If they’re throwing out the equipment, they’re not planning on making another voyage.

  This is it, for them. This dredge voyage will be their first and their last. They don’t need the buckets anymore. They’re full up with gold.

  Why do they want gold? Is it for the reasons I thought of earlier, all the uses they might have for it? Or do they need it as currency? Do they owe someone something?

  And why dump out the bins now? They could just store the gold in them until we get to wherever it is the raiders are going.

  The answer comes to me quickly. Because the bins are heavy. Very heavy. They want to keep the gold, but lose some of the weight.

  They have their precious cargo, but they need to speed things up. They’re worried about something. Or someone.

  “You want to go faster,” I say. “And you’re too heavy.”

  “The only people left on board are the ones we need to run the ship.” Porter rests his elbows on the platform railing, but his gaze darts across the floor, back toward the tailings stacker. There are dark shadows under his eyes. “I’ve sent everyone else on ahead of us. When we arrive at our destination, we’ll give the rest of your crew a choice about whether they want to stay with us, or die.”

  I laugh, hard and cold. “So now you give people a choice before you kill them?”

  “It’s more humane than what you’ve done,” Porter says.

  I take an involuntary step in his direction, ready to rush, but the handcuffs keep me locked. They slide back onto the hurt part of my hand, and I feel one of the blisters scrape and seep. “You shoot people in the back,” I say. “We made the armor after you killed first.”

  “I’m not talking about what’s happened on the river and the dredges,” Porter says.

  “That’s too bad,” I say, “because I am.” Pain and anger literally make me see red in that moment. Blood and burning and everything the raiders have done.

  “Listen for a minute.” Porter’s gone very still, and for the first time I can see straight into his eyes. They’re brown like mine and just as angry. “You only know what the Admiral’s told you,” he says. “You don’t know our side.”

  “I know my side,” I say. “I didn’t need the Admiral to tell me anything about you. I saw it for myself.”

  My whole body is burning. I’m ready to break. I want out of this skin. I want out of my own hot, blistering mind.

  “He was about to sound the alarm,” Porter says. “We had no choice.”

  “That’s a lie,” I say. “You could have shot him in the leg. Taken him down without killing him.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Lily asks. “Fix it?” She’s echoing our conversation in the captain’s quarters back to me. “You know we can’t.”

  I was right then. She’s right now.

  There’s no fixing this.

  The dead are the dead.

  “Don’t you want to know what the settlers did?” Lily asks. “That’s worse than shooting someone in the back?”

  I don’t. I look down at the crew working on the mining deck, the heavy bags of gold, anywhere but at these people who want to tell me that anything we’ve done is as bad as killing Call.

  “Have you noticed that we don’t have any children?” Porter asks.

  Brig’s face flashes in front of me, his careful, considering expression. He noticed.

  “We hide them,” Porter says. “Far away from here. Do you know why?”

  Of course I don’t. If I could move my hands I’d cover my ears. I have enough to bear without the raiders giving me more.

  “Your Admiral took them,” Lily says. “For years, you were raiding. You took our children and put them in your orphanages.”

  Orphanages. My body goes rigid. My bed. The heavy doors. The other children. The loneliness. So lonely, until Call.

  “And you call us raiders.” Porter’s voice is soft and furious.

  “That’s not true,” I say. “I grew up in an orphanage. And I remember my mother. I remember being raised in the Outpost before she died.”

  “Oh, you’re Outpost through and through,” Lily says, her voice poison. “But that doesn’t mean everyone in those orphanages is.” She points to a man down on the deck, who has a rifle trained on our machinists while they work. “That’s Mac. The settlers took his daughter. She was four. She’d be eight now.” Lily glares at me. “I saw it happen.”

  “The Admiral wanted more workers,” Porter says. “He convinced his Quorum that it was a humanitarian effort. He pointed out that if the Outpost took our children, they’d have access to medicine and a trade education. They could be raised to supplement and support the society of the Outpost.” Porter sighs, a long exhalation of anger and sadness. “He said it was a better life for the children than staying out here with us.”

  “That’s when we started moving,” Lily says, “but they kept finding us.”

  I take a step backward, stumbling over a sack of gold. Neither of them moves to catch me but I right myself before I fall. “I knew plenty of other kids in the orphanage where I lived,” I say. “None of them ever said they’d been stolen.”

  “The settlers take them when they’re very young,” Porter says. “They give the children a medicine to confuse them, and they’re told that their parents are dead. Later, memory will come back. Most children will remember their families. With time, they might even recollect the beginning of the raid. But they can’t remember exactly how they got where they are now. They can’t remember the end.”

  They can’t remember the end.

  No. This can’t be true. Can it?

  “Finish it for me,” Call said.

  Call. Is that why I see you everywhere out here?

  Was this your beginning?

  CHAPTER 27

  I WOULD REALLY LIKE A DRINK.

  Some food.

  Medicine.

  “It’s right here,” Lily says. “All of it.”

