SOON AFTER SETTING off the next morning, Ramus slipped. He shouted first—he could feel it happening—and scrabbled at the sheer cliff face as he slid down. His toe caught against a stone lip and his upper body leaned out, and then he fell away from the cliff with a jerk.

Lulah was ready. She grunted as the rope between them tautened with a snap. The grunt turned into a groan, which turned into a roar as Ramus felt for purchase. His fingers slipped into a fissure and his feet found a crack, and he took his own weight.

Lulah eased up above him, breathing hard. He looked up and saw her legs shaking with the effort she had just expended.

“Sorry,” he said.

She looked down and shook her head, unable to speak.

After a while they started climbing again. Ramus was sure that they would make it to the cloud level today, and already the rock before them was damper than before, even beneath the constant breath of the wind. We should have been swept from here by now by the gales, he thought. But though there were occasional strong gusts that forced them to hold tight, the winds they had been expecting this high up were absent. Ramus did not know why, and he did not dwell on the fact. He simply gave thanks.

He slipped again before noon. One moment he was holding on well, the next his feet went from beneath him and his sore fingers scraped away from the handholds. It surprised him this time, and Lulah cried out when the roped pulled at her waist. Ramus hung in space, spinning slowly, head and arms back, and he thought he probably looked not much different from the corpse they had passed way below. The pain in his head that had knocked him from the cliff consumed the whole of him for a beat, forcing blood rapidly around his body and staggering his heart. He thought he cried out, but he could say nothing. The sound was only in his mind.

The agony receded as quickly as it had come, leaving him weak and uncertain. A voice came in from the distance, louder, louder, and it was telling him to wake up.

Nomi, in one of her nightmares?

Ramus looked up and saw Lulah straining above him, her mouth opening and closing as the distant voice grew closer and found itself.

“Pissing wake up, Ramus, or I swear by whatever god you choose, I'll cut this fucking rope!” Ramus lifted his hands to hold the rope. They moved very slowly. He looked down, found footholds and then pulled himself flat against the cliff.

“What the piss was that?” Lulah shouted.

“Slipped,” Ramus said.

“Slipped? You were gone there, Ramus! I thought you'd passed out.”