by Martha Wells
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 sand of the bottom level of the Waste, dangerous with burrowing predators. The stocky vigil with the red headcloth was dead, the back of his robe rent into bloody fragments by shrapnel from the steamwagon. The other was the Patrician. He lay facedown, a crumpled bundle of cloth, but Khat could see from here that he was still breathing.
Khat pushed himself up enough to see the wreck of the steam-wagon through a gap in the rock. Tattered figures swarmed over it, trying to get down into the housing and the small cargo bed beneath it but hampered by the superheated steam still escaping from the boiler. In moments they would realize the passengers had escaped and begin a search. Khat knew he should skirt around the dead and dying and keep moving, but the prospect of acquiring a painrod distracted him silly. Survival instinct warred with the thought of possessing so rare a relic, and temporarily lost. Khat started forward.
His hand was on the painrod on the Patrician's belt when movement in the corner of his eye alerted him. He turned just as a dark-clad figure knocked him backward over the corpse of the vigil. They rolled in the soft sand, struggling for the weapon.
The pirate shoved his weight down on Khat's arm, forcing the painrod toward the krismen's side. Khat twisted frantically, but the painrod grazed his ribs, and the pirate shifted his grip enough to trigger it. Khat's muscles spasmed as fire seemed to jolt through his body, and he cried out with the last breath of air in his lungs. He was helpless for an instant, unable to move, and the loss of control was terrifying. The pirate was straddling him, and he couldn't see anything of the man's face past the concealing hood and layers of dirty rags. The stinking robes were stained with old blood and sewn with whitened bone fragments and lengths of human hair, still attached to pieces of dried scalp.
A figure loomed above the pirate suddenly, wrapping a wiry forearm around his throat. The pirate gasped for the breath so suddenly cut off and fell backward. Khat dug his hands into the gravelly sand and managed to sit up, panting desperately for air. As the pirate wrenched away from the slight form of the Patrician, Khat drew the knife from his boot sheath. The pirate flung himself at him, and he slashed sideways, catching him in the throat. The pirate recoiled and collapsed, twitching helplessly, his blood staining the sand.
Khat was still trembling from reaction to the painrod. He looked around and saw the young Patrician had staggered to his feet again.
His veil had been torn loose, and he ... No, he corrected himself, she. The idle suspicion he had felt when he heard her speak hadn't been so idle. The hair was blond and cropped close to the skull, the fashion Patrician women followed. The young features were well formed, if narrow, the eyes dusty blue and glazed with pain. Lifting a hand to her forehead, she sat down hard suddenly, and pulled her veil back over her face.
Khat cursed, bitterly angry at himself, at fate, at the world in general. It didn't help. The woman had saved his life and obviously wasn't near enough to death to make abandonment feasible. He put the painrod into a sleeve of his robe and knotted it, then stood and hauled the young Patrician unceremoniously to her feet. Half dragging, half carrying her further into the sheltering rocks, he muttered, "If you had any common courtesy you'd die now and save me this trouble."
This deep into the Waste, traveling on the bottom level would only get them attacked by one of the myriad of poisonous predators living in the sandy hollows and the shade of the rocks. Hauling the dazed and injured woman with him, Khat scrambled up a fall of tumbled stone to the midlevel, where natural trails, tunnels, and caves honeycombed the rock. Faster still would be to climb to the very top, where the stone had been mostly smoothed into gentle waves by the wind, but up there they would be seen by the pirates as soon as they climbed out of the canyon formed by the road.
It was slow going, with the woman's arm over his shoulder, supporting her weight and minding his own balance on the treacherous pathways. They were in shade much of the time, though the sun fell at irregular intervals through sinkholes and the jagged tears in the rock over their heads. Khat kept hoping she would die suddenly, releasing him of any responsibility, but she seemed to have no inclination for it.
They had reached a narrow chimney leading up to the harsh light of the top level when she wrenched back with enough force to make Khat stagger, and demanded, "Where are we going?" Either she was still trying to disguise her voice, or it was naturally deep for a woman.
Too irritated to be gentle, Khat dumped her on the rocky floor of the tunnel and said, "Where do you think?"
She had a
djusted her veil to conceal everything except a pair of angry blue eyes. Controlling her temper with effort, she said, "To the Remnant?"
"Clever." The inside of the chimney was rough and easy to climb. Khat hauled himself up into it and said, "Now come on."
