Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

Z ev spurred his horse onward, driven as much by fear as by enthusiasm. What was Marieke's plan? Surely she must know there was no rope long enough to reach the bottom of Sundering Canyon.

He pulled to a stop alongside the stake and dismounted smoothly. In the next moment, he was on his knees by the trailing rope, looking over the edge. All he could see was a dark head of hair, not too far down the cliff face, with a figure mostly hidden. But one he'd know anywhere.

"Marieke!"

Her head whipped up, her eyes widening as she caught sight of him. He watched several emotions cross her face before she settled on a smile.

"Zev." She sounded almost shy, not like her usual self. "You came. I'd given up on you."

"What are you doing, Mari?" His nerves at the prospect of their reunion had disappeared in exasperation. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"Of course not," she said with dignity. "I'm trying to—"

The words were cut off as her foot slipped, a cry bursting from Zev as the rock under Marieke's other foot cracked and fell away. Not stopping to consider the situation further, Zev seized the rope and began to pull it hand over hand. Marieke protested, not walking up the wall like she had the previous time they'd been in a similar situation. The task was considerably harder as a result, and a moment later became impossible as the section of turf on which Zev knelt began to slide. He tried to shift his weight back, but the land under his knees had other ideas. It gave way, and to his horror, he found himself slipping over the edge, only his grip on the rope keeping him from plummeting downward.

Marieke gave a cry of irritation below him, her face bumping against his leg.

"Don't worry!" he called, not daring to look down and risk throwing off his precarious balance. "I can pull myself up and then pull you up as well."

"No, don't. I can't hold on that long." Marieke's tone was somehow still exasperated rather than terrified. "I'm going to have to let go."

"No!" Zev called in alarm. "I can help you!"

Fighting the instinct that wanted to retreat to safer ground above, he walked down the wall toward her, grateful that the rope's knot was holding strong. Before Marieke could say a word, he'd reached her, using his longer legs to push most of his body further from the wall while keeping his hands and the rope right against the stone.

"Can you pull yourself up far enough for me help hold your weight?" he asked, his muscles starting to strain and his head spinning from the awareness of the dizzying drop below him. But he needed to keep calm. "Then I can help walk us both up the cliff. "

"Actually—" Marieke's reply was cut off as the rope suddenly loosened. They both jolted down far enough to make Zev's stomach feel like it was trying to leave his body. The stake Marieke had attached the rope to must have bent over. It would surely give way soon.

"That's it." Zev pushed himself out from the wall as much as he could without disturbing the rope. "No more time to argue. Press yourself flat against the rock if you can."

He walked himself down, afraid with every movement that the rope would give way. And not without reason. He'd just managed to edge himself over the top of Marieke when the rope went slack. With a shock too intense for crying out, they both fell.

About two feet.

Zev landed hard on rock, for a moment too winded to grasp what had happened. When he shook off his stupor, he realized that he was lying on a large rocky ledge, the edge of the cliff not too far above him. He also realized that Marieke was somehow encased in his arms, looking as dazed as he felt. He released her hastily—holding her that close was too much for his conflicted heart to handle. Fortunately more complex emotions were quickly overcome by his relief that they were alive.

"You really need to stop dangling off cliffs, Marieke." He found himself holding back a smile, probably born of some combination of the joy of survival and the nearness of the person who'd occupied his thoughts relentlessly for weeks past.

Marieke gave him a disgruntled look. "I wasn't dangling."

"Sure looked like it," he commented.

"I had everything under control," she insisted.

"Didn't look like that." Again Zev was fighting a smile. Was he losing his mind?

"I knew this ledge was here," Marieke told him. "That's why I started at this point. If you actually look at your surroundings instead of panicking, you'll see that this is a huge surface. We couldn't have missed it if we'd tried."

Zev cast his eyes around to see that she was right. More of his tension eased.

"Well, I'm glad you had some kind of plan," he said. "But I still think you should stop dangling off cliffs."

Marieke narrowed her eyes at him for a long moment before her disapproval suddenly gave way to a swift smile.

"Why, though?" she asked cheekily. "Since you always show up to pull me to safety." She flicked his sleeve. "At least you have a shirt on this time."

Zev had opened his mouth to give another retort, but at her last comment he choked on it, feeling the faintest hint of heat rising up his neck. Marieke turned away, but not before her slight smirk told him she knew she'd managed to regain the upper hand.

