AS THE SUN BEGAN to sink toward Armstrong’s horizon, Rolf doubled over, coughing from the thick dust that still filled the air after the main tent had collapsed. Overhead, bright lights flashed as the Kindred shuttle took off.
Rolf spit a curse after them. “Good riddance. I hope you never come back!”
He heard footsteps and turned quickly, ready to fight off any of Ellis’s rogue deputies who had survived the tent collapse, but was surprised to see Dane, limping slightly, his uniform singed.
“I thought you were leaving with Cora,” Rolf said warily.
“I thought so, too,” Dane said, breathing hard. “But . . . plans changed. There was only time for one of us to board, either me or Willa, and I . . . I sacrificed myself so that Willa could escape.”
Rolf raised his eyebrows.
Dane motioned to his limp. “I had a tussle with some Kindred guards who were chasing us, but they let me go. It was Cora they were after, not me.” He looked up toward the sky. “At least she’s safe now.” He sighed dramatically. “That’s what’s important.”
Rolf observed cautiously as Dane sank onto a crate, wincing. Rolf hadn’t known Dane, other than what Cora had told him, and those stories were hardly flattering. But wounded, Dane seemed in no condition to be an immediate threat. “You really did that? Sacrificed yourself?”
Dane nodded. “It was the least I could do.” He wiped his forehead and motioned to the collapsed tent. “The battle?”
“It ended when the tent collapsed. Half the deputies suffocated. Most of the ones who got out are badly wounded. The mine guards and the tent guards called an emergency truce. They moved the wounded to the wives’ tents.”
“A truce?” Dane shook his head. “It won’t last. Not until there’s a new sheriff to replace Ellis.” He stood up, hobbling toward the tents.
“Where are you going?”
“If everyone else is occupied with the wounded,” Dane said, “they don’t need us there. We’d be more useful here, burying the dead.”
Rolf frowned. “You should go to the wives’ tents too, and get patched up. That leg looks bad.”
“I’m okay. Besides, that sun’s getting lower. We should bury the bodies before it gets dark.” He hobbled toward the tent with determination.
Rolf glanced over his shoulder at one of the smaller tents, where Keena and the other deputies had taken Nok for safety. He should go to her, make certain she was all right. He took a step toward the tent.
“Hey, I think this guy’s alive!” Dane called.
Rolf paused, then turned back and hurried to help Dane. If there were survivors, he had to do what he could. Dane knelt near the edge of the collapsed tent, where a pale hand stuck out. Rolf helped Dane lift the heavy canvas and pull the man’s body out. It was one of the deputies, the young one with the weak chin who had almost revealed Nok was pregnant during their processing. They dragged the body into the sand and Rolf crouched beside it, feeling for a pulse.
He shook his head. “He’s gone.”
Dane started pulling out another body, calling to Rolf to help. Rolf glanced again at Nok’s tent, wanting to check on her, but Dane was right—the day’s heat had made the bodies begin to putrefy. They needed to bury them soon, and anyway, he hated the idea of Nok seeing so much death like this. It was grueling work, but soon they had a row of bodies lined up on the sand. No survivors.
Dane was pacing, agitated. “None of them are Ellis. We have to find Ellis.”
Rolf scrunched up his nose. “She’s dead. She isn’t going anywhere.”
“Rolf!”
He turned at the sound of his name. Nok was coming out of the tent with Keena on one side and Loren on the other. Dane abruptly stopped searching the bodies, stepped back, and wiped his face of sweat. Nok ran up and threw her arms around Rolf. She wasn’t wearing the apron, and he felt the full press of her belly against his own.
“You’re feeling okay?” he asked.
She nodded, then looked at Dane. “What’s he doing here?”
Dane held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “You can trust me—just ask Rolf. I had the chance to leave, but I stayed behind. I wanted to help.”
Keena snorted, which turned into one of her deep coughs. “He’s a mutineer. We should send him headfirst into the mine.”
“We were planning to overthrow Ellis,” Dane agreed quickly. “But only because she was a tyrant. And it wasn’t even my idea. I’m not interested in leading. Only peace.”
“Is that right?” Keena eyed the row of corpses. “Then why are you out here digging through the dead bodies?”
“We’re . . . we’re burying them,” Rolf explained. Wasn’t it obvious?
Keena shook her head. “I know what you’re up to, Dane. You’re looking for Ellis’s body. You want to get your grubby hands on that badge, don’t you?”
