“But a day doesn’t end until sunset. This is still the third day.”
“And will another few hours make a difference?”
“Maybe. I told the Oracle everything I know. She could discover something.”
He bats a hand. “She is as useless as her father. If she could read it, she would have done so on the day you arrived. Now, tell me the brand’s secret or your mother’s blood will paint the side of the dam.”
The guards must have told her where to look, because her face is turned toward the window, as though she expected to find me standing in its frame. Her hair hangs limp around her face. I imagine her expression as pleading, though she’s too far away to be certain.
“I don’t know how to read it. If you give me more time, I can figure it out.”
“You are out of time.” The General pulls a square of red cloth from his vest pocket and raises it above his head. I’m trying to think of a lie—something, anything that might spare her—when he brings the cloth down and the Loyalist on the dam draws his blade across my mother’s neck.
She goes slack, crumples to the ground. I make a noise I don’t recognize, something guttural and wild. The guard grabs her at the shoulders while a second Loyalist gathers her feet. With a single heave and swing, they throw her from the dam, and she disappears as a ripple of cloth and hair.
I stare, heart in my throat. He said it would come to this. Promised it. And still I’d thought there’d be another way, a reasonable compromise. Surely if I didn’t waver, the General would trust that I was being honest, that I had no clue how to read the map. But she’s gone.
I turn on him. His guards have me by the wrists before I can strike. I could tear that glinting star chain from his neck. I could gouge the star pendants into his eyes. “I needed more time!” I scream. “I could have solved it with more time.”
“It’s quite possible,” the General says calmly.
“Then why did you kill her?”
“So you understand how serious I am.” A glance at his guards. “Bring her to the baby.”
Not Bay. Not Bay, you monster. I’m dragged from the window, shoved toward one of the cradles.
She’s swaddled in a pale cloth, sleeping soundly. It doesn’t seem possible that she could have changed in just three days, but her cheeks seem fuller, her eyelids a bit less translucent.
“This child represents the future of your pack,” he says.
It is not a question, but I nod, fear gripping me. I don’t know how to unlock the map. I can’t give him what he wants, and he’s going to kill Bay for it. I’ll have to lie. There has to be something I can say, something I can do . . .
“You want more time?”
“Yes, please,” I gasp. I’m on my knees beside the cradle now, begging with a devil. “Please, I just need more time.”
“Then you will have more—three days for each of your pack-members. At noon every third day we will convene in this nursery. You will look across the dam at the oldest surviving member of your pack, and if I do not hear what I want, they will fly like your mother. I’ll work my way down to this child”—he nods at the cradle—“and if, by the time her blood is spilled, you still haven’t come clean, perhaps I will believe that you’ve been honest. That you do not know how to read it.”
“I don’t know how.”
The General pulls a knife from a sheath at his hip and rolls the handle idly in his palm. “So I should just kill her now?” The blade dips toward Bay. “Not even bother with the new time I’ve afforded you?”
“No—wait! It’s a code!” I blurt out. “Your Oracle can’t read it because it’s not written in the Old World language.”
The General lifts a brow. “Go on.”
“I can’t decode it from here, I need . . .” Asher. The Vulture’s Roost. He’ll know what to do. “I need to leave,” I tell the General, “and I will get you answers if you promise that my pack will be safe until I return.”
“Whatever you need, we can acquire it. Name the objects or person who can decode the map, and we’ll bring them to Bedrock.”
I open my mouth, pause.
“You’re lying.” The General smiles slyly. “You know the code. You know how to read it and you’re keeping it to yourself.” His smile morphs into a scowl. “Remember this, Delta: whoever finds the Verdant controls who can access it. You won’t be leaving Bedrock unless I allow it, and you and your pack won’t be granted access to the Verdant unless I allow it either. Give me what I want, and your pack can have a future. Do you understand?”
I consider lying again—calling out a random location where the Verdant might be and sending him searching the wastes. But he’d only return furious, happy to spill more of my pack’s blood.
So I nod, numbly.
“Wonderful. Reed?” The General looks behind me. “Give her a few minutes with the baby. Let the full weight of the situation register.”
“Yes, sir,” Reed replies.
“And Delta?” he adds.
I force myself to look at the General. His voice is even, but there is a smile in his eyes. He’s enjoying this.
“Tonight is your last evening in your quarters. I’m short a fieldworker now, and you will take your mother’s place at first light.”
He whistles for his falcon, and it sweeps into the nursery to land on his shoulder. As the General strides out with his two guards, the bird watches me with a gleaming golden eye.
I’m not certain how I remain standing, not when the earth has given out beneath me. Ma, dead. My remaining pack-members all facing the same potential fate, even Bay. And my new work assignments. How will I keep my head when I’m moved to the fields? I doubt the shanties have water pitchers. There will be no way to set up an inverted well.
Everyone in the nursery is staring at me. I spot Wren, Brooke’s girl of just four, fiddling nervously with the end of her braid, her eyes wider than the moon.
This was a calculated move on the General’s part. He could have let me watch my mother’s murder from his own room or the meeting chambers, or anywhere in Bedrock, but it took place here in the nursery so that these children see what happens when you cross him. If they are not gods touched, they will end up in the General’s fields or army. He is teaching them with fear and threats, cruelty and submission. He is bending them to his will now so that they are easier to control later.
“Here,” Reed says gruffly, nudging me toward the cradle.
I glance down, and there she is, eyelids fluttering open. “Hey,” I whisper, crouching beside her. “Hi, Bay.” Her gaze flits around idly. “I am going to get you out of here. I don’t know how, but I will make it right. I promise. The Oracle told me not to make promises that I can’t keep, but I have to keep this one. I won’t be able to live with myself otherwise.” Bay wriggles, arms popping free of the swaddle. I touch her small hand, let her fingers curl around my pinkie.
I think of the stories Ma told me when I was little, passed down from her ma and the ma before that. Stories about water—rivers and streams, coves and canals, oceans and inlets. So many formations lost to us, so many we wish the gods would resurrect.