Zev shook his head at her back, his own lips tugging up into a smile in spite of himself.

"So what's your plan from here, as you supposedly have everything under control?" he quipped.

Marieke was coiling the rope that had fallen nearby. "Well, the plan was to use songcraft to detach the rope from up there once I was down here, but it seems the stake did that for me." She turned her head to grimace at him. "I will admit that I had more faith in that stake than I should have. It's a relief that I can use my voice thus far, though. I couldn't talk last time I was in the canyon, let alone sing, remember?"

Zev nodded absently, his eyes on the cliff's edge above. "I'm glad I didn't tie up my horse," he commented.

Marieke slapped a hand to her mouth. "You rode here! Of course you did. I was dropped by a public coach not far away and walked, so I didn't even think about it."

"Don't worry," Zev reassured her. "My mare will find her way home. She knows these roads well. I just hope the poor thing doesn't wait a long time before heading homeward."

Marieke considered him. "So you're stuck with me on this venture, it seems."

"It seems so." They locked eyes, the silence growing until it had a tangible presence between them. A presence that tasted like the kiss they'd shared in Zev's moment of reckless abandon. A moment he both regretted and didn't regret at all.

He cleared his throat, breaking the standoff with a mixture of reluctance and relief. "I received your letter."

"Evidently." Marieke seemed faintly disappointed, but she didn't call him out for sidestepping the tension between them. "Did you intend to come with me into the canyon, or did you ride out here to try to stop me?"

"Hm." Zev smiled slightly. "The first…if the second failed."

Marieke rolled her eyes, but she also was smiling. "It would have failed." The shyness was back in her voice. "I am glad you're here, though. When it reached noon and there was no sign of you, I thought you weren't planning to come."

"Well, I wasn't planning to come here," Zev said fairly. "I don't even know where here is."

Marieke raised an inquiring eyebrow. "Is this not the spot where you pulled me up last time?"

"Not even close," Zev said dryly. "I waited at that place for a couple of hours before coming searching."

"Oh." Marieke looked sheepish. "Oops."

Zev didn't know whether to roll his eyes or laugh.

"That's a shame," Marieke continued. "Because I was hoping to find the staircase Gorgon took me partway up. It would have made our task much easier, both because we would have much less sheer cliff to scale, and because then we'd know we were in the right area to find the monarchists."

"I hear a lot of we in that explanation, but I have no desire to find these self-proclaimed monarchists," Zev pointed out.

"Then why are you here?" Marieke asked.

There was a moment of silence before Zev responded. "You know why I'm here. I'm here because of you."

The silence that followed his words was longer, and more charged. When Marieke looked into his eyes, he held her gaze, wondering if she would put words to whatever was between them, as he'd thus far been too cowardly to do.

But she didn't. After a moment, she looked away, shuffling one careful step closer to the edge of their platform and peering down.

"The more pressing question isn't why but how. We need to find a safe way down." She must have heard Zev's grunt, because she added with a faint smile, "All right, safe might be optimistic, but the safest of our available options."

"What was your plan once you reached this ledge?" Zev asked.

"To figure out a plan once I knew if I had my voice," Marieke told him. "And for now, it seems I do. As long as that's the case, I can tie the rope, then climb down it to another landing point, then use my song to untie the knot and free the rope to fall down to me. Then repeat."

"There are a lot of problems with that plan," Zev said.

"Are there?" She folded her arms. "Name them."

"Firstly, tie the rope to what?"

By way of answer, she swung the rucksack she wore around to her front and pulled out a large metal peg. "To this. Once I've used this ," she pulled out a mallet, "to drive it into the wall."

"Huh." Zev grunted. "That might work. "

"It will work," Marieke said calmly. "Especially if I can use songcraft to strengthen it."

Zev glanced over the edge of the platform as well. "All right, second, your plan assumes that there are enough landing places like this to get you all the way down. That seems extremely optimistic."

"Not all the way down," Marieke said. "I acknowledge that there are some sections directly below us that might be…questionable. But if we can get through them, we should be fine. Further that way," she gestured westward, "the cliff face is incredibly sheer in the top section, but then not that far down becomes much more gradual. Genuinely climbable, I'd say. We just need to get across to it once we're far enough down."

