The Broken Lands (47 page)

Susannah spoke up first. “Who are you?”

The stranger turned his gray eyes toward her. “I am Bios. I am he who was made to govern the daemons, which were set to the task of searching the cities by the creatures of Jack Hellcoal. We were released by one in this room, but I cannot tell which of you that is. Was it you?” He took a step toward Susannah. “Are you the root?”

“It was me,” Jin said quietly, stepping in front of Susannah. “I don't know what you mean by the root, but it was my message that did this.”

The creature called Bios stepped closer and examined Jin closely. “You smell of fire.” He regarded her for another moment, then nodded. “Thank you. We are glad not to be forced to witness the work of Jack Hellcoal's men any longer.” Then he turned to leave.

“Wait,” Jin protested. He turned back and she winced as the gray eyes in the red-slicked face stared at her. “The things they are saying . . . can you . . . can you stop them?”

The gray eyes narrowed. “Stop them?”

The voices of the daemons rose angrily. Jin swallowed a wave of nausea and fear and nodded. “The things they're saying—people will go mad if the voices go on this way.”

“They are merely speaking of things they have seen,” Bios said. “Your people seem to have charge of this world. They should be made to answer for what they do.” He paused. “Although, perhaps I can help you after all. There are things my people have seen that should not be allowed to continue. We can devnull them.”

Susannah put a hand on Jin's arm. “What does that mean?” she asked warily.

“Devnull,” Bios said. He pointed to the half-full glass that stood on the bar between himself and Ambrose. The glass vibrated, then it winked out of existence.

“Devnull,” he repeated.

Susannah gasped. “Oh, no.”

“Wh-where did it go?” Sam stammered.

Bios turned to him for the first time and tilted his head. “Devnull.”

“But where did it
go?
”

“Devnull,” the daemon repeated patiently. “It is devnull. It has gone to devnull. It is not.”

Ambrose touched the ring on the bar where the glass had been. “It's not . . . what?”

“That is all. It is not. It is devnull.” He looked from Ambrose to Sam and back. “My daemons can devnull all that we have seen. This would make your world a better place.”

“No,” Jin protested. “No! No, don't . . .
devnull
anything!” She dropped her head into her hands. “This is all my fault.”

Sam stepped up next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. “They aren't all evil,” he said. “It isn't all bad, like you've seen.”

The daemons conferred again. Bios held up a hand, and they fell silent. “Who is the root?” he asked Jin. “You say this is your fault. Are you the root?”

Susannah stepped forward. “I'm not in charge—not the root—but I—
we
speak for the cities of New York and Brooklyn.”

Bios looked at the yellow paper with the red catherine wheel that Susannah still wore pinned to her collar. “This is the wheel group, then? In that case it is for you to decide. Do you wish us to devnull what we have seen?”

“No,” Susannah whispered. Then, stronger: “Please, no.”

One of the daemons stepped forward. “I saw three men break into a house,” it said coldly. “They killed a woman and hurt a man. The woman and the man spoke Jack Hellcoal's name and the words
pillars of the city
. That woman was your friend. We do not understand.”

“That woman was my
sister,
” Susannah corrected, angrily. “I loved her, and I had to leave her, knowing I was leaving her to die.” Her voice rose. “It was the hardest thing I'll ever have to do, and I did it to save the cities I speak for. And if you . . . if you do whatever it is that you do, if you just . . . just . . .
devnull
it . . .” Her voice broke. “If you do that,” Susannah choked, “she died for nothing. If I let you do that, then I
let
my sister die for nothing.”

“Perhaps you have not seen the things we have seen,” Bios suggested gently. “Perhaps you would understand if you had seen.”

“I have
seen,
” Susannah snapped. “Don't you think for a
moment
I haven't. My mother—my father . . .”

“So have I,” Jin said, when the young woman couldn't continue. “Look.” Bios turned his face to her as she toed her slippers off and hiked up her trousers to display her crumpled feet. “Look! Someone did this to me. On purpose. We've
all
seen things like you've seen. I walk on the memory of those things every day.”

