The Broken Lands (26 page)

“All that's true, Jin, and I'm not saying I think anything, one way or the other,” Sam said. “How well do you really know him, though?”

“How well do I know Mr. Burns?” Jin gave him an utterly disgusted look. “I've known him as long as I've known Uncle Liao. They're my family.
Both
of them. Just because Mr. Burns isn't Chinese—”

Sam put up his hands. “Jin, you call one
uncle
and one
mister
. That does sound like two different things.”

“That's only because—”

“Jin. Stop. I believe you.”

“Fine, then.” She gave him one last sharp look and turned her attention back to the book. “Now let me read for a while.”

A while
turned out to be the rest of the trip, which took them all the way to Red Hook. Sam searched his pockets for a deck of cards. Thinking about the incredible feats of the sharper in the porkpie hat, he worked his way through his repertoire of stocks and slips and false shuffles and cuts. But even with that to occupy him, it was a long way to ride in silence.

Mike followed the coach all the way to the docks, then he pulled the horses to a stop and let the four-in-hand disappear around a corner. “Any farther and they'll know they're being followed,” he said. “If they don't already. What do you want to do now?”

“I want to know what they're up to. They can't go much farther in that huge coach, anyway.” Sam glanced at Jin. “Let's go on foot, see what we can find out.”

“This is a bad idea,” Mike said in a tone that sounded like he wasn't really expecting them to listen.

Sam hopped to the cobbled pavement with Jin on his heels. “Just be ready to go in a hurry.”

“You think I should? Really?” Mike snorted. “Good plan, kid.”

“I'd make a properly crushing answer if I wasn't sure he already wants to bash my teeth in,” Sam muttered as he and Jin strode after the four-in-hand.

“Good plan, kid,” Jin replied.

The docks were noisy and thronged, but the route the carriage had taken was fairly obvious. The crowds that had been forced to part like the Red Sea for it to pass had not quite filled back in, and Sam and Jin were able to follow in its tracks without too much difficulty.

They turned away from the docks and onto a narrow street between two warehouses, and immediately flattened themselves against a shadowy wall. The four-in-hand carriage was less than a block ahead.

Moving slowly, it turned another corner into an alley. A moment later, the red-haired man and the bald fellow in the long coat stepped back into the street. Leaving the carriage behind, the two men headed deeper into Red Hook.

Sam started after them, keeping to the shadows, but Jin grabbed his arm. She put a finger to her lips and pointed toward where the carriage waited. They would have to pass the entrance to the alley, and the driver would still be there.

Sam nodded and followed as Jin crept silently to the corner and poked her head cautiously around it. She waved for Sam to go ahead. He took a quick look as he passed, but the man Mike had called Overcaste was not in sight.

At the end of the street, the two strange men stopped in front of an old stone church. A moment later the door opened, and they disappeared inside.

“Now what?” Jin whispered.

“That's probably not the only door. Just about every place has some kind of service entrance.” Sam skirted around the side of the building, under the bricked-in arches that had once been windows.

He found what he was looking for at the very back, almost hidden beneath a pile of cast-off building material and refuse. Under a dory with a gaping hole in its hull, a scattering of bricks, rotting planks, and what looked like a pair of pews was a short stone stair leading down to a wooden door.

As quietly as they could, they shifted the debris off the boat. Sam lifted it so Jin could scramble underneath, then she held it up for him to follow.

Pale beams of light filtered through onto the door at the bottom of the flight of stairs and illuminated a word burned into the wood.

“‘Christophel,'” Jin read. “What's that mean?”

“Maybe it's the name of the church.”

Jin tried the latch. The door opened easily.

“It's unlocked?”

“Yes.” She looked at him uncomfortably. “I'm starting to think Mike was right, and this is a bad idea.”

“Want to go back?”

She sighed. “No.” Gingerly, she slipped inside. Sam mumbled a wordless prayer to whatever saint watched over kids who snuck into places they knew they shouldn't, and followed.

