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for a coin, and tossed it up onto the housing. The stoker collected it in disgruntled silence and withdrew.
    Kythen Seul came around the housing to stare at the scene, and Khat waited, wary but outwardly at ease. But Seul only gave the Patrician a sour I-told-you-so glance.
    The wagon topped the rise, and in the distance across the sea of rock was the blocky shape of the Remnant.

    Another mile gone, and Khat had pulled his hood up and begun to doze. The heat of the Waste dried the eyes, tightened the skin, and seared each breath of air. It was nearing the point in the day when all rational people slept.
    The Ancient Remnant had been visible for only a short time, where it stood high above the rocky sea, a giant stone block with gently sloping sides looming above the top level of the Waste. From this distance it might have been an unusually level plateau. Not so startling when compared with some of the greater flights of architectural fancy among Charisat and the other Fringe Cities, but its stark, solitary presence here was disquieting. Now they were closer, and the rock of the Waste rose high on either side of the road, blocking the view of everything but the sky, which was a blue so bright and blinding it might melt anyone who touched it.
    Iron clanged like a bell as something struck the wagon. Khat opened his eyes and saw a canister roll across the platform, spitting sparks.
    He was instantly on his feet and yelling a warning. Vaulting the railing, he landed hard on the smooth stone and scrambled for shelter. He reached the rubble lining the edge of the road just as another firepowder bomb landed beneath the steamwagon’s wheels. The two explosions came one after the other, and Khat covered his head trying to burrow further into the sand. Hot metal fragments peppered the ground around him; some landed on his back and he rolled over, scraping them off before they could set his clothing on fire.
    The steamwagon was slumped forward, one of the front wheels blasted out from beneath it and the driving chain broken. The housing gaped open, and clouds of steam and smoke billowed out. The old stoker was sprawled unmoving on the road, his skin fire-red from the released heat of the ruptured boiler, and the carter was draped over the wheel on the crazily tilted back platform. Khat couldn’t see the Patrician or his vigils anywhere.
    He cursed, knotted his draping robe around his waist, and crawled back through the rock away from the road. He couldn’t see the pirates, but he could hear the skitter of pebbles, loosened by feet climbing over the tops of the boulders. Belly flat to the hard-packed sand, Khat kept crawling. It was hard to say just how much trouble he was in. Pirate bands varied widely, with the less dangerous being formed of escaped criminals and the poor of the Fringe Cities. Unable to pay for water and forced out because of it, they joined the pirate bands if they survived the initial exposure to the Waste. Others were formed of people who were barely people anymore, the descendants of Survivors who had unwisely left their ruined cities after the Waste had formed. They were the most desperate and the most dangerous. They had nearly decimated the kris Enclave until all the lineages had united to drive them off, and now the pirates killed each other for food when they couldn’t raid caravans on the trade roads.
    But this band must be desperate indeed, to risk an attack this close to the well-patrolled outskirts of Charisat.
    There was a scrabbling on the top of the boulder behind him, and he froze. A dark form leapt over the open space above and kept moving.
    Khat changed his course slightly to stay parallel with the road, following it further into the Waste and away from the city, the direction the pirates were not likely to search for survivors in. Then a gap in the rocks showed him others had had the same idea.
    Two forms lay sprawled in an open space between the boulders, and the ground beneath them was the loose