He shrugs his bag and coat off. "Women are second-class citizens here."

I spread my hands, incredulous. "What does that have to do with anything?"

He stares at me like he doesn't understand how his random fact was not an explanation. Delayed, he blatantly states, "The Ufir thinks you're my slave."

"The who?"

"The Ufir. Their leader. They—"

I cut him off, realization kicking in. "Wait. Did you tell him that?"

"No. I simply didn't confuse him."

I gawk, unsure how else to handle him. "You didn't correct him?"

He tips his head, considering me with one eye. "I just said that."

For once, I don't have any reply. Despite understanding each word, I feel as if we're speaking two different languages.

After a minute of bewildered silence, Sean sighs. "Look, here's what happened. I told them to take us to Xela, my hometown, and I would pay them. He liked the look of you," he continues, ignoring my indignant protest, "and offered to take you and the money as payment. We argued. He decided to take you and leave me here. I gave him the compass instead of you. The end."

Sean's blunt explanation does nothing to end my speechlessness, but he doesn't seem to notice. He's too busy looking around our new quarters. After giving one satisfied nod, he begins to lay out his blankets.

Several moments later, he notices me staring at him. "What?" he asks obliviously.

"I—" I'm not sure whether to be furious or thankful.

My answer not forthcoming, he turns back to his pallet. "I don't know about you, but I'm beat. I'll see you in the morning." Just like that, he rolls into his blankets and goes to sleep.