“The General is going to kill them, Asher. My entire pack. Even Bay. They’re dead if I don’t figure out how to read the map. The mare will help us make good time. If I just get out of here . . . Find another gods touched, someone who can read whatever language most of the brand is in . . .”

“The mare will get you caught.”

“You owe me this, Asher. You helped sell me, dammit.”

Regret glints in his eyes. “I did,” he admits. “And I’m so sorry. No amount of apologizing will make up for it. But I’ve shown up at the Vulture’s Roost every day since they took you to Bedrock. I showed up even though I never expected to see you again. And now that I have, I’m not throwing away a second chance.” He swallows, looks at me pleadingly. “I know how to get us out of here, Delta. Into the wastes, just like you want. It’s just not through the southern pass.”

I frown. That’s what makes the Barrel the Barrel. A single passageway through the mesa. It wouldn’t be a barrel if other routes branch off it.

“Do you trust me?” Asher asks.

I answer honestly. “I don’t have much of a choice.”

Asher leads.

The Loyalists are in a frenzy of activity—questioning people in the market, storming shacks and shanties in the Barrel. On the gunner walkways overhead, their weapons scan for a girl with a branded back.

Thanks to our dark ensembles, Asher and I blend in on the canyon floor. He even has a skull mask. Stolen, most likely. He must have been holding it when he found me in the Roost, and a good thing, too. If he’d been wearing it, I’d have cracked it in two when punching him, and it wouldn’t be diverting eyes from us as it is now. Among the chaos, we’re just two more Loyalists sweeping the Barrel.

A boom echoes from the southern end, far out of sight.

“What was that?”

“The gate,” Asher says. I remember the raised gate I saw when I first entered the Barrel, the spikes that are now surely buried in dirt. “No one will leave until they’ve found you—or until they’re convinced you were never here to begin with.”

He darts behind a shanty and pulls me to a crouch alongside a pile of storage crates. Just ahead is a single Loyalist guard, standing watch before a woven blanket that hangs against the canyon wall.

Asher puts a finger to his lips, then reaches behind his back, procuring a hand sling from the waistband of his pants. He can’t be serious.

I motion to the black powder rifle on my shoulders. The weapon is a pain to load, but it will be more reliable than the sling, especially at this range.