“Oh, rust, Asher. I think every god in the sky knows how you feel at this point. You’ve said you don’t trust Reed about a hundred times since he showed up. You think I trust him any more?”

“You wanna bring him with us, so yeah.”

“I’m bringing him so I can keep my eyes on him. Better to have him on the wagon than running back to the General.” I glance at Rune’s cooling body, wondering if I should have spared the bird. We could have healed her up, sent her east with a fake message. But it’s too late for second-guessing. What’s done is done.

“You told him he could stay behind,” Asher points out.

“He’ll choose to come,” I say surely. “I didn’t really give him a choice, just the illusion of one. Now, how about we get started on this wind wagon?”

“Thank the gods,” Harlie says. “A person could die of boredom listening to you two argue.”

We spend the next several days working on the wagon. I measure and mark. Harlie cuts. Asher lugs supplies and is a fantastic sport about doing our bidding, even when it includes lying under the wind wagon and holding things in place for hours while Harlie and I see to fastening and securing.

All the while, Reed lumbers around camp, wrists still tied together. He hasn’t tried to run, which is the first thing that makes me consider that he might be telling the truth. The fact that no Loyalists come looking for him is another. I almost feel guilty about the first night he spent with us, the look he shot me as he sat in the dirt while Asher, Harlie, and I ate dinner.

“We couldn’t waste fresh meat,” I’d said to him. “You know how it is.”

“I’m still not eating her.” He glanced at the spit extending over the fire, and the pain he was feeling touched his eyes.

We could have burned Rune, but putting fresh meat on a pyre is like sowing fresh seeds and never watering them; you might as well pray to the gods to end you. And it wasn’t as if Harlie’s Hope had plentiful food to spare.

Still, I couldn’t shake the guilt. It was my own weakness, or perhaps proof that Reed’s story was true. Blood is the strangest bond; it makes you do wild things. Like trek through the ocean bed to bring your sister to a healer, or make an impossible promise to a baby you barely know.