“Then why should we not make those things stop?” Bios persisted.

“Because we believe this country is worth saving,” Susannah answered. “If you've been watching, you know how hard we have worked to try and save this place.”

“You said you speak for these cities,” he said to Susannah. “Perhaps you have no choice.” Bios pointed to Jin's feet. “And you—why, if you walk in pain, do you keep on walking?”

“Because . . .” Jin faltered. “Because once the pain was worse than it is now, and maybe someday it will get even better. And because since the days of the memories under my toes, I've danced on these same feet. And I've been across this country twice at least, and I've seen the fields of Shiloh and Gettysburg.” She turned to look at the crowds of daemons that filled the room. “Years ago those were killing fields, and there were so many bodies the earth couldn't hold them all. But there are flowers growing in those fields now. I've seen them.”

“I do not understand
flowers
.”

“Beautiful things,” Jin said. “Beautiful things trying so hard to survive, even though they have to work their way up through bullets and bones. Beautiful things that deserve not to be punished for the world they were born into.”

Bios turned to Ambrose. “You do not believe this.”

The newspaperman sighed. “The world was finer, once. The country, too. I wish you could've seen it before we tore it to pieces.”

“I do not understand
country
.”

“It's what we all thought we were fighting for on the killing fields.”

The new voice came from the doorway. They all turned.

It was the ashen man who had delivered Sam's note to Tom Guyot, the man with the sideburns and the sharp blue eyes. And he wasn't alone. The lounge entrance was crowded with men and a few women, all wearing boutonnieres or corsages of wild roses or briar.

“I do not understand,” Bios said again.

“'Course you don't. You have to live it to understand it,” Tom said.

“So pain and anger—this is acceptable if done for this thing that is
country
?” Behind Bios, the daemons murmured angrily among themselves.

“Nobody's saying that,” Tom said. “Only that there is something we thought was worth fighting for, maybe the only thing both sides could agree on. We could show you.”

“‘A ghost that steals into the world fears all men.'” Jin spoke up again. “You don't know the world you've been brought into. You should see it before you decide it isn't worth saving.”

Bios looked at her. “And who will show it to us?”

Tom and Ambrose exchanged a look, then they turned to the men and women in the entrance. Susannah stepped forward. “Will you do this thing?” she asked them.

“No.” The daemon shook his head. “Not the fighters of the killing fields. We will not be shown by creatures who have done so much killing that they have paved this country with the bones of the dead. Of course the ones who lived will say they should go on living.”

“Well, that's easily resolved,” Tom said. He nodded to the crowd in the door. “All these people are dead.”

D
EAD
?” J
IN STARED
at the group in the doorway. They looked as substantial as anyone. “But how . . . ?” She looked from Tom to Ambrose. “They look just the same as you.”

“I told you,” Ambrose said. “I told you it was just a matter of timing, spotting a dead man on the road.”

Tom smiled sadly. “It's hard to tell the difference, sometimes. War does that. The ones that survive die a little anyway, and the ones that die, well . . . sometimes they don't find peace so easily. Take Ambrose, for instance.”

“I beg your pardon,” the newspaperman said indignantly. “The dead can't drink like I can.”

“Starting to think you're drinking on behalf of every damn fellow that died,” Tom observed mildly. “Just saying you're not precisely whole, is all.” He faced the group of dead men and women. “What do you say, then?”

The soldier with the sideburns turned to survey the faces around him. Then he nodded. “Yes, if this is what is needed.”

“There are many of us,” Bios said. “Many hundreds of thousands now.”

Scattered laughter rose from the soldiers. “Don't you worry none about that.” Tom chuckled. “Between the ones from the North and the ones from the South, I suspect we can find you guides aplenty. Six hundred thousand and more we left on the fields.”

“Will they all work together, though?” Susannah asked. “After all they've been through?”