"How do you know that?" Zev demanded.

Marieke moved past him, starting to untie the rope from the stake as she answered. "I have considerable training in agricultural song, Zev. Getting a feel for the terrain around me is rudimentary. And I had plenty of time up there, waiting for you to show up. I did all kinds of assessing songs, and if I say so myself, my reach is pretty good. I have a very fair idea of the state of the slope for quite a while around."

"That is…handy," Zev acknowledged. He was impressed. He wasn't quite willing to admit it to Marieke, but he admitted it to himself.

She stared at him. "Did you just say something positive about magic? You've changed since we parted ways."

Her tone was light and joking, but Zev didn't respond in kind.

"It wasn't the time since we've been apart that changed me. It was being with you."

Marieke bit her lip, probably as unsure what to make of his words as he was. He didn't know what he was trying to achieve, he just didn't seem able to help becoming more intense the more flippant Marieke became. Perhaps it was because inside, he was so torn. Half of him was relieved that she was approaching their reunion with a bantering spirit. The other half was wrestling a desperate desire for them to find their way back to the passion they'd so briefly shared. It seemed impossibly out of reach at that moment, and while his head knew it was probably for the best, he couldn't seem to convince his heart.

"Meeting you changed me as well, you know." Marieke's quiet voice surprised him as she matched her tone to his this time. She gestured at the canyon below them. "All of this changed me. You went back to your old life after you left, but I…couldn't. There was so little of it left to go back to."

Something in the region of Zev's heart throbbed painfully at her mention of him leaving her. She hadn't used the word abandoned , but he still heard it. Just as he'd heard it in his own thoughts every day since he walked away from her in that marketplace in Ondford.

"I didn't just go back to how things were before," he said. "I suppose I tried to. But it didn't work. I couldn't just forget."

"So here you are," she said softly.

"So here I am."

For a moment they just looked at each other, the light of their moment of intimacy flickering almost back into life. Perhaps if it had been a declaration they'd shared, it might have been enough to give body to the feelings hovering between them. But it hadn't been a declaration, it had been a mere kiss. Everything that mattered had been left unsaid, and in another moment, Marieke was turning away again.

Clearly it would be left unsaid today as well.

"But here is not where either of us want to be," she was saying briskly. "We need to keep moving if we want to get safely to the canyon floor before dark. We can't afford to spend the night on the cliff face, and we can't afford to rush. So let's go."

Zev followed her lead, silently taking the mallet and peg from her when she'd mapped out their next stopping point to her satisfaction. Muscles straining, he hammered the metal into the rock, not stopping until it was almost all the way in. It took all his strength, and he couldn't help giving Marieke a sardonic look.

"So you were planning to do that part alone, were you?"

"Not alone," she said with dignity. "I was going to use magic."

Zev shook his head, but he had to admit once they'd descended to another, much smaller, ledge that it was mesmerizing to listen to as she used her song to untie the rope above them. The peg stayed lodged in the stone, thankfully having held better than the stake up on the surface.

They repeated this process a few times, some of the landing points precarious to say the least. Zev insisted on going down the rope first each time, and his heart hammered in his chest whenever he saw Marieke clinging to handholds with determination, very little between her and a horrifying fall below.

Thankfully they were on a section of rock wide enough for their whole feet to stand flat when they ran into a new problem.

Marieke raised her face to the landing above, clearing her throat and opening her mouth.

Nothing came out.

"Marieke?" Zev prompted her.

She frowned, trying again with the same result.

"I've lost my voice," she murmured, her own words startling her. "No, I haven't. What's going on?" She cleared her throat again, but nothing emerged when she opened her mouth. "Curious," she said. "I can speak, but I can't sing. Blast." She bit her lip as she studied the rope. "I suppose I should be grateful that the canyon hasn't taken my voice completely like last time, but this is going to make things a lot harder."

Zev looked around before replying, squinting to his right. "I think I can see the section you were talking about before. We don't have much further to go, and then the terrain should be more passable, right?"

Marieke nodded. "But I don't see us getting over there without a rope. And I don't want to be without one when we get lower down. I couldn't sense all the way to the bottom of the canyon. There may be more sheer sections lower down."

"I'll get the rope," Zev said stoically. "I think I can climb the section we just did without it."

