Someone’s always on watch, making sure I can’t break a bar on the wagon’s cage and slip free. When it’s Asher’s turn and the others are sleeping, he drops a squab wing at my feet. I eat like a heathen, then toss the bone into nearby scrub, causing the goat to bleat at me before she returns to munching on the greenery. I sleep eventually, exhaustion pulling me under.

We start moving again just before dawn. A headache throbs between my eyes. I haven’t had any water since before West Tower, I realize. Haven’t needed to pee either. I’m dehydrated.

I lie on my side in the bed of the wagon, curling myself around Bay, and try to ignore the scratchiness in my throat.

Chapter Eight

It goes on like that for another two days. Traveling across desolate land. Spending nights at camps the boys seem to be familiar with. I never see Burning Ground, so we must be staying well away from it. Asher says little to me, but he always gives me a bite to eat during his evening watch. In the worst heat of the day, Bain even allows me to have water. A corpse won’t fetch him much when we get to the Barrel.

To keep from going mad, I talk to Bay. I tell her about the dying earth and the deserting gods and the stars that judge us. I even sing her a lullaby Ma used to sing to me. It calms my nerves as much as hers.

By noon on the third day, the sun is high in the sky, red-angry and gleaming, and the land has changed.

Sand and dirt have all but vanished, giving way to hard rock. Not packed, dry earth like the land near Dead River, but honest-to-gods rock. Rock everywhere, rolling and bucking and spreading north, with shallow ruts worn into their surface. Ahead of us, a wall of it sprouts for the heavens, rock stretching east and west for several clicks, as solid as can be, save for one narrow pass.

“A mesa,” Asher says when he sees me staring.

“Huh?”

“That’s what you call a rock formation like that. A mesa.”

I wonder if he was as awestruck as I am when he saw one for the first time. I’m about to ask him where he learned the term, but Bain glares at us over his shoulder and Asher falls back.

Squinting, I can make out sun-bleached canopies stretching over the pass that cuts through the mesa and a series of wooden bridges snaking back and forth along the rim. Below, additional platforms and walkways seem to be built on top of one another, lining the sides of the pass like a skeleton stairway.