The room was dark, damp, and smelled of dirt. After allowing the silence to settle around them for a moment, there was a
snick
and Jin's blue-flamed lighter flared to life, flickering just brightly enough to reveal the pale round shapes of skulls set in niches along one wall and the dusty backs of wine bottles stacked along another. In between, there was an inky-dark hallway.

With a quick glance over her shoulder at Sam, Jin headed into the passage, her flint lighter held aloft. Mercifully, the dirt floor absorbed their footfalls.

They heard the voices just as they turned a corner to find themselves at the bottom of a set of flagstone steps. Light fell from a half-open door opposite the stairs.

“It's slowed down, certainly.”

Jin doused the flame she carried, and she and Sam crouched in the shadows.

“What do you mean, slowed down?” Sam recognized the red-haired man's voice.

“I mean, there are fewer daemons coming alive. Bios is not hearing the key words as much.” That wasn't a voice he'd heard before.

“So . . . what? Walker needs to mangle a few more people, get them talking again?” The bald man.

“You could do that,” the voice of the third, unknown man said.

There was a moment of silence, and then, “There's really nothing?” the red-haired man demanded. “Ten hours gone, and nothing from the daemons in all that time?”

“Well, look at the map,” the third man said. “There's activity in Coney Island”—Jin's fingers dug into Sam's wrist—“but we have to dismiss that as local chatter because that's where your first two kills were, and there's activity in Brooklyn, but you already knew about that, and you told me the pillar there had already fled.”

“This one in Brooklyn,” the bald man said. “It's not quite in the same place, is it?”

“Close enough,” the red-haired man grumbled.

“And when did it happen? That's more recent than last night.”

The third man answered, thoughtfully, “It was earlier this morning, but you're right, it must have been well after you left Tammany Hall. It's hard to be exact. Maybe around eight or nine?”

“And Overcaste said four of the five pillars had planned to meet there last night, but Sawyer and Hawks didn't show up,” the red-haired man said thoughtfully. “We searched Hawks's home on the Bowery last night, then Sawyer's home and stoneworks in Brooklyn this morning, sometime around eight or nine. Sawyer certainly wasn't there then. But that's when you think these daemons were created?”

“Then this is the fifth pillar,” the bald man said. “Either Sawyer or Hawks went to the fifth pillar, the one whose identity Overcaste doesn't know, the one who didn't have to go into hiding because the other two knew Overcaste couldn't give him up.”

“Her,” the red-haired man corrected. “Overcaste said all he knew was that she's a woman.”

There was another moment's silence, then the third man spoke again. “That's Columbia Heights. If there's someone of interest there, she ought to be easy enough to find. Most of the rich muckety-mucks are out of town for the summer.”

Sam grabbed Jin's arm and hauled her back down the passageway toward the door. They were making noise this time, too much, Sam thought as they reached the room lined with skulls and wine, but speed seemed more important now than silence.

They burst through the door and fought their way clear of the refuse. Sam started for the waterfront the second they were safely aboveground, but then he heard Jin hiss his name. She was dragging back the pieces of refuse they'd pushed aside to be able to move the dory. Sam cursed, dashed back, and helped her pile the two heavy wooden pews on top of the hull. “Just in case,” she said breathlessly. “Okay. Let's get out of here.”

They rounded the corner of the church and hit the cobbled street just in time to run full-tilt into the man who'd been driving the carriage, the one called Overcaste.

He got ahold of Jin, who'd been in the lead. Before Sam could so much as consider what to do about it, however, Overcaste howled and shoved Jin away, cradling his left hand. Jin pocketed the lighter she'd just burned him with, grabbed Sam's arm, and ran.

They reached the waterfront and zigzagged their way through the crowds on the docks until they came to the street where, thankfully, Mike was still waiting with the runabout.

The coachman watched Sam and Jin sprint for the carriage with a nonplussed look on his face. “Go,” Sam panted as they flung themselves inside. “Go, go,
go!
Columbia Heights, as fast as you can.”

