Tam was right. Burning would be a horrible way to die. I’m almost silly with pain, but there are more trees to go.

  A shriek sings through the night.

  “Fire!” someone calls out from up high in one of the trees. “FIRE!” A woman’s voice, terrified. Someone else calls back.

  They are here. In the houses, in the trees.

  In the smoky dark, my hand still aching, lights beginning to bloom above me, I realize: I don’t want to be here for this. When they die and scream. I have never been there for it. Not when the dredge cut them.

  I wasn’t even there when Call died.

  There are two more fires to start.

  Can they see me in the dark? A demon crouched against the blue white orange of the blaze?

  The fires take the trees like lovers. Lick, flicker, touch and taste, and then—

  A roar of consummation.

  I’ve reached the last tree. I hiss my breath in, steel myself against the pain.

  In the moment before I touch the stove to the kindling, I make another mistake. A movement above me catches my eye, and I look up.

  A silhouette against the lamplight. Someone lowering a ladder.

  They’re trying to escape, of course. I should set the tree on fire. But. Something about the shape of this shadow.

  I set down the stove, put my good hand on the ladder.

  Call?

  The figure, outlined against the canvas walls. Coming closer.

  It could be true.

  What if he survived? What if I only thought he was dead? What if the raiders took him with them?

  You know what you saw, Poe. You know you saw me dead.

  Don’t tell me you’re dead, Call. Don’t tell me what I saw.

  The idea inside me is an enormous, beating bird, a huge, flopping fin-over-fin fish. It is not even part of me but it’s living in me. How long has it been here? This thought? This openmouthed, hungry hope?

  Ever since the first night when I saw the raiders’ houses, I’ve been drawn to them in spite of myself, like a moth to the flame. Maybe this is why.

  I’m coming, Call.

  Up the ladder, into the tree. I leave some of my skin on the rungs when I forget and use my injured hand. The ladder creaks slightly under my weight.

  A figure darkens the doorway. Come to meet me. My lips open, my eyes close.

  Call. I have missed you. More than I can say. Or breathe. Or live.

  Do you know how it has been to exist without you?

  I open my eyes.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE LAST THING I NOTICE before the figure takes my hand:

  My crew. I glance over my shoulder and see their eyes reflected in the underbrush, like animals. Watching me.

  They came back.

  I told them not to but they did.

  I’m sorry, I want to say. I looked for the traitor in all of them. Brig. Naomi. Eira. Tam.

  I should have known it was me.

  CHAPTER 24

  HE REACHES FOR MY HAND.

  When I see him up close, I know my mistake.

  Not Call.

  Tall, spare, dark eyes and hair, older than Call will ever be. It’s the man who was in charge the night they took the first dredge. The man who gave me the message to take back to the Outpost: This is the last time we leave anyone alive.

  I saw his shadow, and I turned him into Call. I thought of that night, of a ship burning bright, and I betrayed myself. I told myself Call might be alive when I knew he was dead.

  The raider grabs my burned hand to pull me up into the tree house, and the pain of it, the nerves on fire and seeing the face of the person who killed Call . . .

  Not Call.

  The light goes out.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I wake, the raider is sitting across from me. My hands and feet are tied. It takes me a moment to focus, to look around into the shadows and adjust my eyes, but when I realize where I am, I almost laugh.

  The captain’s cabin.

  I’m back on the ship.

  Even though there’s a bed and a chair in the cabin, they’ve got me propped up against the wall, rivets and seams poking against the knobs of my spine.

  Still, they haven’t killed me outright. And someone has dressed my wound. My hand is wrapped in gauze and the skin around it is clean. The rest of me—what I can see, anyway—is filthy, still dressed in my undershirt and uniform trousers and boots.

  “How many died?” I ask.

  The raider has weather-beaten skin, dirt under his fingernails. He holds Brig’s knife, and Tam’s knife, in his hands.

  I should have given one to Brig.

  Did they capture him? And the others?

  And then I notice that my shirt pocket is missing the familiar weight of Call’s ruler. No. Did it fall out when I was setting the trees on fire? When I climbed the ladder?

  Did it burn?

  I want to ask the raider if he took it, but I can’t, not without giving away how much it means to me. Instead, I repeat my earlier question, making it more specific.

  “How many raiders died?” I shift my legs, bringing my knees up in front of me, trying not to panic at the loss of the ruler and the way they’ve trussed me up.

  “We’re not called raiders,” he says. “We’re drifters.” He puts both knives in his shirt pocket. Is the ruler in there, too? Then he stands and stretches his arms up to touch the low ceiling. It’s torture. I wish I could do the same.

  “And you’re the leader.” It must be him. He’s the one that led them the night Call died; he’s the one occupying the captain’s cabin—my cabin—now.

  “Now I lead your crew, too,” he says. “They’ve agreed to help us in exchange for their lives.” He sits back down on the chair, tapping his fingers on his knee. “Poe Blythe. Former captain of this ship. The architect of its armor. You’re going to help us repair it.” He indicates my hand. “We bandaged your burn. It’s bad, but you should still be able to work.”

