The silence between them was as frigid as the air. Dunyasha broke it first. "So. You're just as bad as me?"

"You heard everything?"

"All of it. You two weren't exactly being quiet, were you?"

Aysel pulled the fur blanket they had given her closer around her shoulders. She was still dressed only in the red undershirt and wool trousers she had worn as a disguise, and while it was thick and long-sleeved, it wasn't near enough to keep her warm, even in the windless cave. "I meant what I said. You're a murderer, and now so am I. Nothing more to say."

"But there is more to say," Dunyasha said. She walked over, her bare feet padding on the stone, until she stood looming over her. She bent down until their faces were at the same height, her large jaw getting too close for comfort. Even though she knew Dunyasha wouldn't hurt her, Aysel's muscles involuntarily clenched with instinctual fear. "Thank you."

"What?" This hadn't been at all what she was expecting.

"Thank you." Aysel realized that the odd bend Dunyasha was doing was some sort of bow. "You saved my life, the life of my cousin, and the lives of many other innocents at great personal cost. I thank you for it."

Aysel said nothing. She buried her face in the blanket. Dunyasha had no idea how much that cost had been.

"I know you didn't do it for him," she continued, undeterred by Aysel's silence. "You don't need to tell me what Enrick promised you to get you to come along on this stupid trip, or sacrifice so much to protect him, but no matter the reasons, I think you did a good thing."

"How do you know?" Aysel asked, rising from her furs. "You're not exactly one to talk about good and evil."

"Maybe not," she said. She sat down next to Aysel, close enough to speak quietly to her but far enough away that there would be no chance of them touching. "I still feel it, you know. Every time I kill someone, it's like a little part of me dies with them. But I do what I have to do."

Aysel sighed. "I think we've already had this conversation."

"But we haven't had this one." Dunyasha cleared her throat. "Did I ever tell you I was a Reader?"

"No," Aysel said, confused. "I thought the reason Enrick was your leader was because he was the only Reader in your group."

"Not exactly. When I was a child, the last leader taught me, Enrick, and several other children how to read both smoke and symbols, to prepare us if we were chosen to lead as adults. I was the best at it," she said, her voice rising with the barest hint of pride. "And I looked forward to becoming leader and guiding my people. Enrick didn't care; he was only there because his father made him do it. But I really cared. When I was old enough, I started learning how to fight, because I knew I would have to protect my family as well."

"Protect them from Letters?" Aysel asked accusingly.

"Yes," Dunyasha answered cooly. "You already know that I was raised to hate and fear Letters. I was trained to kill them, too, ever since I was young. We all were. We thought that by going out and killing any Letters we found, we were protecting our families and our homes, but in reality, we were just murdering innocent people for no reason."

"We've had this conversation too," Aysel said. "You said you changed your mind when you had a child."

Surprisingly, Dunyasha laughed. The sound rang out loudly through the cave, bringing some life into it as it echoed off the walls. "I didn't say I had a child! I said a child changed my mind! Oh, Aysel, I love children, but as much as I'd like to have one of my own, the people I'm attracted to don't have the right parts for that."

A rush of heat flooded Aysel's cheeks as she realized what Dunyasha was saying. "Oh."

"But that's not part of this story. This story is about how my hate and fear of Letters led me to learning how to kill them.

"So you admit it?" Aysel wrapped her furs around her again like a small child. "You're a killer like me."

"Give me those." Dunyasha leaned over and snatched the fur away from her.

"Hey!" she protested.

"Relax; I'm making you a new coat. You must be freezing." She rummaged in the bag Enrick had left behind and pulled out his bone needle and a knife, which she used on the furs to cut a length of it.

"Oh. Thanks." Aysel cleared her throat and drew her knees up to her chest so she wouldn't feel so exposed."Well, keep going."

Dunyasha flashed her a half-mocking grin. "Curious now, huh?"

"I just want to understand."

"And you will." The smile slipped off her face. "I kept training. I learned to kill more effectively. I learned to hate Letters more effectively. And when it came time for my first real battle, I ran into it with my teeth bared and my heart racing not with fear, but with joy, because now I could finally get my hands on a real Letter and tear them to shreds. And I did, and I liked it. I killed six people that day, and laughed with my friends as we burned the bodies."

Aysel stared at her, wondering what she had looked like charging forward, yellow eyes lit with a fiery passion or death, or laughing as corpses burned at her feet. She would have been terrifying.

"I went on more raids. I killed more people. Any of the horror that I should have felt was missing, and in its place was this kind of sick pride in my ability to snap Letter necks with a single twist. It defined who I was, and I gave myself over to it completely. Until..."

"Until the child?" Aysel asked softly.

"Yes," Dunyasha answered. "We were raiding a small Letter settlement that we claimed was threatening our people, but in reality was simply close and convenient. In the chaos of the attack, some children managed to escape. I went after them, because I was taught that survivors were a sign of failure."

