The Iron Compass

Hollis Vey is a legacy at the Iron Compass, which is not a school so much as a chapter house off I-40 where riders study rune-binding in a converted church and race for slots every spring. Her father rode for the Compass and died on it, and he left her a battered KLR, a debt, and a name the chapter still respects. Her enrollment waiver pairs her on paper with Ren Darrow, the Warden — thirty-one, silent, holding the chapter together through two failed tithe seasons and one funeral he has never once mentioned. Neither of them wanted a mate-bond. On the third night, over a carburetor, the mark flares anyway. They agree to ignore it. Then a rival chapter out of Amarillo starts burning tithe routes, one of the Compass riders doesn't come back, and Hollis is the only body still standing with a working bike and a clean license. She rides the route alone. She comes back with a manifest, two defectors, and a set of numbers the chapter has been lying about for six years.