"Zev."

Marieke's voice showed her reluctance, but Zev didn't stop to argue about it. The task wouldn't get easier for being left. Already it was getting dimmer in the canyon, the sun having passed out of sight above them long before.

Pulling himself hand over hand, Zev scaled his way back to the previous stopping point. As long as he didn't look down, it was easy enough. The most dangerous part of it was the thought of what would happen if he fell. He just needed to be resolute in not entertaining that thought.

He untied the knot as swiftly as he could, coiling the rope across his torso before starting to climb down. He'd thought the descent tense enough with the rope—it was a very different experience without it. His palms began sweating at once, and the need to find footholds prevented him from avoiding looking down altogether. The ledge on which Marieke stood, anxiously watching him, wasn't like the one above—if he lost his grip, it wouldn't be wide enough to stop his fall.

Just as he drew close enough to Marieke to start relaxing, the jutting rock he'd grabbed with one hand broke away from the cliff face. Caught off guard, Zev lost his hold and, to his horror, found himself sliding down the rock out of control.

He heard Marieke's cry, and the next thing he knew, she'd thrown her arms around him as he slid to her level, trying to use her body to pin him to the rock.

It slowed him enough to allow him to get his footing on the little ledge, but with him against the wall and Marieke on his outside, she had barely any purchase for her feet. She was still pressed against him such that he felt when her foothold gave way.

There was no time to cry out. Silent and panicked, Zev reached around, gripping her arm just as she jolted downward. It took every bit of his self-control to stay stationary, and every bit of his strength not to lose his own hold on the rock. But he managed it, and once everything was still and he was sure of his footing, he pulled her slowly back to his position, his arms straining with the effort.

"Zev." Marieke's voice was a gasp, but he shook his head.

"We're not secure enough here. Look, the ledge opens up that way. Come on."

Still maintaining his grip on her arm, he started to shuffle along the rock face, not drawing a proper breath until they emerged onto a larger section. With her back to the wall, Marieke slid to a sitting position, her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling rapidly.

"That was terrifying." She opened her eyes suddenly, her gaze piercing him. "Thank you for grabbing me."

"What were you thinking?" Zev growled, his fear making him irritable. "You shouldn't have thrown yourself around me like that."

"What should I have done?" Marieke asked weakly. "Let you plummet to your death?"

Better me than you .

Zev stopped himself from saying the words aloud. They would be far too intense. Even he was rattled by them, by how quickly they'd risen to his lips. Rattled because he felt their truth with simple certainty. Not for the first time, he wondered where this girl had come from, upending his life and oversetting all his priorities. Sometimes it felt like she'd changed his very self.

"We have to keep moving," he said instead, his voice gruff.

"I'm scared to." Marieke's vulnerability made it hard for Zev to keep his own voice even.

"I know," he said. "So am I. That's why we need to. The longer we wait, the more we're risking being paralyzed by fear, and we can't afford to be stuck here. If you fall off a horse when you're still learning to ride, you need to get back on right away."

Marieke drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "That's true," she said, reminding him that she'd grown up around horses. "And I certainly don't want to get stuck here." Her voice became stronger. "All right. Let's do it."

Zev took the lead, scouting the area with his very non-magical sight, encouraged to see that there was a larger ledge not far down. They took the next couple of descents slowly and carefully, always moving in a westward direction where possible, and even sooner than they'd hoped, they found themselves on a section of cliff that sloped outward as it went down, allowing them to comfortably descend without a rope.

In spite of the need for caution, they began to move faster. Zev could tell that Marieke was as eager as he was to get his feet on solid ground again. They climbed for half an hour without saying much, only needing to stop and use the rope once. Zev heard Marieke's breath catch in excitement when the rocky canyon floor came into view. They exchanged a look, then increased their pace. Zev had been going slowly to match Marieke, but now he outstripped her, reaching the ground with a sigh of relief and turning his eyes quickly upward to watch her progress. One foot on the ground and one on the rocky slope, he reached out a hand, steering her down the last, shaley part of the descent.

Instead of a sigh, Marieke let out a much less dignified squeak when her feet touched the ground. Zev's face froze mid-grin when she turned and flung her arms around his neck. Instinctively, he put his own arms around her, thrilling at her nearness. She burrowed her face into his chest, causing something to roar to life inside him. In that moment, all he wanted was to hold her there forever, safe from the deadly accidents and murderous monarchists alike.

