“Our side doesn’t drug people.”
“But this side still kills. They do what they think is necessary.”
“What do you think is necessary, brother?”
He almost flinches at the term. He touches his lodestone, feeling it through his shirt. As he looks out over Powder Town, I take in the slope of his nose, his wide eyes, the shade of his hair. How is it that we can share so many features, when Indie and I, also half-siblings, never looked like blood?
“This,” Reed says finally. “What we’re doing, what the Prime is planning. This is necessary. Our father knew it, but he was too scared to see it through. So we’ll see it through ourselves.”
I shrug out of my jacket and pass it to him. “I want that back,” I say before severing a braid of my hair and handing it over as well. “The hair, I’m not as attached to.”
He chuckles. “If this goes well, you can have them both back, plus anything in Bedrock. If you want the General’s star chain, I’ll give it to you.”
“I want him dead. That’s all.”
He nods silently, then offers me his palm. I take it, and we shake.
“Godspeed, sister,” he says.
It’s nice to be called that again, even if it reminds me of the one I lost.
Chapter Forty
Three days after Reed heads for Bedrock, with Ember soaring overhead, the largest aurora I have ever seen paints the northern sky at dusk. What begins as shifting ribbons of green and blue stretching for the stars becomes a rippling wall of color. Like a curtain, hanging from the sky to the horizon, red in places, even yellow or purple. It shimmers, flexes, inverts.
Powder Town’s residents gather in the foothills, their eyes turned to the sky, speechless. It is eerily quiet, but there is a tension in the air, the understanding that something is about to change.
There’s a tug at my sleeve, and when I look down, a girl stands beside me. “What is it?” she asks, wide-eyed. It takes me a moment to place her—Rain, the child who didn’t know what an execution was.
“The start of a very big storm,” I tell her.
Her eyes gleam with excitement. “I always knew you were gods touched,” Rain whispers.
A woman steps up behind her—the girl’s mother. “What sort of storm?” she asks. Others are turning toward me now, drawn by these questions. “What have you seen?”
“A silent storm that will rage for many moons. Nine or ten.”
A murmur spreads through the crowd.
“Will it bring dust?” someone calls out from the shadows.
“It might.”
“How will our crops survive?” a panicked voice asks.
“And what about our trade with Bedrock—will it be safe to travel?”
“The wastes haven’t seen a storm like this in over a hundred years,” I say. “There’s no telling what, exactly, it will bring. But it will pass, and when it is over”—my gaze flicks from the northern ribbons of light, east, toward Bedrock—“the General’s rule will end too.”
Now the crowd chatters wildly.
“Have you foreseen this, Bringer of Life?”
“How will we beat him?”
“Where is the Verdant? Shouldn’t we go there now, before the worst weather?”
“Tell us, Green Goddess.”
“Should we pray?”
“What do we do?”
“Tell us!”
A hand closes over my wrist—the Prime. “I must borrow your Green Goddess,” she announces, “but all will become clear in time.” She tugs me through the throng of people, down the hillside. “That’s enough mingling,” she says as we approach the Serpent River. “They’re getting frenzied.”
“Maybe if we told them I’m just a girl. Not a Green Goddess. Not gods touched, either.”
She shakes her head, trains her good eye on me. “If you’re just a girl, then I’m just a woman. A woman who let a deserter back into Powder Town, accepted her Old World weapons, and plotted how to take out the General with that untrustworthy deserter’s help. I can’t be a woman right now. I need to be the Prime. So you will be a god.” She raises her chin, motions for her Reaper. Luce steps from the shadows, another two sentries on her heels. “See that Delta reaches her bed without interruption from citizens. And check with the Tender. I want the wind wagons tied down in case the storm brings gales.”
* * *
The following day, a new normal begins: construction beneath an ever-raging silent storm. Harlie and many of the other elderly hands helping with the wagons retire to bed, their hearts racing, their heads pounding, weakened by the storm we can’t see.
Adjustments are made to the bow of the boats, allowing room for the Prime’s blast barrels. They will be dissembled and loaded onto the wind wagons belowdecks, so as not to slow the sailing for the bulk of the trip, then reassembled as we close in on Bedrock. At that point we’ll want the fleet to be slowing anyway.
Harlie, who is still in bed, looks over sketches of the design changes, nodding or grunting through her headaches, offering advice when she can manage. Those not weakened by the silent storm continue construction as the weather allows. Most days the skies are blue, and the only proof that the storm continues is a curtain of light visible in the northern sky. Other days the sun is blotted out with dust, and construction is ground to a halt as rubble spills over the foothills. Workers rush to cover the crops. Windows are shuttered tight. Everyone hunkers down and waits and prays. The dust always clears, but the aurora continues to dance.
Traders aren’t allowed in during the construction. Our work in the town’s clearing is impossible to hide, and the Prime fears word of what we’re building might make it back to the General. She orders traders to lower their rickshaws outside the perimeter wall, and all bartering happens on the wastes, the goods brought inside only after the men have cleared out. I see Clay during one of these trades and assure him that Bay will be safe again soon.
“Safe how? Are you planning something, Delta?”
I don’t miss how he peers over my shoulder, trying to get a glimpse beyond Powder Town’s wall. Clay may not be the brightest, but even he knows that this new arrangement is odd. “Just keep your head down,” I tell him. “Keep doing what you’re doing. It will all be right in time.”
When Powder Town is due to deliver its first batch of powder since my return, the Prime sets out with her convoy, modified rifles and bows at the ready, goggles and scarves in place. I watch them roll out toward the boardwalks, wondering if I will see them again. What if a dust storm hits while they travel? What if they don’t make it back? Will the Reaper rise to the position of Prime in that case? Will she still want to attack Bedrock? But my worry is needless because the Prime returns a few days later, her wagons loaded up with iron and water.
The days blur together, but the questions from citizens never fade. I am plagued by crowds that ask me when it will end—this silent storm that drags on. I give cryptic, poetic answers, the way I imagine a god would. Some townsfolk whisper when they see me. Others turn away, as if my eyes might set them aflame. Children run to me in the streets and tug at my sleeves, muttering praise, asking for blessings. By the time two moons have passed, I’m exhausted by the act. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. Certainly not until midsummer.