The Prime presses her palms to the table. “Tender, wake your crew and ready the completed wagons immediately. I want the fleet moving at first light. Reaper, I know you’ve selected troops for the fifteen wagons, but as we’ll have only nine, you need to whittle that number down. Choose carefully. Arm them with mag-rifles, but have them bring their preferred weapons of choice, too. And Chemist? Load our black powder and balls for the blast barrels. We sail at dawn.”
V
The Verdant
Chapter Forty-One
The sky is just beginning to lighten when a fleet of nine wind wagons rolls through Powder Town’s main gate, one after the next, sails filled with wind, flags flapping. The wastes are bruised and purple in the early dawn. I stand at the bow of the foremost wagon, a hand on the side rail, breathing deeply.
I am dressed for battle, which isn’t all that different from any day on the wastes. My scarf over my head, goggles pulled into place, and a leather jacket the Prime lent me to replace the one I sent to Bedrock with Reed, buttoned high beneath my chin. A mag-rifle is slung across my back, the shoulder strap cutting from one shoulder to my opposite hip. My bone blade is sheathed at my waist.
The Prime shouts orders from the tiller. We’ll cut south of Burning Ground, avoiding the worst of the dangerous land. Then, staying well out of view of the Barrel, we’ll swing north and approach Bedrock from the southeast.
To our left, the second wagon is creeping up alongside ours. Harlie shouts orders from its tiller, echoing those of the Prime. She probably shouldn’t be captaining one of the vessels, not given how long the silent storms have waged and how weak they’ve rendered all of Powder Town’s elderly. But she insisted. “They’re my darn invention,” she said that morning, cornering the Prime and the Reaper as the troops boarded the wagons. “I’m seeing them sail. I feel fine, besides. Nice break in the storms. Heart hasn’t been racing since last night.” How long this break will hold is another matter. When the Prime tested a mag-rifle this morning, it fired true. If the storm lull stretches a full day, we might get lucky.
Harlie’s crew immediately goes to work adjusting the sails. I catch sight of Asher on the starboard side, gathering spare rope.
Behind our two wagons, the third is captained by Luce the Reaper, the fourth by Amari the Tender. Bronx the Chemist has stayed behind in Powder Town, the secret to making black powder safe in the recesses of her mind, a group of the Reaper’s soldiers stationed to protect her and the town. The final five wagons are led by soldiers the Reaper selected, such as Saph, who brings up the rear.
There are about thirty of us per wagon, packed in tightly despite construction that scaled up the model we sailed to Eden. That puts our numbers just shy of three hundred. Bedrock is thousands strong, the Loyalist army at least fifteen hundred men. But we have blast barrels and mag-rifles and the element of surprise. They have only their modified rifles and the powder in their horns.
Still, the numbers make me shudder. We need everything to go right, or things will go very, very wrong. They might have already. Who knows why Reed blew the powder early—if he’s safe, or even alive.
As Powder Town disappears behind us, the cheers from the town fade out as well. Cries of good luck to the Prime. Prayers that the Bringer of Life guides the fleet true. Teary farewells shouted to friends and family. Soon it is just our fleet beneath the beating sun and the expanse of waste that separates us from the battle of a lifetime.
* * *
We make good time.
By midmorning we’ve safely bypassed Burning Ground and are just a few clicks north of Alkali Lake. We’ll cut north shortly, riding the currents easy the rest of the way to Bedrock. But for now I’m at the side rail, a hand held up to shield my eyes, squinting at my childhood home in the distance.
The lake is smaller than I remember, shrunken and eaten like everything in the wastes. The banks are a dark ring around the lake itself, which is blue in its center, white with alkaline along the shallows. People must live here again—the bread I ate at Bedrock was tinged green, a sign that the soda is still harvested here—but even if they see us sailing past, we will reach Bedrock before word of our fleet can. The only thing that might hinder us is a trained Bedrock falcon with a pouch of tiles in its claws. The Reaper has sent her best archers into the crow’s nest of each wagon—a small platform high up the mast that Harlie suggested adding during construction. From these lookouts, the archers scan the sky, ready to shoot down any such messenger that might soar past.
“It looks different, doesn’t it?” Asher says behind me.
I startle, shocked. “Where did you come from?”
“Told Harlie to bring us close enough to your wagon so I could jump over. We’ll be turning north soon. Wanted to say goodbye while I could.”
“Don’t do that. Saying goodbye means you think we won’t make it through this.”
“We might not.”
“Asher.”
He sighs, rubs his mouth. Over his shoulder I can see the Prime scowling at us. “The heart is unpredictable, especially in battle,” she’d warned me just before we left Powder Town. “We can’t risk temptation—the opportunity to put one person above the whole. This is why Luce does not sail with me. It is why Asher will not sail with you. I’m putting him on the second wagon, with Harlie. It is best for us all.”
The Prime is already calling Harlie’s wagon back, ordering Asher to return to his vessel. I hold up a finger, telling her just a moment.
“We should have spent every second together these last days,” Asher says, taking my hands. “I should have demanded to change pillars, should have helped with construction. I didn’t even ask. I accepted that all we’d get is stolen moments on the rooftop, and I never said what I should have. I think I’ve been afraid to, because if I say it, it will hurt that much more to lose you.”
I nod, understanding.
The unknowns that lie ahead, the wind against my cheeks as we sail into battle—it makes everything sharp and clear. I can’t predict the future, and I can’t always protect the people who matter most. But keeping everyone at bay and locking up my heart and refusing to say what I feel won’t diminish the hurt if the worst comes to pass. It will hurt anyway. It will always hurt to lose the people we love, so we might as well love them fiercely with whatever time we’re given.
“I trust you, and that’s why it’s so hard,” I say, echoing the sentiment he expressed on Harlie’s wind wagon several moons ago. I shrug happily. “I trust you, I love you. They’re one and the same.”
“I trust you, I love you,” he repeats, and lowers his face to mine. When our lips meet, the battle ahead of us feels distant, as if it will happen to different people in a different time, because this moment, now, is inescapable. The tug between us is magnetic.
“Stay strong, Delta,” he says as he steps away. He whistles for Harlie, hops from our side rail to her deck once her wagon is close enough.
I can feel the tug still, his nearness calling to me. I may not believe in the gods or fate or promises foretold by the stars, but I believe in us. I believe in magnets, propelled apart, then drawn together. Like a lodestone finding north. Like the Gods’ Star above the horizon. Constant, inevitable, and true.