"I won't deny it," Marieke's voice came out muffled, "that was a lot harder and scarier than I thought it would be. There's no way I would have made it down without you, not once I lost my song."

She pulled back, her eyes sincere as they met his. "Thank you."

"Thank you for writing to me." Zev couldn't think of anything else to say.

Drawing a deep breath at last, Marieke stepped back, regaining her composure. Zev let her go reluctantly, his arms dropping limply to his sides.

"We should head eastward, I suppose," Marieke said. "Toward the area where I encountered Gorgon and his people last time."

"And why do we want to find them?" Zev asked, as they started to pick their way across the rocky ground. "They're Gorgon's people. And if you recall, he tried to kill you."

"I do recall." Marieke shuddered. "Vividly. But I also recall what he said to me. I told you about it before you left. He knew something about heartsong. "

Zev felt himself stiffen, and tried not to let it show. "And you're still determined to find out what that is?"

"I am." Marieke gave a curt nod. "I'm convinced it's connected to whatever's destroying my country." She looked troubled. "It hasn't stopped with Gorgon's death, Zev, like I hoped at first. We've had floods, storms, raging fires—I came across one myself, and I could feel that it was fueled by magic. Something isn't right in Oleand."

"I agree with you there," Zev said. "But I really don't think that you'll find the answers in heartsong."

He wasn't exactly being forthright, of course—he couldn't be—but he wasn't lying about this issue. Heartsong couldn't be what was causing Oleand's problems. Not when these problems were so recent.

"Why not?" Marieke challenged. "Who's to say it won't provide the answers?"

Zev squirmed inside. He hated that she was so fixated on unraveling heartsong, even while he admired her ability to ask the right questions. But it wouldn't help her solve her current problem, and it was too dangerous for her to explore the concept just from curiosity.

"You said back in Ondford that you think heartsong is connected to the loss of Oleand's royals, right?"

She nodded. "It's my best guess."

"So surely," Zev argued, "whatever effect heartsong might have had should have occurred generations ago, when the monarchs were overthrown."

"I can't answer that when I know nothing about heartsong," Marieke said fairly. "That's why I want to find out more."

"But even if that was the cause of the deterioration of the land, that would hardly be causing raging wildfires or storms," said Zev. "Any more than it could cause attacks on singers like the ones that turned out to be orchestrated by Gorgon. "

"Why not?" Marieke shrugged. "Why couldn't it cause storms and wildfires?"

Because that's not how heartsong works . Zev didn't say the words aloud, of course. He fell silent, his certainty more shaken than he'd like to admit. From what he knew of heartsong, he couldn't imagine it causing fires or storms. But then, he wouldn't have guessed it would keep out that survey parchment, either.

"I'm not saying I know it's all caused by the same thing," Marieke said, panting a little as she clambered up a ridge of jagged rock. "In fact, I doubt it can be. Like you said, the attacks against singers were carried out by Gorgon, not caused by the magic of the land acting on its own as I'd started to fear. And the fire I fought a couple of weeks ago was fueled by manipulated magic. A singer must have done it. But even if different magic caused these different crises, I'm convinced it's all connected somehow. And I still think Sundering Canyon is the place to look for answers. This is where Gorgon came from. He grew up among a people who choose to live in the one place in the Sovereign Realms where magic is most potent and least predictable. If anyone will know the link between Gorgon's attacks and the way the magic of the land is turning on Oleand, it'll be these canyon-dwellers."

"Maybe you're right," Zev said slowly.

Truthfully, he'd also be glad to find answers as to how it was all connected—the deterioration of Oleand, the contrasting thriving of Aeltas, the inexplicably magical nature of the attacks Gorgon and his followers had carried out against singers in Oleand, and the recent spate of natural disasters that were apparently not natural at all. If the monarchists in the canyon knew something he didn't know, he'd like to hear it. But it would be a delicate balance, trying to learn new information while steering Marieke away from the information he already knew about heartsong.

A double purpose he hated to be hiding from her. But his own words to his family haunted him.

What is it that's made you all think I've forgotten everything I've ever believed?

