“Wasn’t doing no such thing,” Zeke insisted. Because he was wearing a gas mask, Rector couldn’t tell if he was blushing, but it was an easy guess.

“It’s a shame you didn’t bring her with you. I wanted to ask her something.”

“Something ’bout what?” Zeke asked.

“Something her daddy said that made me wonder. He said she’d tell me all about people disappearing, and now I’m halfway worried about it.”

Houjin and Zeke looked quickly at each other, and Zeke cleared his throat. “Oh, that. Mr. Swakhammer didn’t mean that people were disappearing from around here. He’s talking about the train.”

“What train?”

“The Dreadnought, the train Miss Mercy rode out west. It was a big mess, and a bunch of people died. Miss Mercy was one of the survivors, but now she can’t find any of the other folks who got out alive. Ask her about it sometime … or maybe don’t. She gets this look on her face like she’s scareder than she’d tell you.”

Rector chewed on this new information and decided it might not be pertinent to his task after all, so he let it go. “Fine, then. I can let sleeping dogs lie. So what about you? We’ve got the afternoon to kill, don’t we?”

Houjin interrupted before Rector could lay out his plan. “He wants to steal the Naamah Darling and use it to scout along the wall.”

“I never said that!” he protested. “I never even wondered it out loud. Your friend here thinks he’s a goddamn mind reader, don’t he?”

Zeke laughed. “You were thinking about it, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“Liar. And if you think you can fly it by yourself, you’re welcome to give it a shot. It’d be a real shame, though. Here you just got into town, and we’d have to dig you a grave right away.”

Houjin laughed that time, but Rector scowled. “Fine, you two have your fun. And to think I was going to invite you all to come with me, hunting around the wall.”

“Hunting for what?” Zeke asked. He sat on the open hatch’s edge and let his feet dangle down.

“Monsters.”

Houjin grunted. “You said you were hunting for holes in the wall.”

“Holes, monsters, same thing. How else would monsters get inside?” he cajoled.

Zeke said, “They’ve had monsters inside for years. They built a wall around ’em, remember?”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I’m talking about the monster that came after me. If nobody ever saw it before, maybe it’s new. People have been talking about something killing the rotters. They’re calling it an inexplicable. That must be what jumped me. It was definitely big enough to kill rotters.”

Zeke looked at Houjin as if for approval or confirmation. For the space of a moment, Rector quietly loathed them both.