He woke to the smell of herbs.

  It was the first thing his nose registered—sharp and green and so foreign after three days of dust and salt that his brain couldn't place it. Sage. Desert lavender. Something bitter he didn't recognize, something that made his nostrils twitch with the memory of medicine.

  The second thing was the weight of his own body. He was lying on something soft—pelts, stacked thick enough to cushion his bones—and every muscle he owned was screaming. Not the sharp scream of injury. The dull, exhausted scream of a body pushed past its limits and left there.

  He opened his eyes.

  Shadows. A low ceiling of woven brush and salvaged tin. Light filtering through gaps in the walls, thin and golden. Late afternoon, maybe. Or early morning. He couldn't tell which day, couldn't tell how long he'd been under.

  A shape moved at the edge of his vision.

  He tensed, tried to rise, and his body laughed at him. He made it to his elbows before his arms gave out and he collapsed back onto the pelts.

  "Lie still." The voice was old and rough, like stone grinding on stone. "You move, you break something. You break something, I have to fix it. I'm too old for fixing things that won't stay fixed."

  The shape resolved into a badger. Ancient, her fur so grey it looked like stone, her muzzle marked with scars that had faded to silver. She was covered in pouches—leather and woven fiber and one that looked like it had been stitched from an old tire inner tube. They clinked as she moved, full of things that rattled and scraped and whispered of medicine.

  She knelt beside him, pressed a claw to his chest, and pushed him back down when he tried to rise again. Her strength surprised him.

  "Mossback," he rasped.

  She blinked. "You know my name."

  "Badgers. The ones I guided. They mentioned you."

  Something flickered in her eyes, there and gone. "Did they." Not a question. She reached for a gourd at her belt, unstoppered it, pressed it to his lips. "Drink. Slow. Your guts forgot how to hold water. You'll bring it back up if you're not careful."

  He drank. The water was warm and faintly bitter—something mixed in, something herbal—but it was wet and that was all that mattered. He forced himself to take small swallows, to let his stomach remember what water felt like.

  "How long?" he asked when she took the gourd away.

  "Three days. You've been feverish. Crying out." She studied him with eyes that had seen too much to be impressed by anything. "Your mother. You called for her."

  Dorn looked away.

  "She's dead," he said.

  "I know." Mossback stood, her joints cracking. "Dead mothers are the ones we call for most."

  She moved to a workbench cluttered with bundles and jars and things Dorn couldn't identify. Her back was to him, but he could see her shoulders moving, could hear the clink of her pouches as she sorted through whatever she kept there.

  "You owe me," she said.

  Dorn had been expecting this. Nothing in the Frontier was free. "What?"

  "Nothing yet. You're not well enough to pay. But you will be, and when you are, I'll tell you what I need." She turned, fixing him with that ancient gaze. "For now, you rest. You eat. You drink. And you don't ask questions about the things you hear in this lean-to."

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  Dorn's ears twitched. "What things?"

  Mossback smiled. It was not a comforting expression. "Like I said. You don't ask."

  He slept again. When he woke, it was dark.

  The lean-to was quiet, lit only by the embers of a small fire somewhere outside. Dorn lay still, listening. His body still hurt, but the pain had settled into something manageable—a deep ache in his muscles, a rawness in his throat that made swallowing difficult.

  Voices outside. Low, urgent.

  "...three settlements now. The one at the Dry Wash, the one at Salt Creek, and the one at the old mine." A voice he didn't recognize. Male, young, scared. "Burned, Mossback. Everything burned. The Purists came through and when they left, there was nothing but ash and bones."

  A pause. Then Mossback's voice, quieter: "Survivors?"

  "A few. Drifting in. They say the Preacher himself led the last one. Rode in on the back of a big cat—a mountain lion, not like the ones we know—and just... watched. While his coyotes did the work."

  Another pause. Dorn held his breath.

  "They're asking questions," the young voice continued. "Up and down the trade routes. About a box. About badgers carrying a box. About anyone who might have helped them."

  "And?"

  "And nothing. No one's talking. But someone will. Someone always does." A shuffling sound, like the speaker was shifting his weight. "You seen anything? Anyone?"

  "I see a lot of things," Mossback said. "Most of them aren't anyone's business but mine."

  The young voice laughed, bitter and tired. "Yeah. That's what I figured you'd say." More shuffling. "I gotta move on. Jin's coming in from the Escarpments tomorrow—she'll have news. If you hear anything, you know where to find me."

  Footsteps. Then silence.

  Dorn lay in the dark, staring at the woven brush above him. Three settlements burned. The Preacher leading the attacks himself. Questions about the box, about the badgers, about anyone who helped them.

  About him.

  He thought about Vex and Flint, somewhere in the Fingers with their failing lock and their terrified hope. Thought about the matted fur Silus had dropped at his feet. Thought about the burned-insulation smell that clung to the Purists like a promise.

  Then he closed his eyes and slept, because there was nothing else to do.

  The next morning, Mossback brought him food.

  Thin stew, heavy on roots and light on meat, but warm and salty and the best thing Dorn had tasted in weeks. He ate slowly, watching her move around the lean-to. She pretended to ignore him, but he caught her glancing at him when she thought he wasn't looking.

  "How much longer?" he asked.

  "Another few days. You pushed hard. Your body needs time." She stopped at the workbench, her back to him. "Unless you're in a hurry to leave."

  Dorn thought about the burned settlements. About the questions. About the Preacher's silver eyes.

  "No," he said. "Not in a hurry."

  Mossback made a sound that might have been approval. Or might have been something else.

  On the fifth day, he heard the box.

  He was stronger now, able to sit up, able to take a few shuffling steps around the lean-to with Mossback's claw hovering at his elbow. She'd been taking him outside for short stretches—sunlight, fresh air, the things a body needed to remember it was alive.

  They were coming back in when he heard it.

  A hum. Low, barely there, the kind of sound you felt more than heard. The kind of sound that made his fur stand on end and his Lead-Sight eye itch with a cold, phantom sensation.

  He stopped. Turned.

  Mossback's lean-to was crowded with bundles and satchels and the accumulated debris of a lifetime of healing. But in the corner, half-hidden under a pile of old pelts, was something he recognized.

  The box.

  Lead-lined. Sealed. Carrying the same burned-insulation smell he'd caught on Vex and Flint, on the Purists, on everything connected to this mess.

  He looked at Mossback. She looked back, her ancient face unreadable.

  "You said you didn't know them," he said.

  "I said a lot of things." She moved past him, settled onto a pile of pelts with the slow grace of age. "Sit down, wildcat. We need to talk."

  Dorn didn't sit.

  "How did you get that box?"

  "The badgers brought it. Two days ago. The larger one—Vex—she was half-dead when they got here. The smaller one carried her the last mile." Mossback's voice was matter-of-fact, but something flickered in her eyes. "They're alive. Both of them. Resting in a place I know, where the Purists won't find them."

  Dorn stared at her. "They made it."

  "Barely. The lock on that box is failing. Whatever's inside, it's putting out... energy. Radiation, the old ones called it. It's why they lined the box with lead. But lead wears down. Everything wears down." She looked at the box, and for the first time, Dorn saw something like fear in her face. "They brought it to me because they heard I remember things. Things about the old world. Things about what the Builders left behind."

  "What's in it?"

  Mossback was quiet for a long moment. Then: "You sure you want to know?"

  Dorn thought about the water skin. The three days of crawling. The silver eyes watching from the rocks.

  "No," he said. "But I think I'm going to find out anyway."

  Mossback nodded slowly. "That's what I was afraid of."