Pewter shoves me, but she’s so weak she ends up clutching her wrist to her chest and fleeing into the fields. Saph catches her a few rows over, drapes a blanket over her shoulders, and walks her, sobbing, to a wagon where she can sit.

“It’s good—clean,” I repeat to my pack and the other workers still watching me. I retrieve the ladle and scoop a drink from the wagon, sampling it before them. “How often did you see the Loyalists drink the water they gave you?” Foreheads wrinkle with thought. “It will be hard for a few days, I won’t deny that. But this will make you well.”

Alder shoulders through the crowd, staggers up to me. Her brown hair, streaked with white, hangs in strings. She pauses before me, peering at my face. “Are you gods touched? You look familiar.”

“No. There are no more gods touched among us. I am Delta the Verity, but you know me as Delta of Dead River.”

A glimmer flashes in her eyes—recognition. “Delta,” she says softly, and cups my cheeks. “Where have you been, child?”

“Everywhere on the wastes, it feels like. And all to get back here.”

Alder kisses my forehead softly and walks to the wagon. Retrieves a fresh ladle of water. Drinks swiftly.

The crowd watches.

“Is it good?” someone asks.

Alder takes another sip. “It is plain, but yes. Delta the Verity drinks it, so it must be. She wields the truth.”

The group rushes to join her.

That evening, ribbons of light paint the northern horizon, a silent storm building. By tomorrow the mag-rifles will no longer work. The Prime sends the Reaper to salvage whatever black powder remains from our wind wagons. Most of the Loyalists have stepped down willingly, ready to serve the Prime, and those who haven’t are already locked up and detained. Still, she wants powder on hand, and she has confiscated all the modified rifles for the Reaper’s troops. Saph is sent on horseback to Powder Town with a message to deliver several wagons of powder to Bedrock as soon as possible.

I’m exhausted from the day, which feels like it’s been years long, but there is something I have to do before I rest. I head to the nursery.

The same caretaker who thought me a threat earlier now shows me to a sunken area of the room, where a baby lies on her back, playing with a wooden rattle.