“They do?” The only person I’ve heard say something remotely similar is Clay, and I never put much weight in his stories.

“Sure. Traders, here and there. Loyalists who feel trapped by their pledge to the General.” Reed rubs the inside of his wrist with a thumb. He hasn’t been bound in days, but a rope burn lingers. “It’s just talk, people looking for hope outside of the Verdant. There’s no way to travel that course without dying—least that was true before wind wagons—but maybe our father tried anyway.”

Something Zuly said surfaces in my mind. I see in you someone I once knew. They were stubborn also, defiant. Wanted the world to make sense and for life to be easy.

Maybe it was all too much for my father, this world. He might have passed through Zuly’s before trying to cross the ocean and escape the wastes. Perhaps she saw him when she looked into my eyes. I think also about what Ma said to me—how my father couldn’t sit still, how he was always searching for something, digging, unearthing.

You are meant to have this lodestone, and I am meant to find another.

He was after the stone itself, searching for the rare material that acted as a compass in all weather, even the silent storms. I’m certain of it now.

He never really knew anything about the future, he just hoped. He hoped so hard that he tried to will it into existence. And for the most part, the future he wished for has come to pass. Reed went to Bedrock. I reconnected with him. We’re working together, against the General, on our way to find the Verdant. And my father, presumably, went looking for more lodestones beyond the dried ocean beds. It strikes me as selfish, irresponsible. Like the gods who abandoned us instead of offering guidance.

“What kind of parent leaves his kids to deal with a mess he saw coming?”

Reed doesn’t have an answer for that. It’s quiet for a moment. “You trust me yet?” he asks finally.

“I’m getting there. A cautious, uneasy sort of trust.”

“That’s not trust.”

I half smile. “What are you gonna do after this, Reed?”

“Whatever I can to help.” He says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s easy.

“You won’t be able to go back to Bedrock. Not if he knows you defected.”

“He doesn’t. And he won’t. We’ll figure it out.”

I wonder, briefly, if I even need the Verdant to barter my pack free. Reed is one of the General’s Four. Surely the General would want him back, would long to punish a defector. Could I trade Reed for the safety of my pack?

Reed’s face stills, his brow furrowing sharply.