We should not be here in the forest, cold and hungry with debris in our hair. We should be safe, warm and fed, on my ship. Whoever did this will pay. Anger wells up inside me and I grip the knife tightly.

  Brig said I was the one person he didn’t think was the traitor. But I can’t say I feel the same about him.

  Or any of them.

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN THE RAIDERS HAVE ALL MOVED ON, when we can no longer hear the sounds of them pushing through the forest, the four of us edge out into a clearing. “Food first,” I whisper.

  The raiders didn’t bother to hide the evidence of their camp. They tidied up and took what they needed, but there are footprints everywhere, drag marks in the dirt, fire pits blackened with burned wood. And compost piles. Flies buzz busily around them. We all fall silently to picking through the refuse, pulling out bits of meat, vegetable peelings, an apple core. The raiders’ castoffs raise questions in my mind. What kind of animals do they hunt? Where did they find an apple out here?

  “I miss Tam,” Brig says, spitting a piece of something rotten onto the ground.

  I try to push away the shame of eating from the raiders’ compost pile. The faster I swallow their scraps, the sooner I can track them down. They will keep me alive long enough to defeat them.

  “Let’s go,” I say after I’ve managed a few more bites. “I don’t want to lose them.”

  “We could split up,” Naomi says. “Two of us could stay here and scavenge what we can. Two of us could track them and come back for the others. We’re faster than they are. We don’t have anything to carry.”

  I’ve thought of this, too. I don’t want to waste time, but it’s true we need food and to learn what we can from the abandoned camp. But who do I leave in charge of whichever pairing I’m not part of? Out of all these people I don’t trust, I suppose I suspect Naomi the least.

  “Naomi and Eira will stay here,” I say. “Brig and I will track the raiders and come back for you. Meet us where you slept last night.”

  Eira glances at Naomi. I’m counting on Eira to be too kind to say she doesn’t want to stay behind. And I’m right.

  “You first again,” I say to Brig.

  The two of us make our way down the path the raiders left when they broke camp. It’s much easier than forcing our way through the brush. The raiders clearly know where they’re going. This is their terrain.

  Like the ship is mine.

  A sound. A shout?

  Brig doesn’t seem to have heard it. I grab his shirt to keep him from going forward and he turns in surprise, his blue eyes sharp on me. I jerk my head in the direction of the river.

  Another shout. And in the distance, the sound of water?

  “Careful,” I whisper to Brig. “Let’s get off the path. Head for the river. I think that’s where they’ve gone.”

  We crouch low and move slow. Leaves and twigs scratch and brush against our clothes, our hair, our skin. My legs ache with the strain of keeping down.

  And then I see the raiders. A teeming mass of them, gathered on a glimmering gray sandbar that juts out in the river.

  How far are we from the dredge? I glance back downriver and there it is, silent and still. I force myself to look away, to swallow my anger.

  Brig’s lips move. He’s counting. Trying to get an idea of how many raiders we’re up against.

  The sun glints off the water upriver, and at first I don’t recognize what I’m seeing out on the sandbar. But as I watch, it becomes clear. Takes shape.

  The raiders are turning their houses into boats.

  They bend the lithe golden struts. They strap the canvas over the curves. Like they did in the trees, but this is for the water.

  Brig looks over his shoulder and meets my eyes.

  Their engineering is so efficient, so simple. But I’m not fooled. It takes a sharp mind—or many sharp minds—to come up with designs so clean and direct and yet so multifaceted.

  Some of the raiders are already paddling downriver, in the direction of the still-quiet dredge; others help assemble more boats and set off upriver. I think they’re going to rebuild the village in a new spot.

  Brig and I make our way downriver from the sandbar in search of a safe vantage point to watch the operations on the ship, or even—I hope—to find a place to cross and get a better look.

  As we creep along the shore, I watch from the brush, trying to figure out the way they’re putting each boat together, frustrated once again that I can’t see exactly how everything works. The canvas must be waterproofed to keep the rain out of their houses and to prevent the river water from soaking in and sinking their boats. But how have they waterproofed it?

  These boats—with the canvas taking in the wind and their curves below the surface cutting through the water—they make movement possible. And what’s more, the raiders have sun on their faces in the day and stars shining down on them at night. They’re not locked up inside. They can see. They use the river instead of destroying it.

  Learn from it, Poe, I tell myself. That’s how you take them down.

  Though most of the village is relocating farther upstream, a few of the boats are coming downriver and across the water to meet up with the dredge.

  I’m encouraged by the ship’s silence. The raiders seem to have been unable to start mining again. When I blew apart the panel, it’s very possible that I damaged more than just the controls for the armor. The thought gives me hope.

  I wonder why the villagers were camped a distance away in the first place. There are a few good reasons I can think of. If something went wrong, and we killed the raiders who boarded, we wouldn’t have noticed the others in the village if they were farther upriver from the ship. And, of course, it would have been hard to pinpoint the exact place the dredge would stop.

  Or there’s another reason, one I don’t even know enough to think of.

  A few minutes later I see something, and my heart catches.

  A footprint. Made by a boot like ours.

