Harlie helps us get sailing and explains how we’ll travel in switchbacks on the way home, sailing west, then east, then west, then east, slowly cutting our way south against the headwind. When Asher, Reed, and I have a handle on the process, Harlie goes for a lie-down. She’s breathless and weak, meaning the silent storm is still raging.

By the third day, when Harlie’s feeling more like herself, I test a mag-rifle off the Gods Touched’s prow. It fires effortlessly, the blast echoing across the wastes. I smile to myself, giddiness coursing through me.

This is going to work.

We’re going to arm the General with weapons that will fail him at precisely the right time, and we’ll overrun him for good.

I just need the sun to cooperate, but if the report back at Eden taught me anything, it’s that suns are merely stars. Gods in their own right. They answer to no one but themselves.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

By the time I spot Harlie’s Hope through my binos it’s a hazy morning at dawn, and nearly half a moon has passed since we left Eden. We’re sunburned on the cheeks, wind-chapped from the headwind, and positively sick of smoked stallion. If I never have it again, it will be too soon.

Asher teases that I’ll be eating more tonight. And again tomorrow. We’ll be eating it until we reach Powder Town, but knowing we’re approaching Harlie’s Hope means the end is at least in sight.

I’m wiping dust from the front of my goggles when a strange shadow flits across the deck. I tilt my head up, search the sky, and spot it. A falcon. I race to the bow, bring my binos to my eyes. Sure enough, three dark figures on horseback are riding in from the south.

“Loyalists!” I call to the others.

The bird screeches above us, signaling to its team, as if our unnaturally tall mast couldn’t be spotted several clicks away.

“Call them off!” Asher shouts to Reed.

“I can’t! I have no way to signal them from here, and they’ll only shoot me the instant they realize I’ve defected.”

“Get one of the mag-rifles out,” I shout to Asher. “Two, actually. Harlie, you man the tiller. Reed? Stay low and see to the brakes. Asher and I will shoot as necessary.”

We should have had the weapons out all along, but I never expected to see anyone out this way. It’s a no man’s land, a dead end.

I don’t know how they found us. Maybe they’ve been searching for Reed ever since his communications with Bedrock went silent.

It doesn’t matter how it happened, just that it did.

They’ve found us, and there’s nowhere to hide.