“Hang on. Let me see.” Rector hauled his legs over the edge of the bed, knees first, then unfolded them and set his feet down on the floor. The floor was rough-hewn but it didn’t creak, and he didn’t feel any splinters against his bare toes. “My socks. They’re gone.”

This observation prompted him to look down at everything else he was wearing, in order to double-check that he was wearing anything at all.

The clothes weren’t his. He didn’t recognize them, but he wasn’t prepared to complain about them. The shirt was sewn from inexpensive blue cotton flannel, but it didn’t have any holes in it. His pants were cotton canvas, too, not wool for winter but lighter for summer—such as it was. They were brown, and there was a long seam sewn tightly across the knee where they’d split and been mended.

He was better dressed now than he was when he’d come inside the wall.

“Whose clothes are these?” he asked, patting himself down. “And where’s my bag? The one I brought with me?”

“The clothes came from the stash downstairs, where the clean and stitched-up things go. Most of the linens don’t come from salvage inside the wall, not anymore. Blight’s too hard on the fabrics, unless they’re treated with rubber or wax. So people down here—they barter, or trade. They collect.” He shrugged, and Rector got the distinct impression that Houjin was talking his way around the fact that he didn’t really know.

“And my things? All my worldly possessions? Did somebody make off with them?”

“Nobody made off with anything, except for you,” Houjin said. The faint tone of accusation wasn’t strong enough to mean anything to Rector until he added, “The satchel you took from the stopover room on Commercial is under the bed. Mr. Swakhammer says you can have it, for now. It’s one of his, but he’s got others.”

“Mr. Swakhammer?”

“Miss Mercy’s father,” Houjin said, which didn’t add much to the store of what Rector knew. “He watches the underground. Him and a few other men down here, and Miss Lucy sometimes. And Sheriff Wilkes, but you already know about her.”

“Didn’t know she was a sheriff. Never heard of a lady sheriff.”

“She took over the position from her father.”

“Her father’s been dead since the wall went up.”