I hunch over, instinctively protecting the worthless, always hungry, never sleeping baby in the sling. Heels connect with my back, and I go sprawling forward. I hear my attacker land on the platform. Then a second set of boots. There’s two of them. Two, plus the bait. I roll over, Baby still nestled against my chest. She’s wailing now, and I palm the back of her small head, like my lone hand has any chance of actually protecting her. A young man towers over us with a blade pointed at me. My blade. I dropped it when I fell.

“Skies, it’s a young one. With a baby, too!”

His companion lets out a whoop. “We’ll get paid good for this. Nice catch, Asher.” He claps the bait on the shoulder and I think I must have heard him wrong. I think also that surely more than one person has that name. I’ve never met another before, but it’s possible.

But then the bait lifts his goggles and I’m staring into a set of eyes I haven’t seen since childhood—staring at a ghost.

He’s lost the youth in his cheeks, and his hair has faded from brilliant sunshine to dull straw. His jaw has hardened, his mouth grown thin. Everything about him has changed, sharpened, steeled, but those eyes are the same, bluer than the sky. Calmer than the still after a storm. The color of the ocean that once was.

“Asher?” I manage. I’m shocked and relieved and furious in the same breath. “What the hell?”

“Wait, don’t!” he shouts, lurching for his companion. But the man’s boot comes out of nowhere, knocking my head so hard I see stars.

Stars, stars everywhere. Worthless, deserting gods.

The world goes dark.

Chapter Seven

When I come to, I’m in a small wagon that they must have kept hidden around the back side of the tower. Woven scrub and driftwood arch over me, trapping me inside like a caged animal. Baby is with me, but my knives are gone. We’re moving beneath the black of night, and the goat follows the wagon, towing my dragger and gear.

I curse up a storm, kick at the sideboards, make threats I have no ability to carry out. When that gets no response, I try a more tactful approach, offering my captors the jars stashed in my pack, the goat, everything on the dragger. The only thing I don’t mention is the lodestone. The two men at the yoke haven’t slowed their pace since they started hauling the wagon from West Tower, and it’s clear that I’m the prize. If I offer up the lodestone, they’ll just take it and sell me anyway.

I hope the bastards make a misstep into Burning Ground. Maybe I can break out in the chaos, assuming that Asher finds his conscience and helps me.