Reed’s still staring beyond me, toward Rune, his eyes impossibly wide.
I twist the blade minimally against his neck and a bead of his blood wells up.
“I came to help,” he grits out. “When the Reaper turned us away at Powder Town, I sent the Loyalists home and said I’d wait behind. Told them to tell the General that I didn’t expect you to sit still long, not with your pack’s lives on the line, and that I would bring you in as soon as you ran. But clearly, I didn’t. I followed you. I was going to reveal myself this morning, but Rune got antsy and took off flying, and then you spotted her before I could explain myself, and it all rusted up.”
I bark out a laugh. “You expect me to believe that?”
His brow furrows. “It’s the truth.”
“You’re here to help? You didn’t help when the General murdered my mother. You didn’t help my pack stay off sleeping ilk. You didn’t even quit chasing me to Powder Town until the Reaper threatened to cancel Bedrock’s trade agreement!”
“I was always being watched then. I had to play a part.”
I shake my head.
“I kept your secret about the inverted well, and I brought you clean water the first night you worked the fields,” he goes on. “I want to help you find the Verdant. That’s why you’re here, right? You know something.”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. And I think you’re full of shit. I think you were sent to spy on me. You were supposed to follow me to the Verdant and report back to the General, but you got yourself caught and are trying to trick me with the shallowest lie the wastes has ever seen.”
“So you know where it is?” he asks, eyes brightening. “The Verdant?”
“Goodbye, Reed. Rest easy.”
His bound arms come up expertly fast, swiping in a circle and knocking my blade aside. Harlie and Asher sharpen their aim with the rifles. I recover the knife. But before I can strike, Reed draws something from beneath his shirt that freezes me solid.
“Don’t shoot!” I yell to the others.
I stand there, staring. Barely able to believe it.
Hooked on Reed’s thumbs is a leather cord, and hanging from it, quivering between us as it finds north, is a lodestone.
* * *
I drag him to Harlie’s shanty and shove him inside. Asher grabs my wrist. “You shouldn’t be alone with him,” he says thinly. “I don’t trust him.”
“Then stand watch. I’ll shout if I need help.” I shake Asher off and push through the fabric that serves as the door. Reed is standing against the far wall.
“Explain,” I say, eyes on his chest. The lodestone still rests there, identical to mine. As black as night. A luster of shine, even in this dim lighting. An indentation to mark north.
“I got it from a trader when I was eight,” he says, tucking it beneath his shirt. “I was living with a pack near East Tower at the time. The trader said there was a man named the General gaining power to the north, that I should leave my pack and head there, pledge my loyalty to him. I didn’t understand, but the trader insisted that I would need to be in Bedrock. That someday, a girl might arrive. She’d have a lodestone to match mine, and he said I needed to help her.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because we’re blood, Delta. Half-siblings. The trader claimed he was our father.”
The room seems to swim. Reed’s eyes flit to the center of my chest, where my lodestone rests beneath my shirt. He’d seen it that day in Bedrock, I realize. When I stole his waterskin and he grabbed me, pulling me close, he’d glanced it down the front of my shirt.
That was the day he discovered who I was.
“What did he look like?” I demand.
“Dark hair, patchy beard. Was riding a horse bareback, and most of his gear was beat, but he had a real nice pair of goggles.” Reed’s gaze flicks to the pair propped on my forehead.
This is an impeccable description—exactly how I remember that trader looking as well, and I never spoke of him to anyone. There’s no way Reed could be making this up.
“Our father suspected that the General would become dangerous,” he says, “and that you would be the key to finding the Verdant. He said I should help you, but only so long as I never lost the General’s trust. That part was key, and it’s why I didn’t help as much as I could have when I first realized who you were. Bedrock’s water is drying. I thought finding the Verdant would save humanity. I tried to help you while also helping the General understand the map. I’m sorry. But I’m here now, and it’s just like our father wanted. The General still thinks I’m loyal to him. He thinks I’m a faithful spy, watching you, waiting. But I’m here to help.”
This is too much. That washed-up trader who gave me my lodestone was my father. Reed’s father, too. We’re half-siblings. I stare at him. I feel like I can see the resemblance now. We have similar noses—our father’s nose.
Suddenly I’m furious at this man I never knew. For abandoning us. For leaving. If he suspected that the General would become so dangerous, why did he seek us out only to give us lodestones and disappear? If he knew we’d need help, why didn’t he stay to provide it?
“Do you know how to find the Verdant?” Reed asks.
I nod.
“You can read the map?”
I nod again.
“Where is it? How far from here?” His eyes gleam with hope.
“This is a lot to take in, Reed. I’ll keep those answers to myself for now.”
“What about your friend? Does he know?”
“Asher?”
“Ash . . .” Reed glances toward the door, understanding flickering on his face. “Rust and rot. We thought he died when he ran. Are there more of you? Branded with the map?”
“Just us two,” I say.
“How did you figure out how to read it?”
“I’m not telling you that either.” Show it to no one. Unless you trust them with your own life, keep it hidden.
“I have no way of communicating with Bedrock, Delta. You slaughtered my falcon.”
“You’d have done the same in my position.”
“Probably. But I’m unarmed now. Rune is dead. I have a lodestone. I’m your brother.”
“Half brother.”
“I’m on your side,” he insists. “If I know anything about this gods-forsaken world, it’s that you don’t turn away help. That’s how you end up a vagrant, wandering the wastes, hopeless. Please, Delta. You can trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone. Not even Asher.”
“But he knows how to read the map. You trust him enough to travel to the Verdant with him.”
I can see the hypocrisy of it, and if I stand here letting Reed fill me with more doubts, I’ll come undone. I’ve got to trust my intuition. It’s the only thing left that seems to guide me true. That and my lodestone.
I glare at Reed. “You can come with us, and I’ll share what I want to share, when I want to share it. Or we leave you here, anchored to a boulder for the vultures to pick apart. Your choice.”
He stares for a long beat, then says thinly, “It’s not a choice when you hold all the power and I can’t win.”