He reached the top, and a cautious look over the edge told him they had beaten the pirates here. Those worthies were probably still searching for wounded passengers along the fringe of the road, knowing anyone city-born would be afraid to venture into the Waste. Khat struggled out of the hole and leaned down to haul the reluctantly following young woman out.
Struggling over the edge, she pulled away from Khat's helping hand and collapsed. Then she looked up and caught her breath. The steeply sloped wall of the Ancient Remnant stretched up more than a hundred feet above them, and the Patrician simply sat and stared, arrested by the sight. The smooth walls were a warm amber-brown that seemed to glow like gold in the heat, and flat stone slabs formed the base, meeting the darker, rough-textured Waste rock only a few yards from the chimney opening. Even from this angle it was apparent that the trapezoidal shape of the huge structure was too regular to be natural, the lines too straight, the rounded corners too smooth and seamless.
Khat crossed the base to the wall of the Remnant, found the one crack that was testament to the age of the place, then counted paces to the left until he found the lip of the circle cut into the smooth brown stone. It was about a foot in diameter, set a few inches above where the wall met the base. It refused to move when he pushed on it, and he had to sit down and shove it with both feet. It shifted finally, stiffly sinking back into the stone.
The wall trembled from the motion of whatever Ancient gears and wheels worked the mechanism, and a ten-foot slab slid sluggishly back and upward, revealing a gaping doorway into the Remnant.
Something stung Khat's hand, and he slapped the little creature casually against the rock. The predator was only about the size of his palm, a jellylike sac covered with spines, deadly poisonous to anyone without a krismen's natural immunity. It had gotten him in the fleshy part of his thumb, and he pulled the stinger out with his teeth and spat it aside before getting to his feet. It would leave a reddened swollen place by morning, and the little bastard wasn't even any good to eat.
The woman was still staring at him, and at the black square of the doorway.
"You wanted to come here, didn't you?" Khat asked her acidly. The bite hadn't improved his temper.
She started, as if coming back to herself after a shock, and twisted around to scan the waves of Waste rock for the pirates. "Will they follow us?"
"Probably." Ignoring her obvious distaste, Khat hauled her to her feet again.
As they passed under the heavy square stone above the opening, she stopped again to gape. This part of the Remnant was a great hollow block, indirectly lit by a clever system of shafts and traps in the thick stone ceiling that let in air and light but kept out all but a little windblown sand. The walls and floor were flat and even, the seams of the blocks that formed them invisible. The only break to their serenity was the hollow square of another doorway in the opposite wall, which led up to the well chamber in the roof.
Khat helped the Patrician out of the doorway and across the floor, to let her down on the first step of the shallow pit. It was about three feet deep and twenty square, with a wide step of bench down to a floor as smooth and unmarked as the rest of the surfaces in the Remnant. In the center was another smaller hole, square with rounded corners, only a foot or two deep and three feet on the side, which was often used as a fire pit by explorers. By the ashes at the bottom, it had served that purpose recently, and in the far corner of the central chamber there was a pile of dried stalks of ithaca, a mid-level plant that made good firewood. Travelers, maybe even a party of krismen, had been using the place as a caravanserai. Pirates seemed to avoid the Remnants, and anyway would have left the place in a far worse state than this bone-dry cleanliness.
The stone peg near the door on this side moved more readily, but the one next to it that locked it in place was stiff with disuse. Arms aching with the effort, Khat managed to give it half a turn, and wedged a loose rock brought in from outside beneath it.
He got to his feet again and stepped back, watching the door block sink slowly into place, shutting out pirates, Waste predators, and other undesirables. The thickness of the walls kept out much of the heat, and now that the door was sealed it seemed a little cooler already.
A yelp made him turn. The Patrician had pulled up one leg of her loose trousers to see that a spidermite had wrapped itself around her calf above her low leather boot. The spidermite's body was only as large as a small coin, but its legs were thick and a good foot long. The venom numbed the bite; it had probably gotten her when she had carelessly lain half-conscious on the sand. Khat let out his breath and stepped forward, drawing his knife again.
The Patrician scrambled back and almost fell off the bench, distracted even from trying to pry the spider out of her flesh.
Khat grinned and sat on his heels to wait. "It's me or him. Take your time."
"You can get it off?" What little of her face he could see was pale, and her eyes above the veil were desperate and proud.
