They rode out before sunrise the next day, through the glass canyons, the pair of them alone. They passed broken bodies and drifting ash, and by dawn they reached the Badlands.
Connor was waiting for them.
He sat perched on a boulder, playing his wooden flute. Tara had hoped those ghostly skirling notes were the music of wind through broken canyon glass. The wide brim of his hat covered his eyes. Two horses waited behind him, one saddled, one piled with gear.
When he saw them he stopped playing and waved and smiled, as if they had agreed to meet here, as if they were going on a hike.
“No,” Tara said before he could explain. They had packed fast, left early, been discreet. She had thought that would be enough. She did not like being wrong in general, and neither did she like the errant surge of pleasure she felt to be wrong in this specific case.
“You can’t tell me this isn’t my fight. Or my fault.”
His fault? Because he failed to kill with an arrow something that could not be killed with arrows? Because he stood firm against the Seer, and his father rallied to his defense? But he sat unmoved on his rock. They’d grown close enough that she could tell her arguments would not shake him. Like her, he felt guilt whether or not he had cause, and he could no more let it go than she could. “The town needs you.”
“You need me more.”
Dawn drew her horse’s reins too tight, and as it pranced she glowered. “Tara knows the Badlands. She’s walked all the way from the Crack in the World on her own.”
“And came through half-dead with sunstroke, did she tell you that? The Raiders won’t be waiting in their lair with chicken soup.”
“I’m better now,” Tara said. “And there’s no other way.”
“How exactly did you mean to follow them, then? That storm doesn’t leave footprints.”
She drew from her jacket a stone needle suspended by a thin chain from a leather loop. The needle turned freely as they watched, and came to rest aiming out toward a horizon already twisted with heat. “The stone’s from Merrott’s altar. It will lead us to him.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Nice. But knowing which way to walk won’t get you there. The Badlands are full of leaky ordnance from the Wars. The landscape’s twisted, and reality shifts out underfoot. Knowing what direction they’ve gone won’t help you pass through a labyrinth trap, or climb out of a pitcher pit, or skirt an edge storm.”
“You can’t help with any of that either,” Dawn said. “You have no power.”
“Excuse me? Why are you going? Tara I understand, but you’re not even half-trained.”
Her eyes narrowed. The boulder’s shadow thickened into ropes and snapped out, snaring his neck and waist and arms.
“Dawn,” Tara said, sharply, and the shadows vanished, though Dawn kept glaring at Connor. “She insisted. It seems to be a common affliction.”
“I didn’t think you’d leave me.”
That slipped past her guard. “I couldn’t ask you to come.”
“You’re not asking,” he said. “I’m offering. I’ve spent weeks in the Badlands by myself. I’ve crept past half the monsters in the New World at one time or another. You had a two-hour head start on me and I still beat you here.”
“I could have gone faster.” Gods, was she feeling defensive? “I didn’t want to use Craft so near the village.”
“The Craft will draw attention in the Badlands. You know that. What lives out there likes the smell of magic. If you’re trusting your powers to pave your way across the desert you’ll have to fight every step. You’ll be hard-pressed to save yourself, let alone the Pastor.”
He had a point. Tara’s horse stamped, annoyed on her behalf. She eyed the mountains in the distance and thought about her first time through these wastes, how she survived by drinking the blood of vultures she lured down by playing dead.
“I know you, Tara Abernathy. You’re not one to set aside an advantage in time of need. You know I know the Badlands. So the only way I can think you’d sneak off without me is if you wanted me along, but you didn’t want to let yourself have nice things.”
“And you think you’re nice things.”
He grinned and in that moment she forgot the battle, the loss. He had not stared down the Seer, and she had not stood above his father with a knife. They were kids, insolent beneath the sky. She liked him for offering that illusion, and he liked her for believing it. “I am.”
Her hand tightened on the reins. “Ma put you up to this.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed. “She told me last night. I would have come anyway when I learned you’d gone. Might not have caught up till sundown, though.”
“I say we leave him,” Dawn said. “He’ll get in the way.”
He just waited, with that smile.
“Saddle up,” Tara said.
“She’s already saddled. When was the last time you rode a horse, anyway?”
“Whatever. Let’s go. Before I change my mind and turn you into a rock.”
He smirked. “And Dad said I’d never be a hard man.”
She gave her horse rein and left him laughing behind, to catch her.