The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (29 page)

“Knock first? Well, all right. Come on, Rector—one more message to pass along, and then I’ll show you Maynard’s. You’ll like it, I think.”

Rector had a feeling that unless the saloon sold sap by the pound, he could take it or leave it … but Zeke’s enthusiasm was such that he sat back and let the kid run with it, all the way over to the big, bobbing hull of the
Naamah Darling,
which was tethered to the old totem pole.

Forgetting Fang’s note, Zeke rushed up to the ship and seized the hatch that would let him inside.

Rector, getting an inkling of what Fang’s note meant, reminded him. “Hey, you saw what Fang … said. Maybe you should—”

“Knock, oh yeah—that’s right.” He struggled with the hatch, which didn’t want to release. “Ain’t I making enough racket, though? What’s wrong with this thing, anyhow?” He gave the hatch a whack with the back of his hand, then scanned the ground for something heartier to hit it with. Not seeing anything, he made a fist and punched at the hatch while hollering, “Mother, Fang said you’re in there. I need to talk to you real quick. It’s important! Mother?”

And the hatch dropped violently open. It was all but flung to the ground, snapping back against the underside of the ship with a clang before settling into the usual position. But it wasn’t Briar Wilkes scowling down from the ship’s interior.

Captain Cly did not look happy.

“Important?” he said, his voice carefully controlled within his mask.

“Well, yeah…” Zeke said. “Took you long enough to answer the door. Were you in the back?”

Rector put his palm to his forehead.

“Fang said Momma’s in there. I’m looking for her, and you, too,” Zeke continued, clueless as could be.

Rector heard a door open with the sticky suck of seals being broken, and Briar saying, “Ezekiel Anderson Wilkes?” … which couldn’t be good. If Rector knew one thing about other people’s parents, it was that hearing all three of your given names called in one breath was a sign of bad things to come.

“Mother! There you are. We’ve got to get down into the underground. Everybody has to go to Maynard’s.”

“And why is that?” she asked, sitting down beside the crouching captain. Her feet dangled out through the hatch, and Rector saw that her boots were not tied.

“Because Miss Angeline says so. We saw something real awful today, up by the north edge of the wall. We know how the rotters are getting out, and the animals are getting inside. Long story short, we’ve got
intruders.
”

Captain Cly and Briar Wilkes exchanged a worried glance. The captain scratched at the side of his head, where the mask seal was rubbing against his temple. “What were you kids doing out at the north end, anyway? I suppose Houjin was with you,” he muttered.

“Sure, he was with us—but so was the princess. We wouldn’t’ve gone out there alone, of course,” Zeke lied through his teeth.

“Angeline went with you?” Briar Wilkes reached down to tie her boots, and added, “That makes it a little better, I guess—I trust her to keep you out of … Come to think of it, I’m not so sure. She gets into plenty of trouble on her own, without you three tagging along.”

The captain made a feeble effort to reassure her. “Oh, she’ll keep ’em out of the worst of it, I expect. And they’re standing here in one piece now, aren’t they? Two of ’em, at any rate. Where’s Huey?”

Zeke answered. “The princess sent him down to Chinatown to spread the same news we’re telling you. There’s trouble cooking out at the north end of the wall, and the whole city needs to hear about it.”

Twenty-one

Maynard’s Saloon was packed to the gills. Even Zeke admitted, with no small measure of awe, that he’d never seen so many people crammed inside it—and, for that matter, he wouldn’t have figured this many people would
fit.
But everyone had come. There were a number of men from Chinatown, and a smattering of people Rector didn’t recognize at all. He didn’t know where they’d come from, but a couple of them looked like airmen, maybe—and a couple others might’ve been miners or loggers from outside the walls.

The establishment itself was amazingly normal looking, so far as Rector could tell from peeking between the crowd. It had a big wooden bar with a mirrored backdrop, and brass fixtures that appeared to get a regular polishing. A tall player piano sat in a corner, its padded seat occupied by two thin men who stood precariously upon it in order to see over the crowds. Likewise, there were people standing on the wooden chairs that ordinarily went around the card tables.

The lights were a combination of electric and gas, and they glimmered brightly from wall to wall, flickering in the mirrored portions of the serving area and glinting off the metal trim. Maynard’s looked warmer than it felt.

Everyone who pushed, stretched, and strained on tippytoes to see was facing the mirror. Miss Lucy was there, right at home stationed behind the bar, and beside her Angeline Sealth sat on the bar proper, waiting for the room to fill up to her satisfaction.

The boys elbowed through the crowd.

Rector saw the crew of the
Naamah Darling,
including the captain, Fang, and Kirby Troost; he saw Frank and Willard, who still smelled like the smoke room; and he noted Mercy Lynch standing between her father and a wizened Chinese man whose eyes were very bright and sharp behind a pair of spectacles. “Doctor Wong?” he asked Zeke.

“That’s him. Hey, look—we can climb up on the piano.”

“Will it hold us?”

Zeke shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

They squeezed over to the instrument and shut the cover over the keys, then scaled the tall player all the way to the top. They could barely do so without knocking their heads on the ceiling, but they were pleased with themselves all the same.

Now they could see everything, and everyone.

Houjin slipped inside the door and looked around, scanning the room. He spied Zeke and Rector quickly and waved at them, but he opted not to wrestle through the crowd to join them, or further test the integrity of the piano lid. Instead, he stuck close to Captain Cly.

Briar Wilkes hovered close to the bar’s edge. She wore her full regalia, as Rector had come to think of it—her father’s old badge and hat, and a belt buckle with the zigzag initials
MW
.

