The ground is hard-packed and mostly level now, the wind having smoothed the rock over with dirt and dust. When I’m not taking a turn at the tiller, I spend most of my time at the bow, binos to my face, scanning the horizon.
There is nothing. Just endless earth that stretches before us like a blanket.
I keep waiting to see green in the distance, for trees or scrub to pop up, and the anticipation is ruining me. I’m jittery and jumpy and can barely sleep at night.
During the fifth day of continuous travel, Harlie asks, “Are you still sure, Gods Touched?”
She’s started to call me this, joking that my confidence in our destination must mean that I’m gods touched, not the wind wagon. Asher smiles every time I bristle at the nickname, and it makes me want to kick something.
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “We’re on course.”
“How much longer, then?”
The trouble is, I don’t know. I’ve checked our heading with my lodestone almost daily. Reed has checked with his, too. We are heading in the right direction.
“Soon,” I tell the woman.
“Good, because I’m tired of peeing in a jar,” she grouses. “The men have it so easy.”
I don’t mention that my moon bleeding started the day we set sail, and I’m sick of cramps and having to sacrifice spare clothes for rags. She’s seen me tearing strips and can probably guess. And besides, she just wants to vent. Complaining is sometimes the best remedy for crossness.
“Even once we stop, you’ll still be peeing in a jar,” Reed points out. He glances at the inverted wells we’ve set up on the deck using some of Harlie’s spare jars and plas. “But if you want to turn around, you should do it this very second. Your water rations will barely get you back to Harlie’s Hope as it is, and those wells aren’t producing at the rate you’re drinking.”
This is another thing Reed has been doing that makes me want to trust him: refusing ownership over the wagon and our journey. He never refers to the water as his. He never assumes anything. He’s letting us lead and is happy to do so, as if he has no concern for his own well-being.
“We’re not turning around,” I insist.
Harlie nods. Reed shrugs. Asher just looks at me, frowning.
I can’t tell if they trust me or think I’m crazy. Maybe it’s both at the same time. The answer doesn’t matter. There’s no turning back. I touch my lodestone, feel a shiver pass over my brand. This is how I save my pack. It’s going to work.
* * *
That evening I sit at the tiller while the others sleep. Everything is shadowed and purple-black, so dark that if it weren’t for the stars, it would be nearly impossible to tell where the sky ended and the earth began.
Ation dances above me, her long dress fanning behind her like a river. Feder waits halfway across the sky, his shield lowered, as if the sight of the goddess has stolen his breath. They both steal mine again now, and it seems ridiculous that I can hate them but still find them so beautiful. That I want to believe in them again, even after everything.
“Do you trust him?” Asher says beside me, and I let go of the tiller in surprise. Just a moment ago he was lying with the others.
“Rusting rot, you scared me.” I scramble to recover the tiller before we drift too far off course.
“Reed,” he goes on. “He’s been acting strange. Talking like he doesn’t care what happens. He’s up to something.”
“If he was still loyal to the General, an army would have shown up at Harlie’s Hope long before we left it.”
“Maybe they’ll be waiting for us when we return. If we return.”
I sigh. “The way he’s been talking . . . I think he’s just trying to show that he’s loyal to us now. It’s a sacrifice, of sorts. A surrender.”
“It’s reckless,” Asher responds. “Brash. The kind of behavior that gets you killed.”
I cock up a brow. “Like running from Powder Town to follow a map through uncrossable desert?”
“Exactly like that. Preservation would have meant staying in Powder Town, but I’m just a coward. A coward who keeps chasing his best chance at staying alive.”
It’s the closest we’ve come to discussing that night since it happened. He followed me to Harlie’s Hope because I had water and food. But that’s not why he’s here now. Once Reed showed up and his horse was butchered, there were enough rations to easily last a moon. Asher could have stayed in Harlie’s Hope, pulling enough from the well each day to get by. But he followed me.
“I’m sorry about what happened at Powder Town,” I say. “You know that, right?”
He looks at me for a long beat. “I’m not sure what I know anymore, Delta. You were my pack. We used to be easy.”
“Nothing’s easy in the wastes. It never has been.”
“I know. That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?” I can hear my voice rising, getting defensive, though I’m not sure why. He holds a finger to his lips, nodding at Harlie and Reed, still asleep near the bow. I adjust my grip on the tiller.
“Do you regret that we reconnected?” he asks a moment later.
“No,” I answer truthfully. “I wish it had happened another way. I wish I still had Bay, and that the General didn’t know about my brand, and that we started working together to get my pack out of Bedrock the very same day we met. But how could I ever regret running into you, Asher?” I steal a glance at him.
“Well, I got you into quite a bind.”
“Then you helped get me out of it. And I—” I stare at the horizon for a moment. It’s murky and muddled, like my thoughts. I wish words were easier.
“I missed you every single day since Alkali Lake,” I admit finally. “I thought you were dead. I thought you died alone, and I felt like it was my fault, because we left. But you’re here now. I don’t like what you did back at West Tower, but I understand how you thought you had no other options. Just like I thought I had no other option than to run from Powder Town once we could read the map. And I see now that the wastes turn us brutish and shortsighted. All any of us try to do is survive, and that means doing what feels right from moment to moment. I did what I had to. You did the same. And I forgive you.”
He raises a brow. “You do?”
“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”
“You have a will like granite, Delta. You are the most stubborn person I know.”
“Well, maybe Bay started to soften me. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“I never said it was.”
“Oh, so you’re happy I’m softening up. You thought I was too strong-willed?”
“I didn’t say that either. I think you’re . . . I wouldn’t change . . .” He puts his fist to his mouth, blows a muffled breath into his hand. “I thought about you every day when I was at Bedrock,” he says finally. “At least when I could. There were years in the middle when I was on the sleeping ilk and everything was hazy. But in the beginning, every time they beat me or burned me or cracked a rib to try to get me to read the map, I thought of you. Every day they let me heal, every time I realized I was never going to get out of there—that I couldn’t give the General the answer he wanted because I didn’t have the answer to begin with—I thought about you. I could picture you in my head, standing on that rock at Alkali Lake, your dark braid shining in the sun, your eyes cutting into me, yelling at me to put my shirt back on. You were right. I thought every day about how you were right. If I’d only listened . . .”