“Is the trap full?” he asked.
I pulled my knife and held the blade in his direction.
He smiled. “I take it that means yes.”
“You can’t have any,” I managed, shocked that I sounded somewhat brave. He was grown, towering over me. Forty years or so, maybe older. It was hard to tell with his goggles and scarf obscuring most of his face, but I didn’t doubt that he could gut me in the blink of an eye. “It’s been two weeks since this trap’s been full, and the catch is mine.”
“I know. I’ve been watching.”
“It’s my catch,” I repeated sternly, even though my skin was crawling.
“Perhaps it can be mine, for a trade.” He pulled the lodestone from the breast pocket of his vest and showed me the indentation, telling me how it worked.
“That’s worth more than a quail. More than twenty,” I said, eyeing the stone suspiciously.
“It will point north always,” he insisted. “Even in the silent storms.”
“No one in their right mind would want to trade a thing like that.”
He shrugged. “Don’t need it where I’m going.”
“You’re lying,” I said. “It doesn’t work, or you wouldn’t give it up.”
“It works, trust me.”
“Why should I trust a mangy old trader who’s been spying on my traps?”
“Because I know your destiny, Delta.” I went rigid. Maybe he’d overheard my name as I left camp—he’d been spying, after all—but I gripped my knife harder. “I know your destiny, and I know mine. The stars tell it. You are meant to have this lodestone, and I am meant to find another.”
“The stars don’t say things like that. They don’t speak of individual people, just the earth’s greater fate.”
“They speak of everything, if you know how to read them properly. If you have the right map.” His eyes cut into me, deep and piercing and gray. My back felt as hot as coals.
Suddenly I wanted him gone.
“Toss over the stone,” I instructed. He did. I squeezed it in the palm of my hand. It felt icy cold despite having been in his vest pocket, and when I held it out, the indentation pointed north, as he promised it would. If it continued to do so during silent storms, I’d be making out like a bandit. If it didn’t, it was no loss. I’d catch another quail in time, and at least he’d have moved on.
I kicked the trap toward him. “I never want to see you here again,” I said firmly.
And I didn’t.
It’s possible that he found himself in a bad place recently and spoke of the lodestone to a raider, but I doubt it. He hadn’t lied about its capabilities, and he hadn’t lied about making sure I wouldn’t see him again. Which meant he probably wasn’t lying about destinies either. Maybe he has his own lodestone by now. Raiders would have slit his throat for it before he even had the chance to mention me or Dead River.
I’ve kept the thing well hidden, just to be safe, but the truth is, they weren’t after the lodestone. No, they came seeking something else. Something that trader somehow knew about too.
My back prickles, the scars itching.
Show it to no one. Unless you trust them with your own life, keep it hidden. Always.
And I have.
Every map-bearer has kept it hidden since the very first one generations ago, when our pack’s ancestors found an Old World rover half buried in sand. The vehicle’s chassis was rusted, the paper remnants inside so parched and brittle that moving them would have sent the map disintegrating. That’s why they coded it onto a pair of youngster’s backs, one brand for each of the pack’s bloodlines. The number of bloodlines grew in the years that followed, but two brands were kept for tradition, and in time, Asher and I were selected to receive it. When the first of our map-bearers died, Silla copied the brand from his back to Asher’s. When the second passed, Ma did the same with me. The dead were burned, and no more than two people ever possessed the map at a time. More copies meant more chances of it falling into the wrong hands, of someone else finding the Verdant before we did and then sealing it off.
Our pack kept only two copies, with the understanding that when we learned how to read it, we’d all travel together. We’d earn entry to paradise together.
And here we are, still unable to read the thing, still forcing our marked children to stay covered, hidden, cautious. And yet, trouble still keeps finding us.
After Asher was killed, along with half the pack, no one bothered copying my brand to ensure that there was a second bearer. It was the first time there was a break in the tradition, and maybe that’s just as well. No one needs this burden, this curse, this map of a place that probably doesn’t exist. The gods aren’t returning, and the Verdant is an empty promise.
Something juts out of the earth ahead, and I pause. An Old World graveyard, left over from a time when the dead were buried in the ground. I can make out several rows of wooden crosses rippling in the heat. When I’m upon the site, I find each grave overturned, dirt flung about, long-dead bodies disrupted.
The bones are as white as ash, threadbare rags clinging to some of the remains. Anything of use that was buried with the dead has been claimed by scavengers. Most Old World tech comes from graves. Or sometimes from abandoned rovers with their rusted-out bodies, or the rare skeleton half buried in sand while a fraying noose sways from a tree overhead. I’ve never seen a tree, just heard about them from Flint. You have to head far north before the scrub gets any taller than your knee, and even there, the trees are sickly and weak.
I didn’t know there was a graveyard so close to Dead River. I wonder when the scavengers found it. Sometimes the sands shift, covering or revealing. Could’ve been fifty years ago. Could’ve been five days. Only thing that’s certain is the plot is old.
I’m about to move on when I notice the skeleton in the grave before me has a crushed skull. I peer into the next shallow grave, a third, a fourth. A new row. Another. Broken skulls. Every skeleton in the plot.
They checked our dead to see if they were gods touched, Old Fang had said while looking at Astra’s and Cobel’s crushed skulls.
A shiver travels up my spine.
There’s an old well near the graveyard, and I check it on a whim. Bone-dry. Sheltered in a sliver of shade, I lean against its bricks and feed Baby.
* * *
By noon, there’s a trickle of liquid running down the center of the riverbed’s wide girth, and the scrub along the banks looks less like tumbleweed and more like actual scrub. Maybe Flint wasn’t lying. By Powder Town, I might see a real, proper tree.
But that won’t be until tomorrow. Powder Town is fifty clicks from Dead River, and I’m not even at West Tower yet, which marks the halfway point. Like the rig near Zuly’s Ark, it’ll be raised above the dirt—a good place to stop for the night. Away from scavengers and raiders. Sheltered in case a storm blows through. And I’ll need shelter. Far to the east, between Dead River and Alkali Lake, you can find a few settlements where the land is fertile enough for planting. Then Zuly’s Ark to the south and Powder Town to the north.
But that’s it. Everywhere else there’s a whole lot of nothing. Dry ocean beds, sweltering desert, or worse—Burning Ground, where liquid bubbles to the surface, so hot it can kill you. Flint says the earth will warn you of it. You can see the steam rising and the wastes themselves shifting into wild colors—orange and rust and sometimes even a blue brighter than the sky. But I still have nightmares of taking missteps in that dangerous land.