Harrow spreads the map on the bar counter and the three of us lean over it in the yellow lamplight.
The black stain is massive. It radiates outward from the center of the wastes and every settlement it's touched is crossed out in dried brown. Iron-Vein City sits at the edge of the reach, circled in red, labeled as if it's already next.
GOLGOTHA. In the dead center. The wound that everything else bleeds from.
Harrow traces the edge of the stain without touching it.
"If this is the source," he says slowly, "and the vanguard was its forward arm, then destroying the vanguard only bought time." He pauses. "This is still spreading."
"So we go to it," Clementine says.
"You want to go toward it," Harrow says, with the tone of a man who is more surprised than he should be at this point.
"We could sit here until it comes to us," she offers.
"I prefer dying by my own schedule, thank you."
"Then we go toward it. Same result, we get to choose the timing."
"There are bounty targets between here and Golgotha," I say. "Every mark on this map that isn't crossed out is something the Ledger will register. Each one is hours of life."
Harrow looks at me carefully. "So Golgotha is both the mission and the hunting ground."
"Yes."
"Those two things are not necessarily compatible," he says.
"I know."
"The water's the problem," Clementine says, pointing at the black expanse between Bleak-Water Station and the central stain. "How far is it?"
"Two days crossing, minimum," Harrow says.
"In what?" She looks out the window at the sludge surrounding the town on all sides. "Because I am not swimming that."
"The cargo car," I say. "The third one, still on the station platform. Sealed hull. Cut the wheel chassis, drop it in. It floats."
Clementine's brass eye clicks.
"Paddlewheel," she says, like she's thinking out loud. "Scrap metal from the station for the wheel itself. Marine engine to drive it." She looks at me. "Where do we find a marine engine?"
"Under the town," I say. "Smuggling dock. There's always one."
"You can't just say things like that and expect them to be true," Harrow says.
"He does it constantly," Clementine tells him. "And it keeps being true. I find it unsettling."
"It's not some gift," I say. "Corrupt border town on a transit route above black-water? They're hiding contraband somewhere below the boards. It's basic logic."
"That's what everyone with a gift says," Clementine says.
Harrow folds the map carefully and slides it across the bar to me.
"I'll start stripping the cargo car," he says, straightening up, brushing dust off his vest. Something's changed in him in the last few hours. The cathedral exile is receding. Something older and more useful is coming back.
"Harrow," I say.
He stops.
"Thank you for coming," I say.
He looks at me for a moment. Then: "Don't thank me yet. We haven't reached Golgotha."
He walks out. Clementine watches him go.
"He's going to be alright," she says.
"Yeah," I say. "I think so too."