“I 'spect they can be convinced. They fought and died for the country. They won't want to have done that for nothing.”

Jin surveyed the faces of the dead. “In the tales Uncle Liao used to tell me, ghosts are better able to see justice done than the living. Whatever they were in life, in death they belong to the universe and the right.”

Murmuring and more humorless laughter came from the doorway. The dead here didn't seem to precisely agree with that.

“Well, that's a whole lot of selflessness to ask of anybody, even a dead man,” Tom replied. “They aren't going to want to have died in vain, though. Whatever it was made 'em go to war in the first place, I'll lay you odds there's something of it left they won't want to see these creatures take away.” Tom smiled at Susannah. “Don't you worry, darlin'.”

Bios surveyed the lounge full of daemons, the soldiers waiting in the room beyond. “We will see this world, this country,” he said at last. “We will go with you, and then we will make our decision.”

“It's a big country,” Tom said mildly. “Could take a long time.”

“We will not rush,” Bios replied. “We will walk as long as is required. Perhaps . . .” His voice actually took on a wistful note. “Perhaps, in our walking, we will find the root.”

“Come on, then,” said the man with the sideburns. “The country is wide and the roads are long.” As he turned to leave, both Ambrose and Tom straightened and saluted.

“Sir?” Susannah stepped forward and extended her hand. “Thank you.”

The soldier clasped her hand with a silent nod. Then he departed.

The daemons followed on his heels. The last to leave was Bios. He paused in the doorway and faced Jin. “What is your callback spell?”

“Callback spell?” she repeated.

“Yes. When you move on in the loop.”

She had no idea what he meant by either callback or the loop, but they were leaving, so she held out her hand as Susannah had, and said, “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” Bios held out his hand and Jin shook it. “My compliments to this wheel. It is a powerful one.” Then he turned and followed after the rest.

When the daemons left the building, Jin could feel the difference right away. It was as if that weight, that judgment, had been lifted.

“You've got to be exhausted.” Mr. Burns came to stand beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. “What do you say we get you back to the wagon and get some sleep? Tomorrow's a new day.”

Sam followed. “I'll walk you.”

Mr. Burns shook his head. “Get some sleep yourself, Sam. You did well, all of you, but even heroes need rest.”

Jin allowed herself to be led from the saloon and across the now-empty atrium. Mr. Burns gave her shoulder an extra squeeze. “Liao's somewhere right now being proud of you, you know,” he said. “Firefly.”

M
ONDAY MORNING
felt like it dawned no more than five minutes after Sam collapsed on his bed in Mrs. Ponzi's attic. On the other side of the room, Constantine lay sprawled across his own bed, fully dressed and with one shoe still hanging off his toe. He didn't move so much as a muscle when Sam shoved up the window and climbed out onto the roof and down to the alley.

Coney Island was waking the same as it always did. It was a little more subdued this morning, perhaps—it was Monday, after all—but it was almost possible to forget, as he wandered along the avenue toward the East End, that his entire world had nearly gone up in hellfire the night before.

Almost, but not quite.

In Culver Plaza, you could hear the gulls chattering to each other and the breakers crashing on the beach. It was so close to peaceful and Sam was so deep in his thoughts that he didn't notice Tesserian sitting there until the sharper shouted his name. “Hey, Sam!”

“Hey, Mr. Tesserian.” He strolled over and sat on the empty crate at the sharper's table. “I guess you didn't have any trouble with Walker and Bones after I left.”

“Nah. I don't look like much, but I keep an ace or two in the hole for just that sort of occasion. Anyhow, they were both a bit preoccupied with you.” Tesserian tipped his flat hat back and looked Sam over, closely. “You come out all right?”

Sam smiled tiredly and nodded. “I'm here, aren't I?”

“That's not the same thing.”

Which was true, of course. Sam had been asking himself all morning why, after what he and Jin and the rest had done the night before, he didn't feel as if the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders yet. Why he felt so strangely adrift.