He knew what it was—it was Marieke. And here he was, against his family's wishes, accompanying her on her quest to unlock the secrets of heartsong. His family expected him to take every opportunity to steer her inquiries away from the truth. She expected him to genuinely help her search for the answers to every aspect of Oleand's troubles.

How could he possibly do both?

Do you think I don't understand what's at stake?

He'd used those words to reassure his family, and they were true. He did understand what was at stake. But for his part, he felt no reassurance. He had no idea how to walk the tightrope he was on and still maintain his integrity.

"Zev?" Marieke's voice drew him from his thoughts.

He turned his head, realizing that she'd stopped walking and was now a few paces behind him.

"What?"

"I said, do you have any more questions?" Marieke's expression was solemn. "Because I acknowledge that you have the right to some answers about what I'm doing here, given you've now been drawn into whatever misadventure this will turn out to be. But I think we should stop and get it out now, so we can move forward silently. We can't be far from where I encountered the monarchists last time. And this time, I'd rather they didn't sneak up on me."

Zev nodded. "I agree. And no, no more questions. At least for now." He had plenty to think about already. " Let me go first."

He moved ahead, paying more attention to where he placed his feet. He grimaced as he accidentally kicked a rock noisily across the gorge. If they were attacked, he would give a good account of himself, but stealth wasn't his strong point. Although he'd been taught from earliest memory the power of hiding in plain sight, his particular method for doing so was based entirely around getting on with life in a straightforward way and avoiding anything clandestine which might draw attention by its secrecy. That way no one suspected something more was going on. He'd never been taught to creep and hide.

After perhaps ten minutes of quiet walking, he was startled by Marieke's hand on his arm. Looking down, he saw that her gaze was fixed ahead, where the canyon was mostly blocked by a gnarled and twisted tree trunk.

"I think someone's ahead," she murmured, her voice barely audible.

Zev frowned in concentration. "I don't hear anything," he breathed back.

She shook her head. "Neither do I. But there's a concentration of magic that feels more targeted than the chaos in the ground beneath us."

"I thought you couldn't access your song," Zev whispered.

"I can't, but I can still sense the magic around me," Marieke said, her tone suggesting that it was ludicrous to question her ability to do so.

"Well, I don't know how these things work," Zev said, hearing the defensive note to his own muttering.

Marieke just flapped a hand for silence, hoisting her rucksack higher up her back as she crept forward. Zev paused to tighten his own pack before placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. Neither he nor Marieke had made it around the bulk of the tree trunk, however, when a high-pitched voice made them both freeze in their tracks .

"Look, this one's lighting up. Someone must be approaching."

Zev and Marieke exchanged a look before Zev shifted to put himself in front of his companion. Perhaps he should have been looking for a place to hide them both, but, again, literal hiding wasn't his way. He'd prefer to fight if it came to blows.

"That's a pain." A second voice responded to the first, the pitch equally high and the words accompanied by a sigh. "Must be a patrol of those monarchists coming. You know what they're like. They'll slow everything down and just be a general nuisance."

Zev kept his eyes fixed ahead, but he could feel Marieke's confusion behind him, echoing his own. These strangers weren't part of the monarchists? There was more than one group hiding out in Sundering Canyon?

"Well, we may as well keep at it until they find us," a new voice chimed in. Again, the pitch seemed too high for an adult, although the voice didn't sound in the least childlike. "Come on, I like the feel of things over—"

The words were cut off as three figures rounded the tree trunk and came into view. Everyone froze—Zev included—as the two groups caught sight of each other. He'd thought himself ready to fight anything, but he had most certainly not been ready for what he was seeing.

"They're not monarchists!" one of the newcomers screeched. "Take them out, Rissin."

The words brought Zev springing back into action. He threw himself properly in front of Marieke, the edge of his sight catching her furrowed brow and open mouth as he drew his sword with lightning speed.

Not enough speed for his opponents, however. He'd barely reached a defensive stance when one of them broke something in his hands with a loud snap. Marieke cried out, and a second later, Zev's whole body went rigid, his limbs completely immobilized by what he could only assume was magic. He had no idea how they'd done it—he'd heard no song.

He keeled over, the impact of hitting the ground causing his sword to clatter out of his hand. The roar that burst from him told him he still had use of his voice, but that wouldn't help him save Marieke or himself from the beady-eyed creature striding toward them with drawn blade.