  We’re back in the captain’s quarters. My quarters. I suppose they’re keeping me here because it’s small and easy to secure. And if I’m locked up alone I can’t persuade any of my remaining crew to help me. I don’t think they would. But Porter doesn’t know that.

  My hand hurts so much that I keep forgetting to breathe, as if holding my breath could halt the pain. In and out, Poe.

  In the circle of light from the lamp, I watch Lily. She’s sitting on a chair. I’m on the floor again, back against the wall. On the desk is a glass of water and a piece of the dry flat bread we call tack, the kind that lasts well through a long trip. Next to the bread is the pack of medicine from my bag, the same pills we were all issued when we came on board. Antibiotics. Something for pain.

  There’s also a pencil on the desk and a copy of the schematics of the armor.

  My armor.

  My ship.

  “You can eat whenever you’re ready,” Lily says. “You can have the medicine. All you have to do is fix your armor.” She slides the schematics closer to me.

  They’d have gotten these from the bridge. Who’s up there steering the ship now?

  And the motor. I can hear it. The ship is too heavy with all this gold. Off-loading the mining buckets didn’t help enough. The motor doesn’t sound as smooth as it should. There’s a hint of something labored in the pitch; a weariness pervades the tune of the dredge.

  My ship is struggling without me.

  I swallow. My throat is dry. My stomach rumbles. My hand throbs. The infection is spreading. I can feel it in my body, sinewing its way from my hand to my limbs, my mind, my heart.

  I don’t want Lily to see me fall asleep, see me lose consciousness, but I’m barely hanging on.

  I am a parched mouth, an empty belly, a seething, burning hand.

  That’s all.

  “Water, food, medicine,” Lily says. “Right here. All you have to do is help us fix your ship.”

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m no leader.

  I’ve tried and tried and it never ends.

  I’m so tired, in the way I was right after the dredge came back from its first armored voyage, when the Admiral sent me word that it had worked perfectly. I went back to my apartment and slept for days.

  I don’t think I can do this anymore.

  Call.

  I don’t.

  I grind my back into the rivets on the wall in an attempt to stay awake. If I fall asleep . . . if I let myself go . . . Call will die too. Because I’m the one who remembers him best. I’m the one who loved him most.

  Will I always be in love with him?

  Am I doomed to live forever like this, always wanting, physically aching, for someone it is impossible to have?

  Call’s not here. I don’t even have his ruler anymore. Every trace of him is gone.

  I rest the back of my head against the wall.

  I don’t have love.

  And there’s a bigger problem.

  In this moment, here in the ship I’ve lost, I don’t even have hate.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” Lily says, her voice furious. For a minute I think she’s going to spit on me, scream at me, and I welcome it.

  “You’re going to die to spite us,” she says.

  I shrug. It’s one of the movements I can actually make.

  Lily’s lips come together in a line of anger. I smile. My eyes close.

  * * *

  • • •

  On Call’s last night, we were up on the deck looking for stars. But the first night on the dredge, we were down in its belly on duty, listening to the ship’s grating, grinding sound.

  “I don’t mind having night shift,” I told Call. My voice was already going hoarse with trying to speak over the noise. “I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway.”

  “Me either.” There was a streak of grease across his cheek. His blue eyes were the deepest, most vivid thing in the room.

  My whole body vibrated with the pulse of the dredge. It reverberated through my feet; my hair was electric, crackling out of its braids. Call grinned at me and reached up his hand to touch the ends of it. We’d climbed up to the platform on the mining deck and stood looking at the scrawled codes for the bell rings and the messages that others had written there, long before the Outpost, when the dredge belonged to a different world.

  TC is a damn fool, someone had written. RJ + EL, someone else had scratched.

  “We’re going to get kicked off the ship,” I said in Call’s ear, as his hands wrapped around me, his palms pressed into the small of my back. My heart pounded against his and I slid one finger under the neck of his shirt, across his collarbone. “And it’s only the first night.”

  “That would be bad,” he agreed, waiting, his lips a breath from mine. “Should we stop?”

  The ship was so loud I could hardly hear him, but I knew the words he was saying. I saw them on his lips and in his eyes.

  “No,” I said.

  * * *

  • • •

  No.

  I wake up with that word in my mind, and my body on fire.

  Fever. From the dream? From my injury? Or because I’m ready to do what I have to do?

  I glance over at the desk. The food, water, and medicine are gone. The schematics are still there.

  There they are. The sounds that woke me. Something on the other side of the door. Hints of movements made, of words softly spoken.

  I get to my feet by propping myself against the wall and sliding up.

  Who’s coming in?

  I crouch low, in the corner where the door will open. There’s almost no room to move in here. I’ll have to make it count.

  The door opens, quiet. Someone doesn’t want to wake me.

  Rich, appetizing scents float in from the hallway.

  I go weak in the knees. Food. It’s something warm. Healthy. Fresh. Garlic. Meat. Sage?

  And then, through the door.

  Not Lily.

  Not Porter.

  Tam.

