“Nobody really knows!” Beq sounded excited about this lack of knowledge. “It has to be deiat, obviously, only deiat can damage unmetal, so it was probably one of the mechanisms inside the ship failing. There’s a lot more damage around the bow, where it’s buried. I hear there are even tunnels that lead inside. Grace got its start as a center of arcana selling off pieces of the ship, and Centarch Garinus Bloodbane led an expedition here in 268 to gather up all the most dangerous relics and bring them back to the Forge. Scavengers have stripped the rest by now.” She paused for breath, then pushed her spectacles back and glanced at Maya. “Sorry. I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Maya said gently. She grinned at Beq, then turned back to the view. “I knew there was a wreck here; I just didn’t think it would be so …” She gestured lamely. “Big.”

Beq was about to respond with some facts about the dimensions of the skyfortress, Maya was certain, but Kerchwite shouted to them from the road. “Keep moving, you two! You can get a closer look tonight.”

As they continued downward, Maya realized that the scale of the thing had tricked her once again. The sheer size of the skyfortress made distance hard to judge. There was still most of a day’s travel between the edge of the valley and the city wall, and the whole time Grace in Execution’s broken frame loomed larger and larger. By the time they were on the flats, following a packed-dirt road away from the Chosen highway, the wreck looked more like a mountain than a ship, its huge shadow sliding across the valley floor to provide a preview of night.

The city that huddled against it was decidedly less impressive. The wall was a human-built thing of mortared stone, only four meters high, and already crumbling in places. It seemed to be intended less for defense and more to channel people to a few well-guarded crossing places, so the queen’s tax collectors could take their due. Traffic was brisk, carts loaded with food mixing with larger wagons like the caravan’s, carrying manufactured goods from the Republic. Loadbirds, thickheads, and other beasts of burden squawked, rattled, and hissed at one another. Guards on warbirds with lances and red tabards passed by at regular intervals, halting to sort out disputes between rival carters.

Maya endured an exuberant hug goodbye from Kerchwite, which both Beq and Tanax emphatically waved off. The three of them collected their packs from the caravan’s wagons and hiked past the queue of farmers and merchants to a smaller gate for those on foot. The armored soldier waiting beside it gave them only a cursory look before waving them onward, under the arched gateway and into the city.