Sorrel’s eyelids felt heavy. Her exhaustion was bone deep, but she was grateful not to be injured. She stretched out on the bed beside Bibi and thought of Lichen’s courage and Genus’s death and Slate’s severed hand and the abdominal wound that would probably kill Sandstorm. She wondered if any of the Toplanders were healers. Then she thought about the eggs she would soon eat, and her stomach roiled. She felt calm, as at the end of something. She looked over at Emrallie and Rashelope and Rapt, standing guard at one end of the barracks and then at the shapes of the Toplanders, huddled around Ganan’s bed. It felt safe enough to sleep.

She dreamed of the rock she had hidden underneath in childhood and the blistering of her cheek, and in her sleep, she thought she felt her mother’s palm against her face. She dreamed of standing at the waterfall with Kes, the sweat on her skin becoming the mist of the waterfall and Rapt watching them with tears running down his cheeks.

An earth tremor rippled through the camp, but no one reacted. Sorrel slept. It was night.

She woke when dawn glimmered through the shutters. She sat up, gasping at the stiffness in her limbs and the pain of bruises she could not remember getting. Bibi still slept beside her; the bite made by Drax’s teeth livid on her cheek. A calabash hung from a hook on the wall next to the bed. Petal’s work. She took it down. It held two boiled eggs and a piece of fried breadfruit.

She took the food and her algaskin and tiptoed to the door. Outside, the dust had cleared, and pale grey clouds tinged with the pink of sunrise gathered, threatening rain. She looked over the patches of growing crops, most of which she didn’t recognize. She wondered where the river was. Homeplace, she thought. Somewhere worth defending.