She couldn’t worry about that right now. Right now, she needed to prioritize each problem and build a strategy. Oran was alive, and he’d stay that way until Sister was done with him. Her first priority had to be locating her girls. Today, they would scout each of the prisons to find them. Once they’d done that, she could figure out how to free them.

Oran was likely being held in a different location, which meant she needed to plan not one, but two rescues. One of which she’d have to complete without the help of the Blades.

Caledonia kicked at the smooth-paved ground, winning a glare from a Bullet passing in the opposite direction. She glared right back and kept pushing up the hill. She needed more time, but every minute they spent here was a fresh risk. Sooner or later, someone was going to figure out the Beacon had come to port bearing the wrong crew. That or Pine was going to murder one too many Bullets.

From one cross street to the next, the buildings grew lower to the ground, allowing more light to fill the channels between. Caledonia paused to take in her new surroundings and was surprised to find that the buildings here weren’t constructed of the same blue-gray stone as elsewhere in town, but out of endless panes of self-healing glass.

In the first, the glass was so densely fogged that she could see nothing but vague shadows within. The next was more of the same, but the third was clear, and through the windows she saw long rows of tables piled with soil.

Caledonia edged closer, scanning the large room for any other presence. It was empty, as was the street around her. Hurrying to the door, she waited one minute more, then entered.

The air inside smelled overwhelmingly fresh and loamy. Caledonia had only smelled something similar once before after a hard rain in the Blades’ camp, when soil and fern and moss all sighed with relief. It made her long for something she’d never had, and made her hope that they could all have it again.

She moved between rows of long tables, noting that the soil on each was a slightly different shade of brown. On the very last table, it was nearly white. It sifted through her fingers more finely than sand, leaving them coated with a ghostly powder. She recognized it immediately. This bleached soil was the reason the northern colonies remained dependent on the coastline for sustenance. It was the reason they all relied on the oceans and what few islands had survived. It was the reason Aric had come to power. He’d found a way to reclaim it and then he kept it a secret.

And that reclamation happened right here.