Aysel drew her legs in more closely. "And you killed them."

"Is that what you think of me?" she asked, shaking her shaggy head. "No. I found a child, a girl, hiding under a half-fallen tree. She was barefoot, and young, just before she would have started growing into a woman. She had these huge dark eyes, dark but deep as well, that stared at me as I came closer. She was too terrified to move. She had a reason to be frightened; it was my job to kill her. But I couldn't."

"You couldn't," Aysel breathed.

"No," Dunyasha said, shaking her head. "Whatever part of me that was horrified at death was still there, deep inside, and the thought of killing that innocent child woke it up at last. I let her go, and didn't look for any of the others. I went back to my group, told them I had found the Letters who had escaped, and went back home."

"You saved her life."

"Yes, and I've regretted it ever since," Dunyasha said bitterly.

"What?" Aysel gasped. "Why?"

"Just wait," she hushed. "After that day, I began to question what I had been taught. I went out into the world alone, and watched groups of Letters from far away, so they couldn't see me but I could see them."

"And what did you see?"

"Life," she said with a shrug. "Children growing up. Elders dying. Letters hunting for food and for the People, and coming back with our faces in bags and their own dead on their backs." She shifted to look Aysel in the eyes. "I saw war between our peoples for no purpose, and I realized it had to end. I decided that I would end it."

Aysel swallowed, agitated under Dunyasha's intense gaze. "Did you?"

She barked out one of her dry laughs. "Would you be all cut up and me full of stab wounds if I had? No, of course not. But I tried. By the time I returned, the past leader had stepped down. Enrick's father had convinced his son to take up the chair, but Enrick hated it; he was a better healer than he ever was a warrior, a Reader, or a leader." Aysel mirrored Dunyasha's small smile. "I took the burden off his shoulders and started making some changes. I stopped the raids and went about teaching the others what I had learned. I'm not sure it ever stuck, but the killings stopped. Now that we weren't always fighting and dying at the hands of Letters, we started to relax. Our population swelled. Enrick's father led a group to colonize in the south. We took up hobbies and learned about more things than killing. It was a good time."

She fell silent again. "But something happened?" Aysel asked, prompting her.

"Yes, and it was my fault." She had started sewing now, jabbing the needle again and again into the fur. "Some time after I had taken power, the child I had spared came back, along with a small army of those whose families had been killed by the People.They blamed us for destroying their homes and killing their families, as we should be blamed. They came into the mountains to take their revenge, and they took it." Her voice was very quiet now, rumbling in the back of her throat like a far-off thunderstorm. "They killed most of us. My parents died. Our last leader. Enrick's mother. The girl I had a silly childhood crush on. The old man who was teaching me to make cloudberry jam."

Aysel was quiet for a moment; she knew what it was like to lose people. "And the child?" she asked after a while. "The Letter girl, what happened to her?"

"She was a woman by now," Dunyasha said. "I snapped her neck."

"Oh."

"In the end, seventy-two out of our one-hundred and thirty-one people had been killed, including most of our children." Her face was hard, her eyes cold. "It was my fault they had died, and my fault for being so naive that I could think I could ever stop all this death."

"It wasn't your fault," Aysel said. "You couldn't have known that saving the girl would end in your village getting attacked."

Dunyasha ignored it. "It was my fault, too, what happened next. I decided to pass my leadership on to someone else, but my options were limited. Everyone who had trained with us as children had been killed. The previous leader was dead as well. Enrick's father, who was a Reader, had left a long while ago. There was only Enrick left."

"But he didn't want to be a leader, you said."

"No, but there was no other choice. I cowardly refused to take it back up, and he had no one else to push it onto. He was stuck in a bad situation, which only got worse when the survivors called for retribution against Letters. Enrick, who had no idea how to fight, was expected to lead a raid." She sighed. "He failed, miserably. His brother died in the battle, along with more than half of those Enrick commanded."

Aysel sucked in a breath; if she was counting correctly, the number had dropped down to less than thirty People.

"I should have helped, but I didn't, because I ran. I ran away from whatever was left of my family, who needed me, because I was too ashamed of failing them before. Enrick got stuck with a position he didn't want and can't get rid of, in charge of a group who blames him for leading their families to slaughter. The way he sees it, if I had stayed, his brother would be alive and he wouldn't be in charge. I think he's right about that."

"And that's why you're here?" Aysel whispered. "Out of guilt?"

"Yes. And that guilt is important, Aysel."

"Why?"

She was silent for a moment, seemingly fully focused on the sleeve she was sewing shut. Then she said, "Because that guilt proves to me I have a soul. I was worried I had lost it somewhere, killing all those people and letting all those others die. But I still feel sick every time I kill, even when I have to. I still feel all twisted up inside every time I remember the horrible things I've done. Do you feel the same?" she asked, looking earnestly up at Aysel again. Her predatory eyes glistened greenish yellow in the dim light.

