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weapon. It was impossible to guess if he was aware of Khat’s reaction.
    The man was carrying a painrod, an Ancient relic housing what scholars believed to be a tiny arcane engine. It was a foot-long metal tube with an odd rounded lump on the end, its surface covered with etched designs or studded with semiprecious stones. The weapon was not common; most citizens of the lower tiers would have taken it for a fancy club, if they noticed it at all. As an experienced relic dealer, Khat knew better.
    Painrods were not sold on the open market. The rare relics could only be legally owned by Warders.
He might be a less-than-legal collector
, Khat told himself. He knew from personal experience that Patricians could get anything they wanted, in or out of Imperial law. But the man was probably a Warder.
Fine. Here I am with a Patrician wizard who earns his water doing dirty business for the Elector, and who I could go mad any moment and try to kill everyone in sight.
That thought made the rising Waste rock look inviting, if not downright friendly. The smartest thing he could do now was to jump off the wagon and walk back to Charisat. Khat didn’t move. He needed the rest of the promised trade tokens to pay off Lushan.
    Still watching the Patrician out of the corner of his eye, he considered the painrod’s price as a relic on the Silent Market and decided it was worth at least eight hundred and fifty days of artisan’s labor, if not more. Khat wondered if the Patrician could be persuaded to part with it, and in the event of that unlikely occurrence, if he could take it apart without waking the tiny arcane engine that lived inside the metal body and killing himself.
    The vigil who had come for Khat that morning climbed around the wagon’s housing and onto the front platform. He glanced at the Patrician perched on the railing and then at Khat sprawled inelegantly in the corner. He said, “How much further?”
    Khat reluctantly hauled himself up on the railing. “A few miles. You should be able to see it when—”
    He was turning forward as he spoke, to point to where the Ancient Remnant would be visible above the ridges and waves of rock. Suddenly the vigil was behind him, grabbing a handful of his hair and shoving him down into the rail. Khat ignored the painful grip, too busy twining an arm around the rail to keep from going headfirst over it and under the front wheels of the wagon. The vigil said, “If you’ve been lying to us, kris, you’ll wish …”
    It was usually only the Patricians who assumed that lower-tier noncitizens lied out of habit; this vigil must have worked for them so long he thought like them. Khat decided to forgo the rest of his lecture. He was bent over the railing, and the vigil stood unpleasantly close. He snapped his elbow back into the man’s groin. As the vigil fell away, Khat straightened up to take a seat on the rail, long legs hooking around the corner support. The vigil was doubled over on the floor of the platform, vomiting. Khat smiled at the Patrician, who had stiffened visibly, his hand resting on the painrod. The krismen said, “It’s a few more miles. You’ll see it as soon as we top the next rise.”
    The Patrician said, “I don’t think that was necessary.”
    It was the first time he had spoken, Khat realized. His voice was husky and oddly soft. Short for a Patrician and slight, and keeping to his veil despite the heat in the road’s canyon.
Behaving like someone with something to hide
… To make him talk more, Khat nodded at the vigil, who was showing some signs of recovery. “He has a very upper-tier attitude for a dockworker, don’t you think?”
    The Patrician hesitated, and then the steamwagon’s stoker crawled over the top of the housing to glare suspiciously down at them. A bent old man in a leather apron, he nodded at the vigil, who was still recovering on the platform floor, and said, “It’s extra to clean that. Who’s going to pay?”
    After a moment the Patrician relaxed, dug under his mantle