“That means there’s another access point,” said Bitterblue, who was still lying with her ear to the ground.

“What?”

Bitterblue sat up. She turned big, black, unhappy eyes to Giddon. Then she pointed out across the yard, to the place where the trees gave way to nothing but sky.

“This property is on a cliff, Giddon,” she said. “If Ferla could see the setting sun from her cave, it means there’s an opening to the cave in the cliff wall.”

—

The dim voice of Hava confirmed this theory.

“Yes,” she called. “I see daylight, now that I’m looking for it, straight ahead. It seems small, and far away.”

“The storehouse is built back from the cliff,” said Giddon grimly.

“We need rope,” said Bitterblue.

“I found no rope in the barn.”

“The rope was kept in the storehouse,” said Lovisa, in that same expressionless voice. “We exploded it.”

And so, they collected every sheet in the house. The house staff—a cook, a maid, and a housekeeper who all seemed so thunderstruck by the situation that Giddon was inclined to believe in their innocence—helped them, leading them to a spare pantry that even Lovisa didn’t know about. The staff’s eyes went huge whenever they glanced at Lovisa, who stayed against her tree, filthy, scratched, tattered, and crying. One of them brought her a cup of tea. Lovisa held it in her hands, unseeing.

While the others tied sheets together, Giddon rubbed grime out of his eyes, then experimentally stretched his arms. Like everyone else in the group, he was still coughing from dust, which filmed his eyes, nose, tongue, the back of his throat. His hands were stiff and bruised from punching guards. But he understood that the person who went over the edge to look for a route to Hava needed to climb down the cliff wall, then free her from that ladder, then probably carry her. That meant him.

The others—Davvi, Nev, Lovisa, the cook, the maid, and housekeeper—would arrange themselves in a line above the cliff, grasping the sheet rope’s other end. They agreed on a system of shouts and tugs for communication, though Giddon wasn’t sure how anyone would be able to hear anything over the crash of the water, or how he was supposed to tug on a sheet rope while clinging to a rock face.

Bitterblue was forbidden from helping, with anything. She was still too high. Nor was she allowed to remain near the hole by herself, where at least she could’ve comforted herself—and Hava—by talking to Hava. She sat against a tree near the rope operation, rubbing her braids with shaking fingers and pretending to be fine.

A sheet rope tied tightly around his waist and groin, Giddon went to her.