Mike rolled his eyes and snapped the reins, and the horses leaped into motion. Sam turned to watch the street behind them, but the four-in-hand didn't make an appearance.

“Was it worth it?” Mike called.

“I think so.” Sam collapsed back into the corner of the padded seat. “I thought Hawks sounded a little crazy when he said naming a thing calls it, but now I'm not so sure.”

Jin sat with her feet drawn up on the bench, her arms wrapped around her shins, and her chin on her knees. “Remember he said the two bodies we found—that they were only killed for the sake of what the killer wrote on the walls? I didn't want to believe anyone could die that senselessly, but he was right. They were killed to get people talking—to make them talk about specific things. And that somehow helped whoever's in that basement figure out where they were.”

“They're ignoring us, though,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Even without naming names, it's still hearing the group at the Reverend Dram, but they think that's just people in the neighborhood where the murders took place spoiling the results somehow. So at least Hawks is safe for a while longer.”

“You know what would be useful?” Jin chewed on her thumbnail, eyes unfocused. “If we could find a way to
really
ruin their results. If we could keep them from being able to find Hawks or the other two. That's all we need, isn't it?”

Sam looked at the green leather book sitting on the opposite bench. “That, and keeping anyone from doing that claiming-by-fire thing.”

Jin shot him a reproachful look. “I told you—”

“I'm not talking about Mr. Burns, Jin. I told you I believe you about that. But it's true, isn't it? The fire, that's the other thing they need.”

She leaned across and picked up the book. “Don't talk to me.”

Sam banged his head twice against the wall of the carriage, closed his eyes briefly, and reached into his pocket. Back to the cards.

 

Frantic footsteps sounded on the stairs. Walker, Bones, and Christophel looked up from the tallow-coated table as Frederick Overcaste burst breathlessly into the basement room.

He opened his mouth, then caught sight of the daemon Bios wading across the star-strewn surface of the table. His eyes popped. He screamed.

Bones reached out a hand and slapped him once across the face. “Haul yourself together, sir.”

Overcaste clapped a palm to his red cheek and stared. “What
is
that?”

“Why, if it isn't the distinguished Mr. Overcaste,” Christophel drawled. “I confess myself disappointed. Didn't you learn anything at Tammany? Never walk into a room and ask a question that everyone else obviously already knows the answer to. It makes you look like an idiot. Worse, it makes you look like an
amateur
.”

“Can we help you?” Walker asked coldly.

Eyes flicking from Walker to the daemon and back, Overcaste composed himself. “There were two children sneaking around the church.”

“Red Hook's full of urchins,” Christophel said dismissively.

“One of them was a Chinese girl,” Overcaste retorted, his voice growing stronger. “Got a lot of Chinese kids in Red Hook, have you?”

“Liao and Burns travel with a Chinese girl,” Bones mused.

Overcaste nodded vigorously. “And when I tried to stop her, she burned me with something. I never even saw what it was.”

“Hell. We haven't got time to go chasing kids around Red Hook.” Walker reached across the table and plucked the pin that marked the most recent activity on the map. “All right. Enough wasting time. We know where the fifth pillar is. Let's go find her. Then we'll go back to Coney bloody Island and deal with Fata Morgana.”

T
HE STREET CALLED
Columbia Heights ran parallel to the waterfront and looked out over the great unfinished bridge across the East River. While the runabout drove past one staggeringly beautiful house after another and Sam and Mike worked out how to get to the address Hawks had provided, Jin examined the bridge.

It was a beautiful thing, with its arched stone and spun-steel bones stretching across the water so far above the roofs on either shore and the constant traffic of steamers and tall ships in between. Sun glittered on the cables. She could just barely make out the wooden footpath that stretched from the anchorage in Brooklyn up to the top of the nearer tower. It extended toward the other tower and disappeared from view, looking like nothing more than a faint line drawn by a pencil. She was only sure it was a footpath because she could see the tiny shapes of people on it.

By the time the carriage pulled to a halt before a grand house several stories tall, a vague idea was beginning to take shape in her mind.