Page 31

“Coward.”

“Medical diagnosis.”

Kesta shook her head and began packing her supplies.

The march resumed.

Near whatever passed for dawn on Kharon-Veil, the landscape changed. The black ridges opened into a broad basin of red stone streaked with mineral deposits. Pipes crossed the slopes in patched lines of mismatched metal, disappearing beneath cloth canopies where steam rose into the colder air.

At first Kesta thought the wall on the far side of the basin was another natural ridge.

Then she saw the gates.

The settlement had been assembled from ship hull plating, volcanic stone and enormous pale bones fitted into defensive arches. Lights burned along the upper wall. Not many, but enough that the sight tightened something unexpectedly inside her chest.

Behind those walls, people were awake.

She could see them moving.

Adults.

Children.

A settlement.

Not a temporary cluster of condemned criminals waiting to die.

Kesta slowed.

Dreven noticed.

“What?”

She looked toward the walls. “You said there were no settlements.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I said the empire recognizes none.”

Kesta thought back and realized he was right.

Dreven glanced at her. “You hear selectively when irritated.”

“I have spent most of our acquaintance irritated.”

“I noticed.”

The gates were still several hundred meters away when two guards appeared above them and crossed long spears over the entrance.

Dreven raised one hand.

Keth called toward the wall. “Returning patrol. Two human living. One human dead. Three raiders under blood debt.”

One of the raiders muttered angrily behind them.

Keth looked over his shoulder. “Would you prefer I change your status?”