He nods. “I know the way there. I can get you to her safely.”

Just paces away, Loyalists are shouting. It’s only a matter of time before their search brings them toward these tunnels.

I nod at the entrance. “Lead.”

Chapter Eighteen

We gag the guard, tie his hands behind his back, then lug him into the tunnel—far enough from the entrance that a Loyalist peering behind the blanket won’t see him, but not so far that we break a sweat.

It’s cool inside the mesa, and dark.

Asher swipes a flint and candle from the unconscious guard and gets a flame going. I follow his flickering form deeper into the tunnel.

“If we move fast, we’ll be out the other side by nightfall. We have to be out by nightfall.”

The tunnel will be searched eventually, and if Loyalists flood it while we’re still in here, there will be no escaping. Suddenly, this feels like the true barrel, not the town we’re leaving behind.

“You’ve been through this way before?”

He nods. “When I escaped Bedrock. The Oracle told me about it.”

“He’s dead now.”

Asher’s head ticks to the side. “I worried that might be the case. Don’t know why he helped me.”

“His daughter mentioned that he was executed for it.”

“Isla,” he says at a whisper.

He knew her before she was the Oracle, when she was her own person, with a name and dreams and wishes. Now she’s just another of the General’s tools.

It’s not such a mystery anymore why her father helped Asher. Freedom exists only if we can make our own choices.

“How’d you escape?” I ask. “During the fire.”

He doesn’t ask how I know about the fire, doesn’t even slow his step. “Those aqueducts that bring water to the crops? There’s similar piping that brings waste out of Bedrock. The Oracle told me how to access them.” He shudders slightly, as though the ghost of sewage still lingers on his skin. And it did linger, I’m sure. Water isn’t easy to come by once out of Bedrock. “The Oracle set the fire on midwinter night, so getting into the Barrel wasn’t too difficult. All of Bedrock was celebrating, and there was a festival in the Barrel’s market. I was probably through this tunnel before they realized I was missing. On the other side, I headed west. Made my way to Powder Town.”

He glances over his shoulder at me. I nod, as if this explains everything, even though I want to ask about Bain and Cree and how he ever managed to fall in with those rusted asses. How he went from the boy I once knew to one who would help con people into wagon cages.