"I do," Aysel said. "I feel awful. The Ancient Ones should drain me for what I have done," she said, and the tears came like a flood, like the spray of blood from the woman's chest. "I killed a person," she said. "I've committed the worst sin there is. And I hate myself for it."

Dunyasha crawled over to her and reached out a hesitant hand. Aysel let her slowly run her thumb over her cheek. "Hold onto that feeling, Aysel," Dunyasha whispered. "Accept what you've done, and always remember how it made you feel. You have a soul," she said, gently brushing Aysel's tears away with one of the coat's sleeves. "Like me."

This time, Aysel didn't flinch away as Dunyasha's body pressed against her. She was solid and reassuring, an island of peace in the sea of Aysel's swirling thoughts. "We should get going," Aysel whispered, though she made no move to leave.

"We can rest for now. We're safe here. It might be the last place we'll be safe for a long time. We need to cross the river."

"The river," she repeated. They really were back in the valley. Even though she had not been gone for so very long, her heart ached to see thick forests, rolling rivers, and gentle slopes of her home again. The mountains had been beautiful, in their own harsh way, but the valley that Letters called their home was paradise.

"You missed it, didn't you?" Dunyasha asked softly. Aysel could feel the low thrum of her voice in her chest.

"I'd never left it before," she answered. "I'm glad to be back."

"Be a little less glad; it's not as though we'll be welcomed here." She snorted. "It's a bit less idyllic once you remember everyone is trying to kill us, isn't it?"

Aysel pulled away from her, her joy at being in her native land fading fast. "I wish it wasn't this way," she said, throwing out the words as if she was tossing stones into the river's water.

"What way?"

"This way," she said, gesturing to the both of them. "I wish our peoples weren't fighting. I want to be able to come home and not worry about my brother dying or my home being destroyed while I was away." She looked at Dunyasha again. "And I wish that the thing with the child had never happened."

Dunyasha smiled sadly. "So do I, but I'm not naive enough to think a few people's good intentions will change the world. And nothing can change the past."

Aysel crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling childish. "Well, sorry that I'm naive."

Dunyasha scootched closer next to her and slipped something soft over her head and around her neck. It was the completed coat, lined on the inside with warm brown fur. "Here. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It's not a bad thing to have hope for a better future."

Aysel snuggled into the soft fur and said shyly, "I've been thinking... nearly everything I was taught about you was wrong. Maybe after this is all over and we get to wherever we're going, we can try to... change some minds."

"We?" she asked with a quiet chuckle.

"You're living proof that People aren't a race of mountain savages. You're not Beasts." She lowered her head. "I'm sorry for ever thinking you were."

"Not mountain savages? Wow, what high praise," she said sarcastically, but not angrily; Aysel could read her tone well enough by know to know her sarcasm was meant in jest. She dropped her smirk, though, when she said, "You'll be pleased to learn that you're living proof that Letters can indeed stand alongside the People, which is the opposite of what I thought before meeting you. You changed my mind."

Dunyasha smiled at her and brushed away the last few tears from her cheeks. Aysel let her do it, realizing with a shock that the feel of her rough, calloused skin against her own no longer made her shudder with disgust and fear. Now it was comforting, as soothing and familiar as getting into bed at the end of a long day. "Do you think we can get other people to see what we see?" she asked.

Dunyasha shrugged her massive shoulders. "Probably not. But we can try."

A loud yawn sounded through the cave."Are you done yet?" Enrick asked. He sauntered back into the cavern, his torn fur coat trailing along behind him. "The first part was interesting, but now you're on about hope and feelings and ugh, I'm boring myself just talking about it."

Dunyasha stood. "Enrick! Were you listening?"

"Not closely," he said, rolling his eyes. "Only to the bits with me in them. Dunya, you forgot to mention the part where I was amazingly talented and handsome."

"I was telling Aysel a true story," she shot back. Aysel smirked. Dunyasha turned to her and said "Even though this one had his ear pressed against the wall, I hope that made you feel a bit better, and answered some questions you had. It's obvious we're going to be responsible for each other's lives, so we need to be able to trust each other."

Trust them? She looked at her two companions. They had attacked her, imprisoned her, and dragged her along on a wild and dangerous quest for a purpose she still did not know. But they had also protected her, clothed her, healed her wounds. She looked at Dunyasha, standing tall and crookedly in the dim cave light.

"I do trust you," Aysel said to her, and she meant it. But still, somewhere deep in her heart was a flicker of doubt. Even after supposedly telling her everything, it felt like Dunyasha was hiding something, and she was sure Enrick was. But it seemed that, for now at least, she would have to trust them. If she was to save her brother, she had no other choice.