With a yank, the worn fabric tears like Old World paper and hangs on my shoulders, my front shielded, but my back exposed. Sun kisses my skin. My flesh prickles with the strangeness of the sensation. I flinch at the whoosh of the whip being raised in the air.

“Wait!” someone shouts from above.

I look up. It’s one of the gunners along the rim of the mesa. His clothes are cleaner than the others, and he wears a ram-skull mask while the rest do not. Like all the gunners who have stopped to watch the whipping, his rifle is aimed at my back. “Those markings can’t be ruined.” The falcon I spotted earlier turns in circles high above his head.

“I’ll decide how to punish my property, Loyalist,” the man with the whip snaps.

“I’m not making a suggestion, I’m giving orders. Put her in the wagon for Bedrock. The General will see her.”

Even with my jacket back on, I feel exposed, naked. The leather kisses my bare skin. It’s another odd sensation, a reminder that all those years I spent following rules are now meaningless. My shirt was ripped. Everyone has seen my back. Everyone has seen the brand.

The wagon they drag me toward is part Old World tech. The bed is made from the chassis of a salvaged rover. Wooden wheels have been mounted where the Old World variety have failed, and a yoke designed for mules is attached to the front so the wagon can be towed by animals. Bars of woven scrub form the cage, and I’m thrown inside with four other prisoners. One is a boy of about fifteen. Two females are twice that. Their eyes drift to my shoulders, the side of my torso, eager to get a glimpse of the markings now hidden beneath my jacket. The last prisoner is Bay.

She is the only thing that keeps me from physically shaking with fear. I scoop her up, gather her into my chest. She’s smarter than she lets on, and if I tremble or cry, she’ll pick up on it.

Curse you, I feel like saying to her. Look what you made happen.

She’s got some sort of hold on me, a dark magic. Just a few days ago I wanted Zuly to take her. All I wanted when I met her was for her be someone else’s burden, and when the moment finally came, I fought it like a rusted idiot. Now we’re in another cage, headed to Bedrock, to the General.

Images of my pack’s smoldering huts flash when I close my eyes.

“Delta?”

I turn and find Asher behind me, his fingers curled around the scrub-woven bars that separate us. “Don’t drink anything they give you. Promise me this, Delta.”

Someone yells for him to get away from the wagon. The gunner from the rim. He’s approaching, rifle at the ready.