Even still, I want to trust him again. Even after everything. Because I can’t deny that his time with Bain and Cree seems like the exception. Everything he’s shown me since then falls in line with the Asher I knew—a boy who was kind and considerate. A boy who put others before himself, who never lost faith, who took risks but never with bad intentions.
I want to be willing to confide in him as I did when we were kids, to know exactly what he’s thinking before he says a word. I want all that, and after our time together in the mountains and crossing Burning Ground, a part of me thinks it may actually be possible.
My stomach churns, and this time I have enough sense to know it’s got nothing to do with the food I ate earlier. I felt this same giddy unease the very first time Flint touched my arm in Dead River and asked if I wanted to go for a walk after he unloaded his rickshaw. This feeling leads to nothing good. I turn back to the sulfur and don’t look at Asher for the rest of the day.
When my shadow has stretched long and the sun nearly skims the horizon, the workers at our hot pool call it quits.
“You almost done? I’ll walk in with you.” I look up to find Asher waiting at the edge of my boardwalk. “Your nose got sunburned,” he adds, pointing.
I’m amazed there’s anything left on me that wasn’t burned already. “You go ahead,” I hear myself saying.
“With Saph?” He almost sounds disappointed. She’s lingering a bit farther back on the boardwalk, smoothing the short hairs at the back of her neck.
“Yeah. I’m going to finish filling this jar and then I’ll head in with Cleo.”
“Okay.” He frowns, but turns around and jogs off.
When I glance toward Cleo, she’s rolling her eyes. “I’ve got no pity for idiots who say one thing when they mean another.”
“I can’t be with anyone,” I insist. “And I’m not sure I fully trust him.”
“No one fully trusts anyone in the wastes. But you’re in Powder Town now, and you won’t be leaving, so if you’ve got something to say to that young man, I suggest you say it before he moves on to someone showing him interest.”
I break off a final piece of sulfur and snap it again so it can fit into the jar.
“I’m not kidding, Delta,” Cleo continues. “Men don’t do subtle well. You gotta lay things out for them, and I promise you, Saph’s gonna lay it out. I’ve never seen her fold and forgive someone so quickly.”
“I don’t get it.” I screw the lid on my jar and stand. “Saph’s your sister. Don’t you want her to be happy?”
“Not if the person she’s happy with would be happiest with someone else. Not if what she’s chasing is doomed for failure.”
“It’s complicated,” I say.
Cleo shrugs. “It always is.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
That evening, I convince Asher to introduce me to Bronx the Chemist.
“She likes to work late—and alone. She’s not going to want to see us,” he says.
But Saph is at some mandatory meeting at the defense barracks and Cleo went to see a friend, and even with my aching muscles after a day of harvesting sulfur, anything sounds better than lying on those cramped bed mats alone with Asher. So I insist. Tomorrow marks six days since my mother’s execution, and Alder will die at noon. I’m too late to save her, but if I act now—if I find answers—I might be able to make it back to Bedrock in time to stop the following execution.
As we leave Cleo’s, Powder Town is peaceful beneath a blanket of stars. The sounds of families chatting and laughing flood the streets. Candlelight flickers through slats of shuttered windows. There’s a sense of ease here, of safety. People are truly relaxed. I’ve never come across anything like it, not outside Zuly’s tanker. It gives me hope that even without our gods, people might be able to live together. If we just pool resources—if we work together instead of tearing each other apart—there might be hope of a future worth seeing.
“Those three buildings house the saltpeter beds,” Asher says, pointing. The smallest building is on our side of the glistening Serpent River, and a narrow bridge leads to two larger buildings on the other bank.
“I think I can smell the manure from here,” I say, wrinkling my nose.
“You can. It’s a scudding bad job, the saltpeter beds.” He shudders, like he’s shaking off a bad memory, then pauses. “And here’s the kitchen.”
A building nearly as large as Prime Hall looms before us, but unlike the Prime’s meeting quarters, this building has no windows. I expect it to be guarded, but there’s not even a door, just a massive opening where several familiar wagons are stationed—the very same ones that made up the convoy I saw when working the fields in Bedrock.
“I thought it would be more . . . secure,” I say.
Asher shrugs. “Only way out with a wagon is through the front gate. Which is always guarded.”
I glance over my shoulder toward the rocky foothills that butt up against the rear of the town. There’s no wall, but the Serpent River and various rock forms create a natural barrier—one that can only be crossed on foot, and even then, not easily. Plus, there are patrols in the foothills, members serving the Reaper’s pillar who stand watch. I can see a few of their torches bobbing in the dark.
Asher leads the way inside, telling me about the pantry—the cool, dark cellar that holds jars upon jars of powder—and the kitchen on the ground level, where we’ll find Bronx the Chemist. Asher has pulled a candle out so we can see where we’re going, and I try not to think about all the stores of black powder waiting below our open flame. Spare wagon wheels and axles hang on the room’s walls, along with carpentry tools for repairs. There’s a strange clay tube pushed to one corner, like the barrel of a rifle, only five times larger. It would take several people to move it. Before I can ask Asher what it is, we’re entering a new room.
Here, floor-to-ceiling shelves are stocked with jars—some glass, some clay. From what I can make out, they hold one of three things: charcoal, sulfur, or a white, crystalline substance that looks an awful lot like salt. It must be saltpeter. These are the ingredients for black powder.
When we pass what must be the tenth shelf, we come upon a work area. Here, a woman with ghostly white skin is bent over a wide wooden desk. Glass jars hold candles that cast faint light on the ingredients she carefully measures and mixes. Her head is shaved like the Prime’s, but the short, stubby growth of hair on her scalp is a brilliant white. The eyepieces of the goggles she wears are tinted despite the already dim lighting, and another piece of eye equipment perches on her nose—two glass disks encased in frames that she looks through, all held in place by a wire that extends from the frames and hooks behind her ears.
“I like to work alone,” the Chemist says as we step nearer, her focus still locked firmly on her work.
“I told her that,” Asher says, “but she insisted on meeting you.”
“Asher of Alkali Lake,” she murmurs, finally looking up. “I received a report from the saltpeter beds this afternoon. You didn’t put in your time.”
“I decided to harvest sulfur from now on. If that’s okay?”