Not that I’ve ever headed toward it before. Not until today.
You have to get to West Tower first, and then Powder Town, I tell myself. No sense worrying about what lies beyond.
I take it one step at a time. One foot in front of the other. One dry-mouthed sip from the waterskin to every feeding session for Baby. By the time West Tower comes into view, I’m drenched in sweat and the sun is setting.
Like Zuly’s rig, West Tower has a platform that can be reached by ladders, but that’s where the similarities end. Instead of a hut on stilts, this is a spike on a platform. The structure is impossibly tall, reaching up into the sky as if it means to stab it. I can’t even guess at how the thing was built. Everything about the Old World puzzles me.
Still, it will do fine for the night. I can climb to the rusted platform and sleep with some shelter over my head. At my first thought of rest, Baby, of course, begins crying.
“I swear to the gods you are lucky I don’t desert you,” I grumble at her.
She wails louder.
“Oh, shut it. We’ll eat after I climb.”
That’s when a voice croaks out, “Help.”
I freeze, squinting through the twilight.
“Up here! Help! Please.”
I scan the tower until I find a figure on the eastern edge, secured to a section of metal that extends into the sky. A skirt waves along the girl’s shins. The rest of her is in shadow, too difficult to make out in the sun.
Trap! my brain shouts. But looking out across the desert, I can’t find a single puff of dust or any other movement that might suggest a raiding party is closing in on their bait.
“Please,” the girl says again. Her voice, low and parched, cracks on the word. Her throat is surely caked with dust. “Please. I need water.”
The girl goes on begging and Baby goes on crying, and the truth remains the same: I need a place to sleep. It’s on West Tower or in the open. I leave the goat and dragger, draw my bone knife, and scurry up the ladder, with Baby still wailing in the sling.
Once on the platform, I turn in a quick circle. No movement in the shadows. No hidden threats. The girl faces out toward the desert—it’s how she saw me coming—and I pad toward her back, shocked at how tall she is. At least a head taller than I am, and I’m not short. It’s then I notice that what I mistook for a skirt is really just bindings. Pieces of rope swaying as he struggles. Because it’s a guy tied to the tower. The width of his shoulders; the size of his hands, tied behind his back; the shadow of scruff along the side of his jaw, where his scarf has slipped.
My pulse kicks faster. Baby must sense a change in my demeanor because she finally shuts up.
I edge toward the man and put my blade to his back. He arches, every muscle tensing.
“Where are your friends?”
“No f-friends,” he stammers. “I was robbed two days ago. I just want water and to be cut loose. Please.”
I glance over my shoulder, down to the goat, out toward the horizon. Everything is as it should be, calm, undisturbed. That raid back home has rattled me good, scudded up my judgment and left me fearing everyone. This guy’s no better off than I am: a victim of bad circumstance.
I cut the bindings at his arms, and he brings them to his front, massaging his wrists. I step around him and drop to his feet. These ropes are thicker and will take a bit of sawing.
“Thank you,” he says as I work. “A trader passed by yesterday and didn’t stop.”
“I’ve seen enough bad in the past day to last a lifetime. You’re lucky I feel like doing some good to counter things.”
“That baby yours?” He sounds sad about it.
I glance up. The goggles he wears have been tinted somehow, and though I can tell he’s looking at me, I can’t see his eyes. He flinches. As if looking at me properly has burned him.
“You have to leave,” he says, his voice at a whisper.
I stop sawing at his ankle ropes and stand. “You said you were alone.”
“I lied.”
I don’t know why he’s suddenly warning me. Maybe so I race from the tower and flee into an ambush. I yank his scarf down and put my blade to his throat.
“Please just go. I’m not lying about this. Go!”
There’s a whoosh from above, and I look up to see a pair of boots descending. Their wearer is coming down fast, thanks to a pulley system farther up the tower—the only place I hadn’t checked for enemies. Of course they’d come from the heavens. From the stars.
I hunch over, instinctively protecting the worthless, always hungry, never sleeping baby in the sling. Heels connect with my back, and I go sprawling forward. I hear my attacker land on the platform. Then a second set of boots. There’s two of them. Two, plus the bait. I roll over, Baby still nestled against my chest. She’s wailing now, and I palm the back of her small head, like my lone hand has any chance of actually protecting her. A young man towers over us with a blade pointed at me. My blade. I dropped it when I fell.
“Skies, it’s a young one. With a baby, too!”
His companion lets out a whoop. “We’ll get paid good for this. Nice catch, Asher.” He claps the bait on the shoulder and I think I must have heard him wrong. I think also that surely more than one person has that name. I’ve never met another before, but it’s possible.
But then the bait lifts his goggles and I’m staring into a set of eyes I haven’t seen since childhood—staring at a ghost.
He’s lost the youth in his cheeks, and his hair has faded from brilliant sunshine to dull straw. His jaw has hardened, his mouth grown thin. Everything about him has changed, sharpened, steeled, but those eyes are the same, bluer than the sky. Calmer than the still after a storm. The color of the ocean that once was.
“Asher?” I manage. I’m shocked and relieved and furious in the same breath. “What the hell?”
“Wait, don’t!” he shouts, lurching for his companion. But the man’s boot comes out of nowhere, knocking my head so hard I see stars.
Stars, stars everywhere. Worthless, deserting gods.
The world goes dark.
Chapter Seven
When I come to, I’m in a small wagon that they must have kept hidden around the back side of the tower. Woven scrub and driftwood arch over me, trapping me inside like a caged animal. Baby is with me, but my knives are gone. We’re moving beneath the black of night, and the goat follows the wagon, towing my dragger and gear.
I curse up a storm, kick at the sideboards, make threats I have no ability to carry out. When that gets no response, I try a more tactful approach, offering my captors the jars stashed in my pack, the goat, everything on the dragger. The only thing I don’t mention is the lodestone. The two men at the yoke haven’t slowed their pace since they started hauling the wagon from West Tower, and it’s clear that I’m the prize. If I offer up the lodestone, they’ll just take it and sell me anyway.
I hope the bastards make a misstep into Burning Ground. Maybe I can break out in the chaos, assuming that Asher finds his conscience and helps me.
I look at him now. He’s walking alongside the wagon, mouth set in a crooked grimace, and his fingers curled around an Old World rifle modified to shoot black powder. Every few paces he glances over his shoulder to make sure the goat is still following with my gear.