  Does he expect me to be grateful? I study him closely. He has plenty of gray mixed in with the dark of his hair. He’s clean-shaven. His eyes are inscrutable, and his mouth gives nothing away.

  “I’m not going to help you fix the ship,” I say. And then, I ask my question again. I won’t stop until he answers. “How many raiders died?”

  “My name is Porter,” he says. “Don’t you want to know how many of your crew are left before you ask how many of mine are dead?”

  “I know you killed at least one,” I say. “The body was in the river.”

  “He tried to escape through the tailings stacker.” Porter hitches the chair closer to me. His eyes are unafraid, calm, though one of his legs bounces up and down, burning nervous energy.

  “Without his boots?”

  Porter shrugs. “He wasn’t as lucky as your friend Tam.”

  “Tam’s not my friend,” I say. I’ll cover for the others as long as I can. It’s better if Porter thinks I’m working alone.

  But from the raise of his eyebrows, I don’t think he’s buying it. “Whether he is or not, we’ll find him. We’ll find all of them.” Porter pushes back the chair and stands up again. The whole time I’ve been awake, he’s been in perpetual motion. It’s killing me that I’m not.

  “None of them matter to me,” I say. I sniff the close air in the cabin, trying to smell what Porter won’t tell me. Do I smell charring, burning, death on his clothes?

  There are familiar scents. Singed cloth, kerosene, something else I can’t quite describe, though I recognize it. Something cold.

  Porter flicks a glance to me and then one at the door. He reminds me of a bird, watching, eyes on everything and wings at the ready. “If you fix the armor, I’ll know you’re really Poe Blythe.”

  I almost laugh. What kind of game is this? He wants me to fix the armor to earn my own name? And why would anyone want to be me? “Everyone knows I’m Poe Blythe.” I think of how I must look—knotted braids, filthy clothes, angry, dirty face. “You said it yourself. My crew told you.”

  “The whole crew knows the Admiral said you’re Poe Blythe,” he says. “They didn’t know you before.”

  “Naomi did,” I say. “The second mate. We were together on the other voyage.”

  Porter shrugs. “I can’t ask her. We haven’t found her yet.”

  Unease bubbles up in me. Is this a good sign? That they didn’t capture her in the woods? Or is it bad? She was sick. I hope the others have stayed with her.

  “You know,” I say. “You saw me on the ship. Two years ago.”

  There. This is the first time I’ve said it. Admitted that we’ve seen each other before. That I know him and what he’s capable of.

  Porter doesn’t blink. “Doesn’t mean that you’re the same person who built the armor.” He takes hold of my upper arm, leans in. “For all I know, Poe Blythe is a myth.”

  The myth is true, I want to say. Because of you. You killed Call.

  “The sooner you cooperate, the easier it will be,” Porter says. “You won’t eat or drink until you work.” He lets go of my arm and opens the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “How many?” I ask, as he leaves me behind. “How many died in the fire?”

  He disappears without answering.

  But I think I can make a rough estimate.

  For him: too many. For me: not enough.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE NEXT PERSON TO COME IN is a young woman who looks a few years older than me, with long red hair and a rifle strapped to her back. As soon as she enters, I know she’s angry.

  She sits down in the chair and brings her face close to mine. As if to show she’s not afraid. And she isn’t—I can’t find any trace of fear on her face or in her movements. But she hates me and wants me to know it.

  She doesn’t even wait for me to speak first.

  “They’re leaving your friends out there,” she says.

  Friends. Everyone keeps using that word.

  I wonder if anyone would use it for me.

  “They can either die or come back to the ship,” she says. “But we won’t waste any resources looking for them.”

  “You tried that earlier,” I say. “And it didn’t work. You realized you needed me to fix the armor.”

  “Maybe.” She raises her eyebrows. “Or maybe you walked right into our trap when you tried to set your little fires.” She makes me sound pathetic. I don’t try to sit up straighter. That would be too obvious a sign that she’s getting to me. But I level my gaze at her.

  “Or it could be,” she says, “that they turned you in. Maybe they betrayed you. They might be in the cafeteria right now, toasting your capture. You don’t know if anything I’m telling you is true.”

  She has an accent I can’t place; one that doesn’t sound quite like the other raiders. When she leans back and crosses her feet at the ankles, I notice that her boots are different, too—the design is sleeker than any I’ve seen, and the leather is good quality. They’re made for use, though—they are scuffed and worn. I’d like to try them on.

  “The ship’s taking on plenty of gold,” she says. “Mining system’s working fine.”

  The ship.

  I try to stay expressionless, but something in my face seems to let her know that her thrust has struck home. She smiles at me, a smile that’s less an expression of emotion than a calculated twist of her lips.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “I’m not going to answer that.” She rolls up her sleeves, cuffing them neatly. Is she planning to hit me? Her forearms are scarred. She’s been burned, too, but a while ago. Though the injuries have healed, the scars make some of her skin look mapped. I envy every easy movement, and the relative cleanliness of her blue button-down shirt, her shining hair. “I’ve heard all the rumors about you. The story is that we killed someone you loved on a voyage two years ago, and you decided to hunt us down.”

