Angel’s mouth curled in distaste, but he said nothing. After how close the fight had been, he couldn’t claim that he wasn’t at least slightly tempted by the thought. As disgusting as it was, easy access to power was looking to be what he might need.

He shook his head. The wound in his foot was almost sealed enough to walk, and the one in his stomach was healing at a good pace. He wasn’t desperate enough for power to resort to what was little more than cannibalism. That sort of thing didn’t come without its own costs, and he preferred to keep his stupid decisions down to one per week.

With a grunt, Angel pulled himself up to his feet with the railing. Vanessa helped him the rest of the way, her brow creased in worry.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll live,” Angel said, licking his dry lips. “My magical energy is already taking care of most if it. More importantly, did you get the bandits’ loot?”

Vanessa nodded, unclipping a heavy bag from her waist and offering it to him. He peered inside and was nearly blinded as the bright sun overhead reflected off the glimmering Vei within it. There were also several disks and a tiny orb that were likely artifacts of some sort. He closed the bag and handed it back to Vanessa.

“Hold on to that for now,” Angel said. “If we need to fight, I don’t want to be carrying it around. Anyways, we’ve gotten completely off topic. Lilian, you said you knew where we were.”

The girl gave a meek nod.

“Could you elaborate on that?”

“We’re about five days travel to the east of the center of the Barren,” Lilian said. “Molten Ridge is twenty days to the north if we don’t stop at any cities, and the nearest city is Starfall. It’s four days to the northeast, and will probably add about one day to our journey if we stop there.”

“Convenient artifact,” Angel said, scratching his chin as he processed her words. “Right. Silver, how many bandits did that Salt Lake bastard hire to come after Vanessa?”

“Just me,” Silver said. “I have a perfect track record. There was no reason to invest in more. Magistrates are filthy rich, but they aren’t made out of money. Not many people can afford to hire multiple bounty hunters of my renown.”

“Just how much do you charge?” Vanessa asked, still watching Silver as if he were a snake hidden within the grass.

“You know that chopper I had? The one these bandits so rudely blew up? That was my fee.”

Angel’s eyes bulged. “That must have been thousands of Vei! Don’t you have your own? Why get one from him?”

“Of course I’ve got my own.” Silver scoffed. “But I didn’t want to waste that on a job like this. I might have scratched it. And, judging by what happened to the poor thing, I’m glad I didn’t bring mine.”

“You sound more torn up about the chopper than the loss of your crew,” Vanessa observed.

“They were hired guns,” Silver said with a shrug. “People die. They were good soldiers and they followed my orders, which is more than I can say for most crews I’ve had. But nobody will mourn their loss. They were murderers, thieves, and criminals. We all knew that their grave would be in the sand – even them.”

“How can you live like that?” Vanessa asked. “Don’t you care about human life at all?”

“Of course I do,” Silver said, stretching his arms out and yawning. “My own. You’ll be the same, soon enough. The Barren will eat up any humanity you’ve got and turn you into one of us.”

He grabbed Angel by the shoulder and shook him with a playful grin. “Don’t tell me you think your good Seeker is all that much better than I am? He may be no slaver, but look into these cold, dead eyes of his and tell me he’d save a starving orphan instead of grabbing some new artifact.”

Vanessa glanced from Silver to Angel, her frown flickering. Angel sighed and brushed Silver’s hand off. “Don’t push on her, Silver. Not everyone that walks the desert dies with a cold heart.”

“So if you had the choice between saving a little kid and getting a new artifact…”

“Not answering that one,” Angel said, gingerly touching the closing wound on his stomach. It looked like it was going to leave a scar. “Enough chitchat. How are our rations looking, and what food did the bandits have?”

“Mostly jerky, cheese, and hardtack,” Lilian said. “Some hot sauce as well. Nothing too nice, but better than rations. There’s more food than we could possibly carry, so I don’t think we’ll have any trouble there.”

“We’ll each take ten days’ worth of food,” Angel decided. “Make sure you’re able to move quickly with whatever you’re carrying. Not everything in the center of the Barren can be killed, so we’re better off running than fighting most of the time. Lilian, do you have any form of fast travel artifact?”

“The pirates had a few old sets of skates,” she replied. “I’ve used them before.”

“That works. Everyone, feel free to mill about the barge and take whatever you’d like so long as you can carry it easily. Let’s plan to leave within the hour,” Angel said.

His companions dispersed across the deck. Angel took a ginger step, putting weight on his wounded foot carefully. It was achy, but he didn’t collapse. He made his way down the stairs to the bandit captain’s corpse and, with a heave, flipped the man over.

With a whir, his arm shifted to its blade form. He ran it across the captain’s chest. Mixed in with the blood and flesh was fragments of what might have once been an artifact. Angel’s arm returned to normal and he pulled a piece out, examining it.

Lines of Old World magic ran across it. Whatever it had been, it was well and thoroughly destroyed. The Star Fragment had drained the man dry. His mouth turned down in a grimace and he sat beside the corpse for nearly a minute, contemplating his next action. Angel set his jaw as he came to a decision. He punched into the man’s chest, pushing through bone and organs, and felt his finger clink against something.

In a spray of blood and gore, Angel pulled a shimmering white orb free of the man’s chest. He flicked the blood off his hand, wiping what remained on the captain’s ruined robes, before putting the orb into his travel pack and standing up.

The wound on his chest was finally starting to stop hurting, although the ache still reminded him of his mortality. Angel took one last look at the captain before weaving through the sea of bodies on the deck and over to the railing.

During the fight, the bandits had abandoned their posts on the barge. The huge sandship had completely halted in the middle of nowhere, and his master’s old warnings rung through his head like a symphony of warning bells.

“When traveling through the center of the desert, move at a brisk pace and avoid drawing attention to yourself at all costs,” Angel muttered under his breath. “Oops.”

The dunes below the ship seemed innocent enough, but he had enough memories of the first trip he’d taken through the center of the Barren to know that all sense of safety was nothing more than a deadly illusion.

That being said, rushing to get away from the ship wouldn’t do them much better than sitting on it. Moving on was key – but it had to be done in calculated steps, not in an emotional rush.

Angel descended into the ship, gathering supplies for himself. He peered into the treasure room, delighted to see that his board had survived the bandits. He slung it over his shoulder, then paused as he spotted Cowl’s blade resting against the wall. The disk that made it expand sat on the ground beside it. His wings were nowhere in sight, and the rest of the room looked like it had largely been stripped bare of anything worthwhile.

He bit his lip, then grabbed the disk and put it into his pocket. After a moment, he grabbed the blade and strapped it to his left hip before heading back abovedeck. The others seemed to understand the unspoken sense of urgency, although it might have been the horrible stink rising up from the offal surrounding them. Long before the hour was up, everyone had gathered on the top deck once again.

“Are we all ready?” Angel asked.

“More than ready,” Vanessa said, glancing down at Cowl’s sword but saying nothing. “I’m going to get sick if we stay here much longer.”

“I don’t know,” Silver said, smirking. “I do love the smell of copper in the sun.”

“I’m ready to leave as well,” Lilian said. She’d refused to take off the one remaining chain on her left arm and had apparently been uninterested in all of the bandits’ weapons.

“Then let’s get moving,” Angel said. “The day is still young, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”