“Really,” he says. “They didn’t talk about it in front of me, and not all of the raiders came through the line for meals. Some of them took food to the others. I couldn’t figure it out.”

  I shake my head. I don’t know if I believe a word he says.

  “This is going to get exhausting,” Tam says, tossing the food around in the pot. “You have to decide if you trust me. And you’ll have to do it soon. I’m making your supper. I could have poisoned it.”

  He holds the pot out to me.

  “You first,” I say.

  Tam takes a few bites, using his hands to scoop out the food, and gives the pot to Naomi to eat. When she finishes, she passes it to Eira, who eats, then hands the food to Brig. When it comes to me, I hold it in my lap. Waiting to see if anyone suffers any ill effects.

  “How many raiders did you count today when you were watching the village?” I ask Eira and Naomi. I’m not crazy about Tam hearing all of this, but it doesn’t seem like we have much choice.

  “Seventy-three,” Naomi says. “Some left and came back. We tried not to count anyone twice.”

  “We saw thirty-four,” Brig says, and I nod confirmation.

  “There are about twenty-eight raiders on the dredge full-time, as near as I can tell from the amount of food I cooked,” Tam says. “Plus the prisoners. There were nineteen of us.”

  “Do they have a leader in the village?” I ask Naomi and Eira.

  “I think that their main leader is on the ship,” says Eira.

  Naomi nods. “There are several in the village who seem to have some authority, but I get the sense they’re reporting to someone else.”

  “A few of them go back and forth from the dredge,” Eira says.

  “Brig and I have seen that, too,” I say. “Can you tell what they’re planning?”

  “They’re excited about the gold and the capture of the ship,” says Naomi. “They talk about the victory and the amount of gold on board. Beyond that, we haven’t figured out much.”

  “Why does everyone want gold so badly?” Eira asks.

  “Gold can do a lot of things,” Naomi says.

  “Jewelry and money,” Eira says. “What else?”

  “It doesn’t tarnish,” says Brig.

  I’ve asked myself the same question Eira posed just now. What good is all this gold?

  What do I know about gold? Why would I want it?

  To make things. “It’s easy to work,” I say. “And it’s a conductor.”

  “A conductor?” Eira asks.

  “For electricity.” Saying the word makes a spark catch inside me, an idea run through the circuits in my brain.

  What if the raiders want to use the gold, for its myriad of practical purposes? The ones we don’t have to think about as hard in the Outpost, where we gathered in everything valuable, where we have more facilities and resources to make things?

  We’re plundering what they have, and they don’t have much.

  No wonder they’re willing to kill us.

  If using the gold to create things is why I would want it, and why the raiders might want it, could that also be why the Admiral wants it?

  I haven’t heard of him building anything. And I should. I’m one of his best machinists. He always says so. But is it true? Or has he decoyed me away on a job that’s merely a scaffold to the real work he’s doing?

  I remind myself that the Admiral and I struck a bargain. I was the one who came to him with the idea for the armor. Killing the raiders was all I wanted.

  I haven’t thought much further than that.

  “If they want gold so much,” Brig asks, “why do you think they burned the last dredge instead of taking it?”

  “They got the gold off before they set it on fire,” I say. “They probably thought it was the only dredge we had. I think they thought that if they destroyed the ship we wouldn’t come back. And that was worth it to them, even though they could have used the dredge.”

  “And they hated what it was doing to the river,” Brig says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask, suspicious.

  “I heard things when I was in the militia,” Brig says.

  “But we didn’t stay away,” Eira says. “We came back with a new ship, one that killed them instead of just taking the gold.”

  Thanks to me. “What else do the raiders talk about?”

  “They’re all obsessed with the Lily,” Tam says. “They love trying to figure out how she works.”

  “It’s not a she.”

  “Of course it is,” Tam says. “Lily’s a girl’s name.”

  “The Gilded Lily is a stupid name.”

  “The drifters don’t think so,” Tam says. “They think it’s perfect.”

  My temper bristles at his mention of the raiders’ other name. “They’re not drifters to us,” I say. “They’re raiders. Call them that.”

  “Aye-aye,” says Tam. “And we still call you Captain, I see.”

  “She is the captain,” Brig says.

  “You can all call me Poe,” I say. “It’s shorter. And if we get caught, it won’t be so obvious who I am.” But my tone warns them: Don’t take this as a sign of familiarity. You’ll call me Poe because it’s better right now. Not because we’re friends.

  “What’s it short for?” Tam asks.

  “Posy,” I say. Brig laughs out loud and then freezes, his face going still.

  “I know,” I say. “It doesn’t suit.” I stand up, brushing the crumbs from my hands. “Tam can stay with us for now. I’ll take the first watch. The sun will be down soon.”

  I move away, hoping that they’ll think I’m too far off to hear them, and then, softly, I step a few paces back. I want to know what they say when I’m not around.

  At first, nothing. Perhaps they’ll all fall asleep. I have both knives in my pocket. Tam’s and Brig’s. I’m safe. As long as I’m awake.

