Then she rode away, and took her share of the outlaws’ horses with her; and the Stranger marvelled, for he knew then what she was; and one did not often see a member of the Major Arcana ride out into the world.

The Stranger, whose curiosity had led him down all kinds of twists and turns in the maze of the Escapement and his quest, did not heed her advice but rode on, and he directed his horse at the road, at a point ahead of where the wagon would eventually arrive.

The other horses followed him obediently enough.

They crossed the distance, passing through isolated patches of flowering cactuses and fever trees, stopping only for the horses to drink at a shallow pool of muddy groundwater. All this while the small plume of dust continued to roll sedately enough along the white road, and as it came closer the Stranger could see that it was indeed a wagon, and it was pulled by two dirty, piebald donkeys.

When the Stranger at last came to the road he stopped, and the horses milled nearby. Such roads could be found, from time to time, in the farther reaches of the Escapement, and who, if anyone, had built them, or for what purpose, the Stranger didn’t know. They led from nowhere to nowhere, seldom in a straight line but rather in a crazy curlicue of a twisting and looping arabesque, like secret inscribed messages in the landscape. In the Thickening, that part of the Escapement that had been partly subdued, or perhaps suborned, by the relative thickness of population, there were no ghost roads, and the settlers had constructed new railway lines. And yet even those would often find themselves subject to the external forces of vastation and revel, and loop upon themselves or terminate, abruptly, in a place where no terminal was.

The Stranger waited, his hands resting on the butts of his revolvers, and watched the road. The solitary wagon traversed along its path, never straying, and as it came closer the Stranger could see that it was a small, wooden wagon, once brightly painted, but the paint had faded and flaked, the wooden wheels creaked, and it was only when it pulled to a halt, at the sight of him, that he saw the legend along the side of the wagon, which read Tinkerers.

Two small figures sat up front in the wagon driver’s seat. They were both bundled in rags, as though to defend themselves, vigorously, against a cold snap, which could, they seemed to silently suggest, strike at any moment. One was male and the other was female, though it was hard to tell them apart. They were both watching the Stranger and neither said anything, nor did they appear to hold a weapon, and the Stranger did not draw his own guns.