"Not from over here." There wasn't any hurry. The greater danger of spidermites was to unconscious or helpless victims, who could be eaten alive if the creatures were given enough time. Khat picked the dirt out from under his fingernails with the tip of the knife, whistling to himself.
"All right."
Khat started to say that was very gracious of her but was she absolutely sure, but he took pity. He stepped down onto the bench and knelt beside the Patrician, who shifted uneasily at this unwelcome proximity. Using the tip of the knife, he carefully worked it under the spidermite's body. The first pincer popped out, and a little blood welled, but the second broke off in her flesh. Khat pulled the legs free, then slapped the spider's body sharply against the bench to kill it and tossed it onto the floor of the pit. The Patrician watched it, fascinated disgust in her eyes. Khat decided to put off telling her that the spider was going to be dinner later, and pulled the broken pincer out with thumb and forefinger.
She probed the swollen, purple area of the bite and said, grudgingly, "Thank you."
"You're so very welcome. Now." Khat put the knife up, but didn't move away, as she so obviously wished he would. "Why did you want to come here?"
She hesitated, the eyes above the torn veil straying to the walls of the chamber, and didn't answer.
"You know this is the closest Ancient Remnant to Charisat. It's been gone over by experts and amateurs for decades. It's empty. Everything that could be carried off is gone. So what did you think was still here? What did you want me to look for? And more importantly, if I found it, was I going to be left alive to spread the word about it?"
She had the audacity to get angry. "I wouldn't kill someone I'd hired."
"Why come to me, then? If you wanted an expert in relics, there's a dozen scholars in the Academia you could've had, if your purpose was legitimate. Why come to a lower-tier dealer, except because he's disposable?"
"I'm a Patrician. I wouldn't have to resort to that."
Her scorn was almost convincing, but Khat thought, You're fooling yourself. If you didn't kill me, your friends would have. He was thinking of Seul in particular. But there was no talking to some people.
He got to his feet, trying to think what she could want here. She watched him, still angry but cautious. Khat paced idly and, hoping to provoke a reaction, said, "This is only one of twenty-five Ancient Remnants in Charisat's recognized trade boundary. Sure you haven't got the wrong one?"
She looked away, but he sensed the expression under her veil was anything but bored.
"Of course, the others are just as scraped clean as this. Some are in worse condition. The door slabs don't close all the way, or the sand traps are clogged. In the one to the south the cistern's been blocked." He went to the nearest wall, and ran an
appreciative hand over its cool surface. The stone had a peculiar quality, a soft, almost velvety texture. "There are shallow, possibly decorative grooves in some of these walls, especially in the well chamber. And on the floor of the well chamber there's a carved pattern-"
"A pattern?" Her voice held a spark of reluctant interest.
"A pattern of lines, or grooves, where there was inlaid metal, probably scavenged after the Survivor Time. Robelin thought it was silver from the traces left. He also thought the Remnants were built to house arcane engines, maybe as a last attempt by the Ancient Mages to hold the Waste back from the cities." There was a legend about an arcane engine the Ancients had used to keep the sea around Charisat calm, when water had covered the Waste and people had traveled on it in wooden contraptions just like the traders on the Last Sea. If the Ancient Mages had used their engines to control wind and water, it stood to reason that they would have at least attempted to use them to control the fire of the Waste. "But he never could find any real sign that there was anything here. Of course, they could have built the Remnants for that, then died before they put the engines in, but in that case you'd think-"
"You knew Scholar Robelin?"
Khat was used to being interrupted at about that point. Few people except the scholars and the die-hard collectors cared about the whys and hows; most spent their enthusiasm speculating on the amount of coin relics would fetch in the markets. "Yes. I was out here a few times with him. He used to come down to the Arcade..." He glanced back at the young Patrician, saw the skepticism in her eyes, and was suddenly angry. "How do you think he learned everything he knew about the Waste? Did you think he sucked it in out of the air in the Academia Garden?"
"If you expect me to believe that an Academic scholar as well-known as he was ..." She shrugged one shoulder in disdainful comment.
Her words stung, though she couldn't know why. Khat hadn't been allowed past the inner gates of the Academia since Robelin had died. Starting toward the door to the well chamber, he said, "If you want to take a walk, you saw how I worked the door. Tell the pirates I said hello."