  My thoughts go racing, flying.

  He’s in league with them.

  They sent him to talk to me.

  He brought me food.

  We are inches apart. He has a rifle on his back and a tray full of food.

  He’s looking for me. He thinks I’ll be on the bed or sitting against the wall.

  In the split second it takes him to find me, I move, springing with all the strength I have.

  In one motion, I bring my hands up, slamming my cuffs under the tray and sending everything flying. The food’s hot, burning on me, burning on him, and he raises his hands to shield his eyes. I shove him against the bed, and he falls, and I pull the rifle from his back. It’s not easy and I have to put one knee on him, use my weight to hold him down.

  But then I’ve got it.

  “Poe,” Tam says.

  They wouldn’t have sent him alone, so I turn for the door, where Lily is already pushing through, a rifle trained on me.

  My aim is worthless with these handcuffs on. I don’t even get her in the leg. But I hit the door near her and she jumps back.

  A mistake. She hasn’t lived in these close quarters as long as I have.

  If she’d come in, I wouldn’t have been able to get out. She could have blocked my exit.

  But as it is, I’m through the door, her rifle pointed at me, and I’m facing her and moving backward down the corridor, shooting all along the way, a catastrophe of bad aim, a total waste of ammunition, and then—

  I get lucky.

  For once.

  Tam comes out to help Lily and in that moment I shoot again and it hits. I can’t tell who. Someone goes down, the other becomes tangled up with them and as for me—

  I run.

  * * *

  • • •

  There are only so many places you can hide on a ship.

  But.

  I was on another ship in another lifetime.

  With Call.

  And we knew all the secret places. Every one.

  CHAPTER 28

  IF I CAN GET UP THE STAIRS.

  If I can get near the bridge.

  If I can get to the closet next to the bridge.

  If they’ve left the closet unlocked.

  If. Over and over again.

  Up the steps, the adrenaline rush carrying me fast, though I’m sweating way too much from one short skirmish and a couple of flights of stairs. The stairwell is empty. Didn’t everyone hear the shots? Why didn’t anyone come out of the other cabins in the hallway?

  Too afraid?

  No alarm sounds. Don’t Lily and Tam know how to set it off? Do they not want to admit they’ve lost me?

  I hear footsteps on the stairs behind. Just one person. Was my hit good enough to incapacitate one of them?

  Even if it wasn’t, they’ll have had to divide. Lily or Tam coming up, the other one going down, trying to see if I’ve run to the top of the ship or down to the mining deck. They’ll want to seal off the escape routes right away.

  Last time I jumped from the deck. Not tonight. I leave the stairway a floor early and head for the captain’s bridge.

  There’s a closet there, a deep, narrow one with a few odds and ends stored inside. Not everyone knows about it, because when the door to the bridge is open—which it often is, so whoever is steering can better hear how the ship is sounding below—the closet entrance is hard to see.

  I slow down as I come to the bridge. The door is open. I catch one second, one quick glimpse of the bridge, all lit up, the night dark beyond its window, and a figure standing inside. Porter, at the helm. I think he’s alone, but then a shadow moves near him, out of a corner.

  Is that Brig?

  Did they betray me, like Lily said? Are they all on board already?

  Don’t get distracted.

  My breathing is loud and ragged, but I think my ship will cover the sound. I edge the bridge door back an inch. Like most of the others on the ship, it’s a sliding door to save space. I push it another inch.

  Do I hear someone coming down the hall?

  There’s the closet. If I can edge the bridge door a little farther . . .

  Footsteps, closer.

  I have to take the risk.

  I slide the bridge door back, fast, grab hold of the handle to the closet door. It’s unlocked. I almost sob with relief.

  I slide it open just enough to slip inside.

  Please don’t see me.

  * * *

  • • •

  Trapped. Entombed. Cocooned and cut down.

  The closet is not empty, and I trip over something.

  My hands fly up to shield my fall and catch on cloth, thick and clinging to my face, keeping me from pushing any farther inside. My knees hit hard, bulky bundles resting on the floor.

  I reach back blind with my foot, kicking wildly, until I feel the door, and then I shove it shut. A metallic ricochet, a clang and a click. It’s closed.

  I’m inside.

  I can’t catch my breath. A pencil-thin rectangle of light seeps around the door frame. At last I pull my hands away from the cloth, push myself up from the thing on which I’m kneeling.

  I put my burned hand to my chest in an attempt to calm my racing heart.

  It’s a trick I taught Call, one night after a bad dream.

  “My heart won’t stop pounding,” he said.

  “Remind it where it is,” I said, and I put his hand over his heart. “Remind yourself who you are.”

  He left his hand there and I kept mine there too. I could feel the beat. Call. Call. Call. I said it for him.

  Call. Call. Call.

  I nudge the bundle on the floor with my foot. As soon as I do, relief and realization immerse me. It’s gold. Of course. They’ve stored more bags here. But what about the cloth that seems to be hanging from the ceiling, floating, reaching out to enshroud me?