Dane glared at her in silence.
“He thinks whoever has the badge automatically becomes sheriff,” Keena said. “But that isn’t how it works. Though the badge is important.”
Keena coughed harder and then signaled for two deputies to lift the heavy canvas of the tent closest to where the platform had been. “Ellis took power by killing the previous sheriff, Randall,” she explained. “Randall took power by killing the sheriff before that, and . . . well, you get the idea.” Keena peeked inside, made a face at the rank smell of bodies in the heat, and then took out her handkerchief and coughed more. “I’m afraid you’re the only one small enough to climb in there, Rolf.”
Rolf folded his arms. “You want me to go in there? For a piece of metal?” He shook his head.
“Please, Rolf,” Nok said softly.
He sighed. She could ask him to jump off a ten-story building and he’d do it.
The deputies lifted the flap higher, and Rolf reluctantly got to his hands and knees and disappeared under the tent flap into the darkness, the heavy fabric stirring up noxious smells. He pressed his sleeve over his mouth, crawling as quickly as he could. The stench of death was suffocating. Bodies brushed against his sides, but in the dark he pretended they were just statues. He finally found the platform. He felt along the edge until his fingers touched charred hair. Ellis’s body.
He recoiled.
Suppressing the urge to gag, he felt along the cadaver’s shoulder to her neck, then to the charred face. His fingers touched metal. He hissed and drew back—the edges were still hot. He had to dig his fingernails carefully into her cheek to free it. As soon as he had it, he crawled out of the tent as fast as he could and emerged into daylight, coughing, gagging.
The badge was slick with blood and singed skin from where he’d pried it from Ellis’s cheek. The metal wasn’t nearly as finely made as it had looked from a distance. This wasn’t anything Kindred made, that was for sure. Someone had roughly hewn this from whatever scrap metal was available on Armstrong.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Nok. He wiped his fingers off on his pants—he’d never missed soap and hot water more in his life.
Nok cradled the badge in her palm. There had been a time, Rolf knew, when just the smell of it would have made her retch. Now she ran her finger over it admiringly before passing it along to Keena.
But the old woman held up a hand, refusing to take it. “I don’t think you understand, Nok.”
Nok wrinkled her face. “Understand what?”
Keena exchanged a long look with Loren and Avery before turning back to Nok. “Dane thinks that whoever controls the badge controls Armstrong,” she said, “because that’s what the mine guards told him. But it’s only half true. The Kindred who oversee this place acknowledge the owner of the badge as sheriff; that’s the only person they’ll do business with. But the humans here don’t care about a scrap of metal. They care about tradition. Tradition that goes back generations, since Armstrong was first founded.”
Rolf eyed the badge in Nok’s hand. He was getting a bad feeling about this.
“What tradition?” Nok asked.
Keena picked up a piece of loose thread from the fallen canvas tent, stringing it through the badge as a makeshift necklace.
“Round up any deputies you don’t trust,” Keena said to Loren and Avery, “and take away their firearms. Especially the mine guards. They’ve been demoted. Tell the slaves they’ll be treated fairly now in return for fair work. The days of Armstrong being a dictatorship are over. There’s a new sheriff in town.”
Rolf let out an uneasy breath. Now he had a really bad feeling.
“I don’t get it,” Nok said. “Who’s the new sheriff?”
“Randall killed the sheriff before him,” Keena explained. “And Ellis killed Randall. That’s the tradition. Whoever kills the old sheriff becomes the new one.” She handed Nok the badge looped over string. “And you killed Ellis.”
Nok gaped.
“We’ll help you, all of us tent guards. We know this place. We know how to run it, how to improve it.” She coughed more, and Rolf wondered how long she could help before the sand-cough rendered her too ill. “But we can’t officially hold the title of sheriff. Only you can.”
The badge tumbled out of Nok’s hand. It landed in the dirt, where Rolf stared at the charred flesh at the edges. The reflected light stung his eyes, but he didn’t look away.
“Sheriff?” Nok sputtered.
Rolf glanced over his shoulder at Dane, who was hanging around just to the side, arms crossed, a nasty smirk on his face. Had he really sacrificed himself to make sure Cora got off the moon? Rolf raised his eyebrows as he realized that now that Dane knew the path toward leadership, he only had to do one thing to be sheriff—kill the current one.
Kill Nok.
And Rolf took his new role seriously: Father. Protector. He was damn sure not going to let that happen.