I actually laugh a little. He’s right. I’m not feeling well. In fact, the room is slightly blurry, and when I blink, the edges of my window seem to ripple. Curse Asher and his rotten advice. How am I supposed to stay alive if I can’t drink anything?
My gaze trails to the waterskin on Reed’s hip. It hangs from a braided strap slung across his torso, and by the way the pouch puckers, I’d guess it’s half full. The dryness in my mouth becomes unbearable.
Don’t drink anything given to me, sure. But water the General and his soldiers willingly drink . . .
“I’ll be stationed outside your room all night, so don’t try to run,” Reed says. “And don’t bother with the window. No one has ever escaped that way without falling to their death.”
Adjusting his grip on his rifle, he gives me a curt nod and strides for the exit. Before I can think too much about the consequences, I grab the waterskin and yank it with the little strength I have left. My efforts combined with his quick pace is enough. The braided cord snaps, and the skin is mine. I raise it to my lips as Reed’s falcon lifts from his shoulder in surprise. I choke and sputter on the drink, half of it splashing down my front. My throat is so raw I’ve nearly forgotten how to swallow.
“Hey!” Reed grabs my wrist and pulls me nearer, pinning my arm and the waterskin between our fronts. With the ram-skull still on his forehead, he seems impossibly tall. My ripped shirt has slipped off one shoulder, and his gaze dips to my front, lingers a second, comes back to my face.
I drop the waterskin, suddenly wanting nothing to do with it, Asher’s warning be damned.
Reed is bone still as water leaks from the skin and onto the floor. “I’m going to pretend this didn’t happen,” he says slowly, “but I won’t pretend again.” He drops my arm, and I collapse to my knees. Then he retrieves his waterskin, beckons for his bird, and is gone.
It’s only when the cloth door falls shut that I begin shaking. I sop water from the floor with my palm, rubbing where his fingers had squeezed over my wrist, scrubbing as though I can wipe away the feeling. The tears come next, or at least the act of crying does. I sob, but I’m so dehydrated, nothing falls from my burning eyes. At this realization, I drink what I can of the spilled water, lapping it from the stone floor like an animal. When I get more grit than water on my tongue, I sit back, clutching my jacket in my hands. The brand burns on my back. The lodestone weighs heavy on my heart.
I crawl to the window and use the ledge to pull myself up. The shanties along the dam are now cloaked in shadow, the fields quiet. Ma’s down there somewhere, and the General will kill her if I don’t tell him what he wants to hear.
There is no choice for me, no good outcome. Part of me wonders if he knows this.
Skies damn Asher and Bain and Cree. This is their fault. They conned me, caught me, let me be led into this trap. I know Asher never intended for my imprisonment to extend beyond the Barrel, but he knew what waited here in Bedrock, and he did nothing to prepare me for it. He could have told me what to expect, how he escaped, what he did to survive. Instead he only told me not to drink anything I’m given.
I grab the pitcher. The water inside smells faintly sweet, but looks clear. I dip my pointer in, lick the liquid from the pad of my finger. Seems normal—glorious and tasteless and wet. But that scent is still there, lingering like a lazy fog. My mouth wants the water even when my brain screams that clean water shouldn’t have a smell.
I collapse on the bed before my thirst makes me do something I’ll regret.
* * *
When I wake, it’s dark, but a plate of cured meat, bread, and fresh peas still in their pods sits on the nightstand. The bread is tinted green, a telltale sign that the soda that helped make it was harvested from the rich beds at Alkali Lake. Of course the General would have the best of everything. He has water and crops and even the wastes’ best baking soda. He can’t leave just one thing to the outside settlements.
I eat ravenously, but I don’t touch the pitcher. I can’t bring myself to ignore the one piece of advice Asher bothered to give. Not yet, at least. My mouth is chalky and dry, and the food tastes like dust in my mouth, but I clear the plate. My goggles rest beside it, moonlight reflecting off the eyepiece.
The eyepiece.
I sit straighter, an idea hitting me. I glance over the items on the table again. My goggles. The tall, narrow pitcher made of clay. The metal Old World cup. I pick up the cup and hold it above the pitcher. It will fit inside, just barely.
In a flash, I’m at the window. The sun will rise behind the Backbone, meaning there won’t be much heat on this window ledge until near noon, but I can’t not try.
I dump the pitcher’s contents, watching as the liquid rains past windows and splats on a stone awning several levels below. The water I stole from Reed has refilled my bladder some, and I relieve myself into the pitcher, then carefully set the Old World cup inside.
Next I rest my goggles atop the pitcher so that the curved, clear eyepiece faces down. The goggles are wide enough—and the pitcher narrow enough—that it creates a decent seal.
I set the whole thing on the window ledge and step back. When the sun finally shines on Bedrock, it will heat up the urine in the pitcher. Water will rise, gather on my goggles, drip down the sloped shape of the eyepiece, then fall into the Old World cup, which waits below. Separate from the urine. Clean, drinkable water.
Gods, am I grateful that I once heckled Flint about his travels in the wastes. I wanted to know how he spent so many days between settlements, how his water lasted so long. He admitted that some days it didn’t, that in the worst of the heat he’d move during the night and stay still during the day to collect water. Flint carried a piece of Old World tech he called plas. He showed it to me once. Clear like glass, but foggier and flexible, it could be crumbled into a ball or smoothed flat like a blanket. During the day, he’d stretch the plas across a hole in the ground and set a small stone at the center so the plas bowed slightly. Beneath, in the hole, was his own piss and an empty Old World jar, waiting patiently below the stone.
“And you can drink what you collect?” I’d asked, disgusted.
“Yeah. Fresh water droplets gather on the underside of the plas, then slide to the lowest point—where I placed my stone—and drip right into the jar.”
“Scud off.”
“I’m serious, Delta. Every trader knows the inverted well trick and has relied on it while trekking between the most remote settlements. It yields drinkable water that won’t make you sick. You’d do it too, if you were ever in a situation that required it.”
I glance at my goggles now. They’re not like Flint’s plas, but they’re clear and curved enough to guide the water true. Eons ago they might have blocked out the worst of the sun’s rays—at least that’s the rumor I’ve heard about Old World eyewear—but I squint plenty when I wear them. They only shield me from dust and rubble now.
Meaning this just might work.
It has to, or I’m dead.
I draw the thin curtains, hiding the inverted well from view, and collapse onto the mattress.
Chapter Eleven
I sleep like the dead but wake early.
First light filters through the sheer curtain, the pitcher a suspicious dark silhouette behind the material. I leap from the mattress and check the cup. Nothing’s collected yet, but the worst of the day’s heat is still a ways off.