  In the dark of the trees, I feel the chill in my fingers and smell the smoke from the raiders’ camp. I’m still hungry. Tired of being cold and alone.

  And then someone speaks. Tam. Of course.

  “So,” he says. “You knew Poe before.”

  He must be talking to Naomi, because she’s the one who answers. “Yes.”

  “Could you tell back then she’d become the most successful killer in the history of the Outpost?” Tam asks.

  “Even if you argue that she’s responsible for all the raiders who died,” Naomi says, “there are others who have killed far, far more than Poe.”

  “But she designed the most efficient weapon the Outpost has seen in years,” Eira says. “That’s why the Admiral loves her so much.”

  Why does Eira know this about me? Does everyone know?

  I haven’t thought about my kill ratio in those terms.

  And the Admiral does not love me.

  “This will mess up her percentages,” Tam says. “I don’t think she was supposed to lose the ship.”

  He tries to turn everything into a joke, but how much of his easy, cheerful insouciance is an act?

  I understand. It can all be a joke or it can all be dead serious. Maybe I chose the wrong way the night Call died. Maybe it should have been funny, Call laid out there on the deck. Maybe I should have laughed at the way his eyes stared.

  You don’t always have time to choose in the moment you survive. Sometimes your body makes the decision for you. You laugh. You scream. You freeze.

  I don’t entirely blame them for talking about me. After all, I’m their leader and I’m not easy. I’d want to know more about me, too. But I hate it. It reminds me of when people whispered about me at school before we came to the scrap yard. Not right. Something odd about her. She’s awkward when she tries to talk to people. Sometimes it’s like she can’t even look at you.

  “Is it true,” Eira asks, “that the boy she loved died on the dredge? That she made the armor because of him?”

  Don’t tell them, I think to Naomi. They don’t need to know.

  “Yes,” Naomi says. Just the one word. She liked Call. Everyone did.

  “Tell us what he was like,” Tam says. “The person who started all of this.”

  Call didn’t start any of this, I want to say. The raiders started all of this.

  What if I marched back into the clearing and told them about Call?

  How it felt to walk with him through the scrap yard? With metal glinting everywhere, sharp edges all around, but his hand on my shoulder, on my back, always gentle? His lips, his mouth. The sunset on his face as we walked home, our dirty, scarred hands touching. I’d glance at him across the yard and sometimes, not every time, he would turn and look in my direction, his hand shielding his eyes.

  But I never blinded him.

  I was never too much for him.

  Even now, I don’t think I would be. Even now, with what I’ve done.

  I can’t tell them about you, Call.

  They would never understand. They would never get you right.

  “He was strong like Poe,” Naomi says. “One of the few people who could match her, I think. He was also very kind. He was easy to read. So was she.”

  I don’t like this. I don’t like other people hearing about him when they could never understand what and who he was. And yet I don’t want Naomi to stop talking. It’s a pleasure to hear someone else—someone who talked with him, knew him even the smallest bit—say his name and what they remember.

  “You think she’s easy to read?” Brig asks. He sounds like he’s been surprised into speaking. “Poe?”

  “Yes,” Naomi says. “This whole time, she’s been blazing with rage.”

  “Rage?” Eira asks. “She’s so calm.”

  “Rage,” Naomi confirms. “She was like that on the first voyage, too.”

  What? Not on the first voyage. I wasn’t angry then.

  I hear someone shifting, a crackle of leaves.

  “But that time, it was love,” Naomi says. “Some people always burn.”

  CHAPTER 17

  AMONG THE TREES, keeping watch, I hold the knife in one hand. With the other, I open and close Call’s ruler. I’ve perfected this move over many sleepless nights; fingers and palm flick open the ruler, work together to slide it closed.

  Before the dredge and our plan to escape, Call hardly ever broke the rules. He was where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing. Steady. Strong.

  But one night, soon after we’d moved into the machinists’ dormitory, I saw him walking on the women’s floor. The door to the bedroom I shared with five other girls was open. He didn’t pause or look inside our room, but I knew his shape.

  I climbed from my bed and slipped out to follow. Wandering at night was not allowed. Was something wrong?

  I caught up to him. The dim safety lights on the stairs gave off a soft glow as we went down to the main floor. He didn’t wait for me the way he usually did, so I walked behind him, watching his muscles shift under his shirt, looking at the back of his head, his dark hair cut short as always. I imagined what it would feel like if I ran my fingers through it—surprisingly soft. I reached out to touch his arm when we came to the main floor. He turned in my direction. In the low light, his eyes were gray. I would have thought he would be softer after sleep but his edges seemed even more defined.

  “Did you have a dream?” I asked.

  He had a look on his face I hadn’t seen before.

  “I want to steal something,” he said.

  “What?” I asked in surprise.

  He didn’t answer.

  We crept down the hall to the kitchen. Worn industrial cabinets, wooden counters grooved deep with cuts over the passage of years. We’d both taken our turn in the kitchen, slopping trays and washing up, or helping make the meals. At night it seemed foreign, every surface taking in the light or reflecting it back in ways I couldn’t predict.