  Don’t you dare speak about Call.

  I turn away but she moves so she can keep her face in mine. “Settlers always take,” she says. The rifle on her back points up to the ceiling like a finger gesturing in accusation or obscenity. “That’s what you do.”

  “You hadn’t even figured out how to mine the gold for yourselves,” I say. “It was fair game.”

  “You think all you’ve taken from us is gold?” She settles back, but every muscle is tense now, all pretense of relaxation gone. “I want you to fix this ship, Poe,” she says.

  Hearing my name in her mouth makes me want to cringe, but I don’t let myself. “Too bad it’s not up to you, Lily,” I say.

  “That’s not my name.”

  “You wouldn’t tell me what it was,” I say. “So I’m naming you after my ship.”

  “It’s ours now,” Lily says. “And you are going to fix the armor. And then I’m going to feed you to the dredge and let it chew you up.”

  I push myself away from the wall so that I’m sitting up straighter. “That’s specific.”

  “I’ve been planning it for a while,” Lily says. She reaches for my hands. I try to snatch them away from her, but the sudden movement peels the bandage from my skin and I hiss without meaning to. So I don’t pull away again when she begins to untie them, her fingers confident and quick. “We’re going down to the mining deck so you can get to work on fixing that panel,” she says. “If you try to escape, I’ll step on your burned hand. Kick you in the ribs. Whatever I have to do.”

  I don’t doubt that she would. Because I think I know what happened. Why she hates me in such a precise way.

  “My armor killed someone you loved.” And then, because I’ve lived it too, I amend that last part. “Someone you love.”

  Lily’s lips are a thin line. Her eyes blaze into me.

  “So who was it?” I ask. “Father? Mother? Sister? Friend? Lover?”

  In a swift motion, Lily closes in on me, narrowing the small distance between us so I see her eyes, her freckles, the twist of her mouth and the glint of her teeth. In spite of myself, I blink.

  “Fix it,” she says.

  As tempting as it is, as recently as I myself made the mistake of hoping that the impossible might be true—when I thought I saw Call, there and alive and waiting for me—it’s important to remember what things are.

  The dead are the dead.

  Our eyes meet.

  “You know I can’t,” I say.

  CHAPTER 26

  DOWN WE GO, into the belly of the dredge.

  As we descend the stairwell to the mining deck, Lily and I are so close that I can hear her breathing behind me. For a minute I think about stopping in my tracks, bringing my head back to knock into her chin, catching her off guard and taking her down. She reads my mind, and I feel her press the rifle into my spine. “Keep moving,” she says.

  We go through the open door at the bottom of the stairs, and I breathe in the motor and dirt smells of the mining deck. Two of my machinists and an electrician look up, and their faces go slack and shocked at the sight of me. They’re working on the disemboweled control panel, the one I shot, and they’re surrounded by wiring, capacitors, and solenoids. I wonder if they’ve used every single spare part we brought on board to try and fix the mess I made.

  “Hello, Officer Wray, Officer Lopez, Officer Jones,” I say, and Officer Jones raises his hand, the one that’s not coiled in a fistful of red wire, to salute. Then he realizes what he’s doing and drops his arm down to his side, darting a nervous glance at Porter, who’s standing next to him. “Keep up the good work,” I say as we pass by, as if I’m the captain and I never left and they’re not working for Porter now. As if they’re not undoing everything I’ve done.

  They want to survive. I understand that. But it’s going to make everything harder.

  “Up here,” Porter says. He motions for Lily and me to follow him up the metal stairs to the platform, the one where Brig and I stood before the raiders took the ship. I notice enormous canvas sacks and burlap bags and crew kit packs all stuffed and slumped against the railings, on top of the platform, and down on the floor of the mining deck. They’re everywhere. Are they bodies? I nudge one with my foot. It’s full of hard, lumpy, smaller shapes.

  Gold. Have they really taken on so much in so short a time?

  “It’s exactly what you think it is,” Porter says. At the top of the platform, he and Lily position me so I’m looking out over the main part of the deck instead of in the direction of the stacker. I have a bird’s-eye view of the work they’re doing and all the gold they’ve taken on. The storage bins are full. They’ve even taken the mining buckets off the elevator and filled them with gold. Sacks are everywhere. Several of the raiders’ light little boats are down on the floor of the mining deck, and they’re also filled with bags of gold.

  As I watch, I notice that some of the crew is dumping gold out of one of the mining buckets. It takes four men to do the job. The gold tumbles onto the floor. The men haul the bucket over to the opening where the buckets usually enter the ship and, to my shock, shove the empty container into the river.

  They’re jettisoning it.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yell before I even realize it.

  A flash of a face—someone on the floor looks up and spares me a glance, but not for long.

  The workers tip over the second bucket.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask Porter. Why would they dump the mining buckets overboard? That means they can’t use them again. They’ve taken on about as much gold as they can carry, but wouldn’t they want to keep the equipment intact for another voyage?

  Think, Poe.