Reed glances at me, his expression pained. Even knowing he was doing the right thing, it couldn’t have been easy, ending the lives of those Loyalist men, seeing the shock in their eyes when they realized they’d been betrayed.

The Prime calls for him, then me. “Meeting at Prime Hall. There are details to work out,” she says, and she starts up the street, answering questions of the townsfolk who have gathered.

I wonder why they don’t call her the Bringer of Life. She is a force, and Powder Town is lucky to have her.

The plan is this: Reed will head for Bedrock at dawn.

Some of the story he tells the General will be true: I cornered him at Harlie’s Hope, killed his bird, and held him captive.

The deaths of the other Loyalists . . . we’ll use that to our advantage.

Reed will say that the first group (the group we barely dodged when returning to Harlie’s Hope) died in a dust storm, but not before sending Ember back with a request for aid. The second group—the one he just lured into a trap with the Reaper? Reed will claim that I killed them. I hid among the rocks, took them and their horses out one by one. But while I was busy doing that, Reed got his hand on a spare knife and managed to kill me.

Exhausted and weak after a moon in captivity, he will claim to have burned my body rather than tow it to Bedrock. But he’ll bring with him a braid of my hair, my beloved jacket, and the ash of my bones, which will actually be the ashes of the Loyalists he killed.

“Will it work?” the Prime asks as we sit at the meeting. “Will he believe it?”

“He has no reason to doubt me,” Reed says. “And I’ll have Delta’s jacket and ashes to prove the point. Delta’s pack will remain safe from executions once I claim she’s dead. He won’t kill them when he needs workers.”

“And you’ll blow the powder when?” the Prime leads.

“The summer solstice, nearly a year from now.”

Given the increase in recent storms, we’ve estimated that the sun’s active cycle should kick off any day now, and according to what we learned in Eden, that cycle should last nine or ten moons. It will be over by midsummer, and the fleet should be ready by then too.

“I’ll make the powder explosion look like an accident,” Reed adds. “You’ll attack any time after that, but before you’re due to deliver his next shipment of powder.”

The Prime nods. “And if you have complications with the ‘accident’?”

“I’ll send word with Ember. And if you don’t hear from me at all by the solstice, it means I’ve been found out somehow, that I’m likely dead.”