  This print is smaller than Brig’s, larger than Eira’s and Naomi’s, and not mine, because I haven’t been on this part of the bank before.

  Someone else made it off the ship.

  Without a word, I pull on Brig’s sleeve. When he turns, I point down at the print in the muddy bank threaded with grass. He raises his eyebrows at me.

  Did someone else escape? Or did the raiders let them go?

  Another fork in the road, another braid in the river. Do I want to follow this footprint to see whether there are more, or keep going toward the dredge to find out what’s happening? What is the best way to get the ship back? I’m torn. I motion for Brig to crouch farther down in the weedy marsh while I decide.

  We can’t speak out loud this close to the raiders. I point at the print with one hand and in the direction of the dredge with the other, then shrug my shoulders. Which way should we go?

  Brig catches my meaning. He thinks for a minute, his expression cool and thoughtful. Then, he points at the print.

  That decides me. I point at the dredge, and motion for him to go.

  * * *

  • • •

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I say, when we’re concealed nearer the shore.

  “It is that you don’t trust me,” Brig says, but his tone is mild. Amused? “But what if I’m saying the opposite of what I really think?”

  “Could be,” I say. “And maybe I’ve already figured that out.” I’m not trying to be funny, but he smiles at me, fast and full, a flash. I feel the jolt of that smile, the unexpected moment of connection.

  “I don’t see a good place to cross,” I say. This annoys me because I want to get closer to the dredge. We could cross, even a river this wide and deep, because there are chewed-up rocks and boulders behind us from our passage along the river, but we’d be totally exposed under the big, blue sky.

  The two of us crouch down. As time passes our legs get tired and we kneel, sit, contort into different positions. Half crouches. Near kneels. Hiding with someone feels oddly intimate because you’re attuned to their every breath and movement. I’m not used to holding still for so long and Brig must not be either, though I have to admit he’s better at being quiet than I am. “How old were you when you had your militia training?” I ask him softly, pointing to the insignia on his shirt.

  “Sixteen,” he whispers. “Two years ago.”

  I’m also becoming deeply familiar with the landscape of this patch of ground where we’ve taken up residence. After the clean, man-made lines of the dredge, the amount of texture in the forest and on the bank feels almost ludicrous. Pebbles and rocks pressing against my flesh. Leaves and grasses intermingling with one another. The lap of water against the bank, the brush of wind across my skin, smells of pine and mud and ripeness.

  “Were you part of the Admiral’s guard?”

  Before he can answer, we both catch movement on the river and fall silent. Raiders emerge from the bushes, carrying a boat. I wish we were closer so that I could see them better, see their faces.

  I wonder what Naomi and Eira are learning. I hope they’re being careful. That, if they’re caught, they won’t tell the raiders that anyone else is out here with them.

  I wonder if whoever left that boot print is watching us. From the trees. From the bushes. From another place along the river. The thought makes my skin crawl.

  The raiders on board my ship have lowered the gangway ramp so that the others can climb on. The ramp is made to meet up with land, but they’re using it to bring in the boat, so they slide the ramp right down into the water. Their boat is small enough for them to pull it onto the gangplank after them, and in the absence of the grinding of the dredge, I hear the sound of the wood scraping along the metal.

  Some of the raiders lean out to touch the unmoving armor on the side of the ship as they come aboard.

  Don’t touch it. It’s not a pet to be stroked. It’s a knife meant to cut you. Kill you clean and dirty.

  They leave the gangplank out and their boat sitting on it.

  The panic I’ve been trying to keep at bay licks at my heart. We’re so close. I have to get my ship back. What if we tried to board the dredge right now?

  “How well can you swim?” I ask Brig.

  “I’m not bad,” he says. He looks at me, at the boat. “You think we can make it without being seen?”

  At that moment I hear people calling out. Another boat has left the shore. And, up on the deck of the dredge, half a dozen raiders have gathered with their gliders. They’re everywhere.

  “Damn it,” I mutter under my breath. Slow down, Poe. I want to be back on my ship but I need to take my time. Do it right so we don’t get caught.

  I study the dredge, my mind racing. We have to get back on before they get the armor going. But a single knife won’t be enough against them. The raiders have our guns. I curse myself again for leaving mine.

  What if I made some kind of trap that halted the ship, or smaller snares that caught the raiders as they move between ship and shore? What materials could I use? I am used to steel. This place is all tree and rock.

  There’s got to be a way. I’m sure I’ve missed something.

  “What have you noticed about the raiders as we’ve been watching them?” I ask Brig.

  “The children,” he says.

  “What?” That wasn’t the answer I expected.

  “There aren’t many,” he says. “Of course, maybe they keep them safe in the houses, but I haven’t seen many little ones.”

  I didn’t pay attention to the number of kids. I didn’t even get a count of how many raiders I saw in the village. I was so taken with the houses they were turning into boats. By the mechanics of how they live, rather than the people themselves.

  “I didn’t notice,” I admit to Brig. “I was focused on the houses. The boats.”

  “That’s good too,” he says. “You know what someone builds, you know them.”

