“Different part of town,” Zeke said. “Trust me, though. Any roof that’ll hold us will keep us out of reach. And we’ll be right up against the main wall, most of the way.”

Rector frowned and scratched at the straps that held his mask in place. He didn’t get a lot of traction, since he was wearing Fang’s gloves, but it’d only been an idle gesture anyway. “So the wall went up smack in the middle of some buildings, right?”

Houjin replied, “Right. Cut some of them in two.”

“But not all the way around, I wouldn’t think.”

Zeke shook his head. “No, not all the way around. Why? What are you getting at?”

“Once we get out to the wall’s edge, how do we investigate without getting down within … you know … grabbing reach?”

“We don’t,” Houjin said simply.

“Then how do we avoid the rotters? The ones we’re technically looking for, I mean.”

“We avoid them the same way we find them,” he said offhandedly. “By listening.”

“What do we do if we find some, and we can’t climb up out of their reach?”

Zeke said, “We run like hell, that’s what we do. Unless you’re packing a pistol somewhere in that satchel, and I bet you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Rector admitted, mentally adding it to his wish list. A gun of some sort seemed to be the obvious means of survival inside the walled city. “And neither of you two have one either, do you?”

“Naw. Guns are so loud, it just attracts more of them. Once we get up to the roof, you’ll see what we use to take care of them.” Zeke led the way up a long flight of stairs that led to a trapdoor. He flipped it open and a puff of swirling Blight gas billowed down into the livery, dousing Rector and Houjin. They wiped at their visors out of habit or reflex. It didn’t help.

Houjin ran up the steps behind Zeke, and Rector came after.

On the roof, a row of storage trunks were lined up along the western edge. These trunks did not match and had never been part of a single person’s luggage set, but they were large and sturdy, and Rector thought he saw Union army markings on one of them. Footlockers, then—that’s what they were. Well, footlockers and a couple of steamers.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

Zeke went to the farthest left one and popped the latch. Houjin did the same to the one beside him.