I twist in a frantic circle, scanning the rocks that border Harlie’s Hope. There’s a whistle nearby, and there he is. Not a stone’s throw from Harlie’s ramshackle hut, crouched low in the rocks, binos in hand, watching us. Reed. The horns of his ram-skull mask scrape at the sky. His rifle, slung across his back, is visible over his shoulder, but his horse must be hidden on the other side of the rocks.
My stomach coils as I realize what happened. He never went back to Bedrock. He sent the others back, but he waited at a distance, watched. And when I was cast out of Powder Town, he followed.
I know what will happen now, remember the leather pouch Reed gave his bird when I sat caged in the Barrel. He sent a message with his falcon that day, using the short codes the Oracle told me about. If Reed sends Rune to Bedrock with a message now, an army will descend on Harlie’s Hope.
“Asher!” I shout, pointing. The falcon is soaring for Reed, who has his arm outstretched, waiting for the bird to land.
Asher drops the file he’s been using to sharpen a handsaw. Standing quickly, he draws his slingshot from the back of his pants, winds up, and lets a rock fly. It slices through the air like a bullet, clipping the bird. The falcon plummets, one wing flapping, desperate, the other hanging useless as it falls. It hits the dry earth with a thud.
Reed bolts upright, shouting the bird’s name as I sprint for it.
One wing is broken, bent at a wrong angle, and Rune flails the other, turning in circles in the dirt. Working quickly, I use my knife to cut a length of braided hair from my head and tie the falcon’s legs together. It nips and snaps at me, but is too disoriented to do any real damage. Once I’ve tied a second knot for good measure, I stand, holding the braid out by the end, with the falcon hanging an arm’s length before me. She twists on the line, her injured wing grazing the ground.
“Easy there, boy,” Harlie says to Reed. She’s got her rifle aimed at him and he’s got his aimed back. “You might shoot me, but my friend’s got a knife, and he’ll lodge it in your chest before you can reload.” Asher has my Old World blade held out, the slingshot dropped at his feet, useless until he finds another stone for it.
Reed looks between them, anxious; then his eyes flick to me. Rune chirps pitifully as she dangles. I lower the falcon to the ground, press my boot lightly to her body, pinning her in place, and draw my bone blade. I hold it at her neck. Her golden eyes lock on me and she doesn’t try to bite me again, as though she can guess what’s to come.
“Don’t,” Reed shouts from the rocks.
“Toss your gun,” I call back.
He throws it, and it clatters to a standstill before Harlie’s shack. Asher inches forward and grabs the weapon.
“Get on your knees,” I tell Reed. “Hands up, toward the gods.”
He does as he’s told, and Asher and Harlie approach slowly. After a bit of careful maneuvering, Reed’s hands are bound. They tear off his mask and drag him from the outcropping, dumping him before me. His bound hands are pressed together before his heart, almost as if he were praying.
“I can explain,” he says. “Just don’t hurt Rune.”
“Explain what? That you were tracking me? That you plan to drag me back to the General?”
“No!” he insists. Then, hurriedly, he adds, “He paused the executions.”
“I already knew that.”
He swallows, fear in his eyes. He thought this would buy him time or sympathies.
“We should just kill him now,” Asher says. “You can’t trust a Loyalist, especially not one of the Four.”
“Not yet.” I give Reed a pointed glare. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Does the General know you’ve been following me?”
“Yes. I sent word that I’d stay behind. But it’s not what you think. It’s—Don’t!” Pure terror flickers in his eyes as I press down on the blade. The bird thrashes beneath me. I can feel her body swell and deflate beneath my boot, breathing uneasily, desperate to flee.
“Check his pockets, his belt,” I say to Harlie and Asher. “He’ll have a leather pouch.”
“He’s got three,” Harlie says, holding them up. “Only one’s full.”
“Empty it. What’s inside?”
Harlie turns the pouch over, and a bunch of wooden tiles fall out. They’re small, about the size of my thumbnail, and marks are burned into their faces. Dashes and arrows, mostly. And a few other symbols I don’t understand.
“What do these mean?” I ask Reed.
“It’s how we communicate. If I planned on returning to Bedrock in three days, I’d send the tile with the symbol for homecoming and the tile with three dashes. If I needed aid, I could send the tile with the symbol for aid and then my location.”
“Location how?” I ask.
“Show us,” Asher nudges him with his foot.
Wrists still bound, Reed extends his hands and selects a few tiles. On one, I can make out the symbol that graces Powder Town’s flags. The next tile has an arrow, and four others are identical, each with five dashes on their face.
“Twenty clicks north of Powder Town,” Reed says, nodding to his selected tiles.
“But that arrow could point any direction,” I say.
“There’s a dot on all the tiles that have arrows. When you read them, the dot always goes on the bottom. That’s how you know the right heading.”
I can see it now, a small dot burned into the tile’s face. The arrow points up from the dot. On the other unused tiles I can easily discern additional directions. West. Southeast. Northwest. It’s genius, this method of communicating. Simple but effective.
And terrifying.
My heartbeat ratchets up in my chest as I realize how close Reed had been to sending a message to the General. If Asher’s aim had been off, if he hadn’t struck the bird . . .
“He was about to send a message for help,” I say, glancing between Reed and his falcon.
“No, I wasn’t. If you just let me explain.”
“I don’t trust him,” Asher says. “Kill them both.”
“Don’t hurt Rune, please,” Reed begs, eyes glossy as he watches his injured falcon squirm. I think he might actually cry for the creature, and compassion is something he almost showed me once, too. It nearly makes me pause. But then I think of the Prime’s story, how Reed was the one who caught her people trying to destroy Bedrock’s black powder. How he’s the reason the Prime lost an eye.
“Will she recover?” I ask Reed.
“Was she bleeding from the head at all? Can she move her neck?” He cranes his, trying to get a better look.
“It’s just her wing,” I say. “Broken, I think.”
Reed gasps in relief, brings his bound hands to his mouth. “She should be all right then. She’ll heal.”
“That’s what I feared,” I say, and I end the bird with one quick slash of my blade.
“No!” Reed shouts as the blood spills. A tear breaks loose, trailing down his cheek. “She wasn’t a threat. She couldn’t even fly. Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t make it this far to go soft,” I say through gritted teeth. “I can’t risk her recovering and you sending word to the General. Forgive me for not being sympathetic to a Loyalist who serves a monster. You killed my mother. I killed your bird.” I take my boot off the creature, now limp, and approach Reed. I put my blade beneath his chin. “Now, you wanted to explain something? Go ahead. Explain before I slit your throat, too.”