“I appreciate your not leaving me behind,” Harlie tells me.
“I wouldn’t have left you behind,” I insist, pride stung.
Harlie cocks a brow.
“Well, the old Delta might have. But not the new one.”
“And who, exactly, is this new Delta? A gods touched? An actual goddess? I’ve heard what they’re saying in the streets.”
“They’re saying what gives them hope.”
“Maybe you’re the great-great-great-something grand-daughter of General Amory,” she says with a snort. “Sure sound like him with all that ‘hope is most important’ talk.”
I brush sweat from my eyes, the rigging I’d been working on forgotten. “Isn’t it?” This way of thinking is all that’s kept me from blurting the truth out to the construction line. The Prime insists that her people don’t need to know the truth, that they came to her to be shielded from the darker parts of the wastes, and she will let them believe in whatever gods they choose—even me—if it helps them get by. If anyone among us is related to Amory, it’s her.
“Nah, the truth is important,” Harlie argues. “People should know who they’re fighting for, why they’re fighting, and how likely they are to succeed.”
“Well, I’m not in charge here. If the Prime doesn’t like what she’s hearing in the streets, she’ll put an end to it.”
Harlie rolls her eyes, which means we’re done talking about this but she in no way agrees with what I’ve said.
That afternoon, as she has every afternoon since we began building, the Prime stops by to check in with the Tender. After receiving updates, she lingers, helping a group of women tie knots and eventually climbing the rigging to assist another with the sail. Her willingness to work alongside her people—to be a part of their trials and triumphs—makes something stir in my chest. Pride? Hope? I only know that I am happy to be here, laboring with her, working toward something bigger than the two of us.
A horn is blown on the defense wall, and chatter spreads through the clearing. “The Reaper is back!” someone shouts. A moment later, the door raises to let the returning group pass through. The Reaper appears first, followed by three of her women, then Reed. His ram-skull mask is pushed back on his forehead, and a second dangles from his right hand. Horses trail behind, corpses slung over the saddles.
The Prime hurries down the mast and vaults over the sideboard, running to the Reaper and kissing her firmly on the mouth. The women embrace, clapping each other on the back. I hear Luce say, “He did the deed himself. No hesitation. Killed the Second and the three Loyalists who accompanied him.”
Reed glances at me, his expression pained. Even knowing he was doing the right thing, it couldn’t have been easy, ending the lives of those Loyalist men, seeing the shock in their eyes when they realized they’d been betrayed.
The Prime calls for him, then me. “Meeting at Prime Hall. There are details to work out,” she says, and she starts up the street, answering questions of the townsfolk who have gathered.
I wonder why they don’t call her the Bringer of Life. She is a force, and Powder Town is lucky to have her.
* * *
The plan is this: Reed will head for Bedrock at dawn.
Some of the story he tells the General will be true: I cornered him at Harlie’s Hope, killed his bird, and held him captive.
The deaths of the other Loyalists . . . we’ll use that to our advantage.
Reed will say that the first group (the group we barely dodged when returning to Harlie’s Hope) died in a dust storm, but not before sending Ember back with a request for aid. The second group—the one he just lured into a trap with the Reaper? Reed will claim that I killed them. I hid among the rocks, took them and their horses out one by one. But while I was busy doing that, Reed got his hand on a spare knife and managed to kill me.
Exhausted and weak after a moon in captivity, he will claim to have burned my body rather than tow it to Bedrock. But he’ll bring with him a braid of my hair, my beloved jacket, and the ash of my bones, which will actually be the ashes of the Loyalists he killed.
“Will it work?” the Prime asks as we sit at the meeting. “Will he believe it?”
“He has no reason to doubt me,” Reed says. “And I’ll have Delta’s jacket and ashes to prove the point. Delta’s pack will remain safe from executions once I claim she’s dead. He won’t kill them when he needs workers.”
“And you’ll blow the powder when?” the Prime leads.
“The summer solstice, nearly a year from now.”
Given the increase in recent storms, we’ve estimated that the sun’s active cycle should kick off any day now, and according to what we learned in Eden, that cycle should last nine or ten moons. It will be over by midsummer, and the fleet should be ready by then too.
“I’ll make the powder explosion look like an accident,” Reed adds. “You’ll attack any time after that, but before you’re due to deliver his next shipment of powder.”
The Prime nods. “And if you have complications with the ‘accident’?”
“I’ll send word with Ember. And if you don’t hear from me at all by the solstice, it means I’ve been found out somehow, that I’m likely dead.”
“What do we do in that case?” I ask.
“We’ll attack anyway,” the Prime says grimly. “If Reed is found out, we’ll have to assume that the General has learned about our plan. I’ll leave a security detail behind to protect Powder Town, and the fleet will head east, hopefully to confront him on the plains before he can attack us here.”
There’s more discussion about logistics—the blast barrels and offensive attacks, but Reed and I are dismissed.
“I’ll see you in Bedrock at midsummer,” Reed says to me on the steps of Prime Hall. Nearly a full year from now. The enormity of that wait hits me for the first time. I’m agreeing to leave my pack in the General’s clutches until this plan can be executed. Bay will be a year old by the time I’m reunited with her.
“I won’t see you in the morning?” I ask. “Before you leave?”
He shakes his head. “Better to head out early, before crowds gather. I don’t like all those eyes.”
“You don’t like them? Have you seen the way they watch me? Have you heard what they’re saying?”
“Yes, and I’m starting to feel left out. Shouldn’t I be a god too? We’re related, after all.” He smirks.
“Very funny.” I touch my lodestone through my shirt. We look out over Powder Town. Down in the clearing, three masts stand proud, the makings of a fleet. So much has to go right for this to work, and the stakes are too high for us to fail. I turn to Reed. “If you betray us, I will kill you myself,” I tell him. “I will draw my blade across your neck, and I won’t feel bad about it.”
His face blanches. “Gods, Delta. And here I was, thinking you were starting to trust me.”
“There are varying degrees of trust. I trust that you want to do the right thing. I pray that you will.”
Reed swallows, looks away. “He called me a traitor before I killed him,” he says, talking more to the horizon than me. “Did you know that? The General’s Second. He said I was a traitor and a coward and disloyal to the gods, that I would rot . . . somewhere. I’m not sure where, exactly. I’d slit him open by then. But it’s interesting, how each side thinks they are the valiant ones.”