  I feel a warm rush of satisfaction—that’s true, he’s right—and then a thought strikes me. If someone looks at the dredge armor, do they think they know me?

  Well. That’s fine.

  They do.

  CHAPTER 16

  MY STOMACH ROLLS WITH HUNGER and my throat is parched dry by the time we need to go back. Brig and I scoop water into our hands from a stream that runs to the river; I make a mental note that we need to find or steal something that can hold water.

  Brig leads the way back to our meeting-place without error. In spite of myself, I’m impressed. There are spots where it would’ve been easy to get turned around. Sometimes the trees are clustered together—at other times, they form natural corridors, the light streaming in soft between their branches. Brig and I don’t say a word.

  Naomi and Eira are already back, sitting on the fallen logs. They look up; their faces show relief when they see it’s us.

  “Did you learn anything?” I ask. “Did you find any food?”

  “Well,” Naomi says, “so to speak,” and then someone steps out from a tree behind her.

  Tam.

  Clothes still damp from the river, hands up so I can see that there’s nothing in them.

  “How’d you get out?” I ask. I keep my arms down and loose in case I need to reach for the knife. Tam and I face off across our tiny clearing, the others standing around us. Brig is at my elbow. To defend me? To help Tam take me down?

  “The raiders found me,” Tam says. “They let me out to join the others on the ship. We’re all sleeping crammed eight and ten to a room.” His face is bruised—forehead, nose, cheeks, chin—and his hands and forearms are, too. Did the raiders beat him? “The ship’s not running, so last night I slid out through the tailings stacker.”

  “Didn’t they have anyone keeping watch?”

  “Yes,” he says, “but I got past them.”

  His story seems suspicious. Easy. But the bruises on his body are consistent with injuries you’d get if you came out of the tailings stacker and landed on refuse and rocks in the water.

  “I brought food.” Tam tilts his head in the direction of a canvas bag on the ground behind him, near one of the fallen logs. “Stuff that doesn’t get ruined if it gets a bit wet.”

  “Eira,” I say. “Get the bag and show us what’s inside.”

  She obeys, dragging the green canvas sack into the middle of our loose circle, closer to me than to Tam. She takes out the items one at a time.

  He’s got cured meat. Carrots. Potatoes. My mouth waters.

  There’s a tiny and somewhat battered camp stove, and a small tank of kerosene that fits onto it. “You tried to bring a kitchen with you,” Brig says.

  “I didn’t want to starve,” Tam says.

  Eira pulls a dented pot out of the bag next. She shakes her head. “It’s amazing you didn’t sink with all of this on your back.”

  “I sent it out through the stacker first,” Tam says. “As a trial run.”

  There’s more food, and a single knife, which I tell Eira to give to me. “You can put the rest of it back in the bag,” I say to Tam.

  He crouches down, moving stiffly as if his body is bruised, too, and gathers the food into his arms. “I’ll cook some of it now, for dinner.”

  “You can’t cook out here,” I say. “They’ll see or smell it.”

  “All right,” Tam says. “Then give me back my knife and I’ll cut up the food and season it for you. If we have to eat raw potatoes, they might as well have some flavor.”

  “Why would I trust you with a knife?” I say. “You were stealing gold.”

  Tam’s composure slips a little. “I told you. That wasn’t me. I don’t know how it got in my room.”

  “And you expect me to believe that.”

  “I’ve had time to come up with a better story,” he says. “But that’s the truth.”

  “Maybe you’re just too stupid to think of a better story.”

  Eira draws in her breath.

  “Fine,” Tam says, his voice bright. He’s trying to be the cheerful, open-faced charmer he was on the dredge, but even he can’t quite pull it off. We’re out here in the woods trying to figure out a way to get our ship back, and we’ve got very little going for us. Again, that edge of panic creeps into my mind. I push it away.

  “I’ll cut the food.” I hold up Tam’s knife. Eira hands me a carrot, and I slice it into the pot, the blade sharp against my finger. I cut carrots and potatoes and strips of cured meat while the rest of them watch, all of us wary and hungry in the dusk.

  I hand the pot to Tam and he begins to season the food.

  “Tell us what the raiders are doing,” I say. “What have you learned about them?”

  “They’re trying to get the ship going again,” Tam says. “They know you’re the one who shot out the control panel, and they know you made it off. Your name’s a curse on the dredge now.”

  “They know my name?”

  “Of course they know your name.” Tam raises his eyebrows. “Not only are you the captain, you designed the armor, and you blew out the control panel. They’re furious that you escaped.”

  “We haven’t noticed anyone searching for us,” I say.

  “They aren’t wasting time on it,” Tam says. “They think you’ll come back when you run out of food. And that you can’t stay away from the ship. They want to get it going again as soon as they can. They have somewhere to be.”

  “How do you know all this?” Surely they wouldn’t speak so freely in front of an enemy.

  Tam shrugs. “People talk when they eat. And I was still cooking all the food.”

  “Who’s their leader?” I ask. “Is he or she on the ship?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. With everything else he says he heard eavesdropping, how did he not discover that?