I risk a glance up, pulse kicking. Asher never mentioned any Bedrock settlement, and the Vulture’s Roost is here, in the Barrel. I was supposed to be assigned somewhere here. The worker stoops near my feet, and I realize the woman was never talking about me.
“Wait!” I shout as he picks up Bay. “We have to stay together.”
“She ain’t yours,” the woman says, “and even if she was, there’s wet nurses and goats.”
“But she’s my niece, my blood.” I move to follow Bay, but the woman yanks me back.
“Go on,” she says, waving the man off.
“You can’t just take her from me!”
The woman’s hand comes up, and this time I see the blow coming. I grab her at the wrist, stopping her cold. She’s all bark and growl, with no real meat on her, and with a bit of pressure at the right angle, her arm folds in and she crumples. “The poker!” she cries out.
The other inspector abandons the girl she’s examining and grabs a poker from the fire. As she turns the red-hot end toward me, something roars to life in my gut, a flame in the pit of my empty stomach. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that I’m weary and dehydrated; when the woman lunges, I drop low. The poker sails over my shoulder, and I tackle her around the waist, bringing her to the ground. She coughs out all her air, and the poker clatters aside. I snatch it up and turn, wheeling on the first woman. She’s clutching her wrist. I wonder briefly if I broke it, but as soon as she starts screaming for backup, I run. Out of the shanty. Into the open market.
I see only one thing: the man carrying Bay. He’s moving toward a caged wagon in the center of the market, this one drawn by mules. I race after him as the women scream for me to be stopped. Their voices are a distant hum. Bay is almost back in my grasp. Another three steps, and the man will be within reach. I wind up with the poker, ready to strike.
Something collides with my side.
I crash to the hard earth and lose all the air in my lungs. Hands pin my wrists down by my ears. Knees pin my thighs firm. The poker is ripped away as I gasp.
“You realize I don’t get paid if you run, right?” Bain smiles above me. Standing behind him, Cree now holds the poker, glowing end pointed at my face. I thrash beneath Bain, but even with the rage burning in my chest, I’m no match for his strength.
“Get her up!” comes a shout.
Bain hoists me to my feet.
“Jacket off.” It’s the balding man Bain had been bartering with.
I crane my neck, trying to find Bay, but my jacket is already being stripped from my shoulders. Bain shoves me, and I stagger forward, barely catching myself on the wagon he used to tow me into the Barrel.
The balding man unfurls a whip, and dread coils in my chest when I realize what’s about to happen.
Show it to no one.
A fist gathers my shirt at the back of my neck.
Unless you trust them with your own life, keep it hidden. Always.
With a yank, the worn fabric tears like Old World paper and hangs on my shoulders, my front shielded, but my back exposed. Sun kisses my skin. My flesh prickles with the strangeness of the sensation. I flinch at the whoosh of the whip being raised in the air.
“Wait!” someone shouts from above.
I look up. It’s one of the gunners along the rim of the mesa. His clothes are cleaner than the others, and he wears a ram-skull mask while the rest do not. Like all the gunners who have stopped to watch the whipping, his rifle is aimed at my back. “Those markings can’t be ruined.” The falcon I spotted earlier turns in circles high above his head.
“I’ll decide how to punish my property, Loyalist,” the man with the whip snaps.
“I’m not making a suggestion, I’m giving orders. Put her in the wagon for Bedrock. The General will see her.”
* * *
Even with my jacket back on, I feel exposed, naked. The leather kisses my bare skin. It’s another odd sensation, a reminder that all those years I spent following rules are now meaningless. My shirt was ripped. Everyone has seen my back. Everyone has seen the brand.
The wagon they drag me toward is part Old World tech. The bed is made from the chassis of a salvaged rover. Wooden wheels have been mounted where the Old World variety have failed, and a yoke designed for mules is attached to the front so the wagon can be towed by animals. Bars of woven scrub form the cage, and I’m thrown inside with four other prisoners. One is a boy of about fifteen. Two females are twice that. Their eyes drift to my shoulders, the side of my torso, eager to get a glimpse of the markings now hidden beneath my jacket. The last prisoner is Bay.
She is the only thing that keeps me from physically shaking with fear. I scoop her up, gather her into my chest. She’s smarter than she lets on, and if I tremble or cry, she’ll pick up on it.
Curse you, I feel like saying to her. Look what you made happen.
She’s got some sort of hold on me, a dark magic. Just a few days ago I wanted Zuly to take her. All I wanted when I met her was for her be someone else’s burden, and when the moment finally came, I fought it like a rusted idiot. Now we’re in another cage, headed to Bedrock, to the General.
Images of my pack’s smoldering huts flash when I close my eyes.
“Delta?”
I turn and find Asher behind me, his fingers curled around the scrub-woven bars that separate us. “Don’t drink anything they give you. Promise me this, Delta.”
Someone yells for him to get away from the wagon. The gunner from the rim. He’s approaching, rifle at the ready.
“Promise me!” Pure terror sparks in Asher’s eyes. He hasn’t confirmed it, but I know I’m headed for wherever he was taken after Alkali Lake. Raiders in black. Old Fang’s mention of a general. It’s all connected. And Asher survived—he escaped—only because of the warning he’s giving me now.
“I promise.”
He lets go of the bars and slips toward the Vulture’s Roost.
The gunner reaches the wagon. Honey-colored eyes gleam at me from behind his mask. “Did he give you something? Show me your hands.”
I shake my head adamantly, hold out my palms.
“What did he say to you?”
“That I cost him. That by running, he doesn’t get paid, and I’m lucky I’m in this cage or he’d kill me.”
The gunner glances toward the pub, then puts his thumb and forefinger in his mouth, producing a high-pitched whistle. The falcon I saw earlier dives from the sky and lands on his gloved fist. With his free hand the gunner holds up a small leather pouch, which the bird snatches in its claws. Then, with a flap of its sandy wings, the creature is airborne again, climbing above the rock of the Barrel and flying north.
The gunner mounts his horse, gives a nod to the driver of the wagon. Reins snap, and the mules plod forward. I look toward the Vulture’s Roost, but Asher is nowhere to be found.
The wagon leaves the market and continues through a final stretch of narrow canyon, the gunner following us on a saddled mare. When we break from the pass, I blink in the afternoon brilliance.
The falcon is ahead of us, now a dark smudge against the cloudless sky. Perhaps two clicks ahead is a monstrous mesa. Twice as tall as the Barrel’s, and running farther in either direction. Water rushes over its edge, clearer and heavier-flowing than any I’ve ever seen.