  Call opened one of the cabinets. He looked through the flour, the sugar, the crackers and bread. The fruit in the cold-storage bin—apples, pears. That was what I wanted to steal. I breathed in deep and smelled them, their fresh outside scents.

  I took one, a pear that would be red in full light, and bit into it. Call turned at the sound.

  “Want one?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.

  “Someone’s going to find us,” I said. “If you’d tell me what you’re trying to steal, this would go faster.”

  He looked at me and his eyes were puzzled. He knew who I was, but he wasn’t quite with me.

  That’s when I finally realized he was walking in his sleep. Talking in his sleep. It should have frightened or worried me, but it didn’t. It made sense, somehow. I thought to myself, Maybe that’s why he never finishes a dream. He gets up to go looking for the end of it.

  Call sank down, sitting on the floor with his back against the cabinets.

  I knelt in front of him.

  “I’m tired of being lonely,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  “You mean hungry?” I asked, because why else were we in the kitchen?

  “No,” he said. “Lonely.”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really tired?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not really lonely. You’re here.”

  He pulled me close. He was warm, and his arms were strong, and then he kissed me, hard and sure. I was surprised, but I wasn’t afraid. And then I was the one with my back up against the cabinets, and Call was against me, and we stood together, sliding up, his hands in my hair, and everything felt so good, it felt so good to be held, to have him right with me.

  And then he broke away and looked at me.

  And I knew he was awake.

  “Poe,” he said. We were both breathing hard. “I was dreaming. I was kissing you.”

  “And it was happening to you?” I asked to make sure, because he was usually watching, he was usually outside, in his dreams.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good.”

  His face was full of wonder. “But it’s really happening to me. Now. I’m awake. We’re kissing.”

  “Well, not now,” I said. “You stopped.”

  He laughed then, a low sound because we could still get caught. We could still get caught but I didn’t care.

  “And you don’t mind,” he said. “That we’re kissing.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. I wish you’d start again.”

  He wasn’t looking for anything anymore except me. Looking at me, kissing me, touching me, laughing again when he found the pear that I still held in my hand. We ate it before we left the kitchen, taking turns, destroying the evidence of where we’d been and what we’d done.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE MINUTE I WAKE IN THE MORNING-DARK, I know what’s coming. I feel it low in my bones, stirring my soul, calling my blood. I bolt upright.

  A crack of a twig. Brig. He had the last watch.

  “Captain?” he says, soft, to keep the others sleeping.

  “It’s going to move,” I say, and when he doesn’t seem to understand, I say, “The dredge,” and my voice is impatient because of course it’s the ship, the ship is the only thing.

  “Watch the others,” I tell him. “Keep them here.” Should I leave one of the knives with Brig, in case Tam gives him trouble? But then what if they use it against me? I can’t decide. And then—

  Churn. Clamor. Rumble.

  Roar.

  The sounds set my heart to racing.

  River, rock, motor, gold.

  My ship is running again.

  Brig’s eyes widen. “How did you know?” he asks, and the wonder in his expression, the way he looks at me for that one second—I have surprised him, I have astonished him—reminds me of Call waking up and seeing me when we were kissing and a pinpoint of pain, specific and clear, pierces through the clamor in my body that the ship has sent humming.

  I hand Brig one of the knives. “In case you need it,” I say, “I’ll be back,” and I leave him there, standing with the blade in the forest.

  I run as fast as I can, through branches that snatch at my arms, over rocks and dirt that catch at my feet. It doesn’t matter how much noise I make.

  My ship is covering my tracks for me with its grinding, terrible, wonderful sound.

  * * *

  • • •

  The light is still dim when I reach the shore. And so across the river I go. Dark satin water laps over my legs, moss slides beneath my feet on stones underfoot. I stagger, swim, slip. Closer, closer, close as I can.

  I’m coming.

  The sound has awakened the raider village, too, and lights flicker. Some up in the trees near the shore, some moving lower, coming closer. Dawn is lightening the horizon by the time I reach the other bank.

  The nearer I get, the stronger I feel it. It rolls more deep and powerful than a pulse, shakes my teeth, kneads my insides. And then. I hear something thin and near over the throb of the dredge.

  Cheering. The raiders on board are cheering because they’re on the move. They stand up on the top deck, silhouettes and shapes pumping fists and raising arms in the direction of their compatriots on the shore. I hiss in my breath. Get down. Get off. This is not yours.

  Wait. They’re on the deck.

  Which means they haven’t been able to get the armor running again.

  They’re steering the dredge to the other side of the bank, the western side. My ship makes its way across the river slowly, deliberately. And I’m right. The armor is completely still.

  Using the ship to screen myself, I cross back again, keeping enough distance that the rocks can’t churn up and hit me as the dredge remakes the riverbed.

  Be careful, I mutter to the raiders between gritted teeth. Don’t run it aground, or you’ll kill it beyond what I can fix out here.