I walk around the vehicle—I assume it’s a vehicle of some sort, since it has wheels—and stare up at the towering posts. Why would anyone want massive treelike posts aboard their vessel? It makes the wagon needlessly top-heavy.

“Someone must have abandoned it,” Asher says.

I use one of the wheels as a foothold and pull myself up and over the siding. Aside from additional roping and a lever near the front, the wagon is virtually empty. Where is the yoke for hooking up mules? Where are the reins and harnesses? The thing certainly can’t be pulled like a rickshaw.

Asher climbs in and steps beside me, shielding his eyes as he gazes up the posts. Even cinched, the pale cloth flutters slightly, toyed by a breeze we can’t feel in the wagon’s bed.

“What is it?” he asks.

I shake my head. “It makes no sense. It’s like a wagon, but shaped all wrong. And these posts will only make it top-heavy. Whoever built it is an idiot.”

“That idiot is about to shoot you,” a voice announces.

We twist toward it. Nestled against the foot of the outcropping, standing in the crooked doorframe of a ramshackle hut we hadn’t noticed in our first sweep, is a wrinkled old woman. She has a rifle aimed at our heads.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” she says, motioning with the weapon, “get your tired asses off my wind wagon.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“We don’t mean trouble,” Asher says, raising his hands. “Just passing through.”

“That’s a lie,” the woman croaks, squinting at us. “There’s nothing around these parts, so there’s nowhere to be passing through to.”

“Wind wagon, you called it?” I say, thinking about the posts behind us, the giant swaths of fabric that could catch the breeze if uncinched. Like my flags back at Dead River, hung out to warn of incoming storms. “That’s genius.”

“Modeled it after a sailboat,” the woman says.

Zuly’s tanker surfaces in my mind. I can see the resemblance between her hull and this wagon’s bed. The tall posts are another matter.

“Not much use for boats anymore,” Asher says.

“There’s lots about the Old World people have chosen to forget. Doesn’t mean they can’t still serve a purpose,” the woman replies. “Now, what’re you doing here?”

“Like we said, just passing through,” Asher repeats.

“And like I said, there ain’t nowhere past here to pass along to.”

“You can’t believe that,” I say. “You built a wind wagon. Clearly you intend to cross the wastes. Which means you think there’s something out there.”

The woman’s eyes narrow. She looks about Old Fang’s age—ancient for the wastes—but I don’t doubt for a second that she could end my life. There’s a fire to her stare. “It doesn’t work,” she says finally. “Not yet at least.”