My heart is beating too fast; I feel trapped in this room. I cross to Noah, softly so my feet don’t make a sound, and I squint out into the daylight. There are five men, and five horses tied to the railing in front of the hotel. I expect them to mount their horses and ride on up through town, searching for our trail. But they hesitate. I realize Maybelle is on the porch, still speaking to them. I can just make out the top of her head, dark wavy hair stirring in the morning breeze, but I can’t hear what she’s saying.
One of the men tips his hat to her, and I see that he’s bent slightly forward—as if in pain.
“It’s Holt,” I whisper.He’s still alive.
Hope—the only thing we have left now—drains out of me.
Impossibly, beyond all reason—he’s alive.
A man Noah has tried to kill twice.His own father. I touch Noah’s shoulder, certain that a tangled storm of emotions is raging through him. He didn’t murder his father after all—the guilt surely eased. Yet it means that the danger is closer than ever.
It means that Holt won’t stop. And the panic slides up my spine.
Noah glances at me, his face a river of tension, but he only nods. This isn’t the time to discuss what it means, how his heart is surely a piston beneath his ribs. We have to get out of here. Through the glass, I can hear Holt speaking to his men—low words I can’t pick apart—but then they turn away from the hotel, crossing the dusty street to climb the steps of the saloon, disappearing inside.
The breath is still climbing up from my lungs, when there’s a tap at the door.
Noah’s eyes flash to me, and he puts a finger to his lips, so I stay beside the window. “It’s Maybelle,” a voice whispers from the other side. “A group of Theorists are looking for you, but I told them to let their horses rest and get a drink across the street, that it was on me.”
Noah opens the door a crack.
“There’s a fire escape off the bathroom,” she says swiftly, her blue eyes darting down the hall. “It leads to the back of the hotel. You won’t be seen.”
In the bathroom, Maybelle slides open the squat little window, revealing a wood ladder down the backside of the hotel. Noah swings himself through and vanishes below the edge of the window. “Thank you for helping us,” I say to Maybelle.
She grabs something from one of the bathroom cabinets—a wool blanket with a pale green stripe along the edge—holding it out to me. “To keep you warm,” she says. “You’ll find your horse in the stable, just south.” I tuck the blanket under my arm and meet her eyes one last time—this woman who gave us a free place to stay and clean clothes and food for the road. She nods back at me, just before I slip out through the window.
Noah and I land on the hard-packed ground below, then run along the outer edge of town until we reach the stable, ducking inside where the scent of straw and manure is thick. Aside from a few horses standing sleepily in stalls, flies buzzing near their large eyes, it’s deserted.
We find Odie, freeing her from the stall and slipping a bridle over her head. Noah pushes me up onto her back, and we’re gallopingout of the stable in less than three minutes, sprinting into the nearest line of trees.
We need to get far away from this town, ride until nightfall, until we can no longer see the way.
We’ll sleep outside; we’ll feel the itch always at our backs of those men not far behind.
But we’ll keep moving.
Because the shadow in the sky is getting closer—the twin stars drifting away—and I can feel the story of the last Astronomer being written along my skin with each mile we cross, a fate I can’t escape.
TEN
The air is cold. Barbed.
We trek into higher elevations, into a clot of steep hills. Noah’s arms are braced around my ribs—his hands held tight to the leather reins—while his warm breath is at my neck, the wool blanket from Maybelle wrapped over both of us, the only thing keeping the cold from breaking through our skin. Our small shelter. Like it’s enough to keep out all the dark things. All the death.
Odie picks her way through the sloping, rocky terrain, sure-footed, the oaks around us grown short and lopsided in the sharp northern winds. My ears vibrate, eyes flashing upward where the shadow has smeared out too much of the sky. More than yesterday. Or the day before.
But finally the sky begins to brighten—golden and rust with the sunrise—and the trees thin, turn to nothing.
Ahead of us, I see what’s to come: a wide row of mountains.
Noah pulls Odie to a stop, eyeing the steep slope ahead of us.
“There must be a way around,” I say. Maybe if we travel east or west for a short distance, we’ll find a shallower, easier route over these jagged, snow-draped peaks.
Noah slips a hand into his coat pocket and pulls out the compass,holding it flat in his palm. His mouth tenses into a line. “North is straight ahead.” He places the compass back into his pocket. “August always said I’d have to pass over a mountain range. There’s no other way.”
Snow starts to fall. Fat white clouds pushing across the sky.