The muttering in the room rose and fell in a curious wave.

Angeline monitored it, and watched the door. When she was confident that everyone important was in attendance, she glanced at Lucy O’Gunning, who nodded. The princess took this as permission to climb to her feet on the bar, high enough above the population that she could be seen and heard by everyone.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and other assorted persons whose quality I am not prepared to judge…” she began. She delivered this line with a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes—and it brought only a smattering of nervous laughter. “We have a problem.”

Several of the Chinese men turned to one another and whispered. Angeline saw them and got an idea. “Huey? Where are you, sweetheart? I don’t see you.”

He raised his hand.

“Good, good. Would you help me out? Come on up and translate for me. I might be talking too fast, and English isn’t my first tongue anyway.”

Houjin did as she asked and came to sit beside her on the bar, urging the Chinese men to come closer so he wouldn’t have to shout.

Thusly reconfigured, Angeline went on, with Houjin’s translation trailing along behind her. “As some of you have heard … we’ve got a hole in the wall, and it’s letting things out. It’s letting things in, too. Neither of them things is any good. Worse yet, the hole didn’t just happen: Somebody made it, on purpose.”

She paused to let Houjin catch up, and took a breath to start again.

It caught in her throat as the door to Maynard’s opened and Yaozu stepped inside, calm as you please. He held a mask in one hand and a lantern in the other. He set both beside the door, and stepped aside to close the door. He did not interrupt or do anything alarming, just folded his arms and turned his attention to Angeline.

The moment froze in place. Rector thought you could’ve heard a feather fall in the silence.

Angeline broke the spell by clearing her throat, looking away from Yaozu, and returning her attention to the rest of the room.

“Up at the north end of the city, at the edge of the park near the hill’s natural peak, the wall’s been broken open. Everything about it looks like dynamite. And we’ve seen the men what done it. Red, where you at?” she asked, scanning the room and seeing him atop the piano.

Rector gestured at his own chest. “Me?”

“Everybody clear a path. I want him to come here and testify.”

Rector could feel himself blushing, and felt dumb for it—which only made him blush harder. He descended the piano and weaved through the crowd, stopping at Angeline’s feet.

“Well? Get up here, why don’t you?”

She extended a hand and pulled him up. He felt highly conspicuous, standing there beside her. Everyone in the room was looking at him now, and he didn’t like it. Many of the people in the room hadn’t set eyes on Rector yet, and a murmur rose up, trickled around the room, and died under Miss Angeline’s glare.

She patted Rector on the shoulder and introduced him. “Folks, this here is Rector Sherman. Young Rector joined us a week ago, and he had a hard time of it at first.”

From somewhere in the audience, someone asked, “Is that the kid who fell down the chuckhole?”

“Yes, this is the kid who fell down the chuckhole.”

Rector’s freckles were on fire.

“He was
chased
down that chuckhole, though—and if you don’t believe
him,
and you don’t believe
me,
you can believe Houjin over here. He saw the whole thing, and he’ll vouch for it. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss. Not exactly, though I’ll likely come back around to it.” She nodded down at Huey, who caught up in his translating duties, then nodded back.

“All right, then. Earlier today, me and the three boys—Red, Huey, and Zeke over there—went looking around topside, up toward the north edges of the city. We did this because we knew there was a leak someplace. So we headed out, and we found the hole—and it’s a big hole, I’m afraid to tell you. The only reason nobody outside knows about it yet is that it doesn’t face anything but woods and wilderness. Now, Red, why don’t you tell ’em who you saw today—who you recognized.”

Rector hemmed, hawed, and coughed, then said, slowly, “It’s like she says: me and her, and them”—he waved vaguely at Zeke and Houjin—“we went looking. And when we got up toward the park, we ran into a couple of men talking. All right, so one of ’em was pissing down the hill, but you know what I mean.” He laughed awkwardly, and when no one joined him, he continued. “I didn’t know either of them, since they had masks on. But we followed them back to the tower—there’s a big tower up there; I guess you know the one I mean…”

But Angeline shook her head. “Not everybody knows.” Then she said to the assembly, “It’s a water tower, built right before the Blight came. It’s brick, it’s big, and it was supposed to serve the rich folks on Millionaire’s Row.” She nudged him. “Go on, then.”

“Yes, ma’am. Um … we followed them, and it looked like the men were setting up shop inside the tower. They’re sealing it up—so they can work there without masks, I expect.”

He paused and licked his lips. He didn’t much care for this speaking-in-public thing, but with Angeline beside him, urging him on, he figured he could finish up and sit down, and people would quit looking at him all the sooner. “While we was up there, a big machine came up the hill, through the hole in the wall. It was driven by a guy I know of, a man named Otis Caplan…”

Yaozu began to fashion a sneer, but suppressed it before it was fully formed. It lingered on his face as a slight hint of bitterness.

“Otis is a sap-slinger from California, and he’s talked real big for a while now about how he wants to make more money off his operation. He’s been working with chemists on the Outskirts, cooking up his own varieties. And he wasn’t the only sign of trouble out there—I also saw Isaac West, who’s a chemist I know from Tacoma. He’s been making the ambrosia strain of sap. You may…”—he surveyed the room, but didn’t see any recognition from anyone but Yaozu, who raised an eyebrow, then put it down again—“… or may not have heard of it. It’s a kind of sap that’s just a little different. Tastes different. Has a different…” He gave up trying to explain.

“What I mean is, he’s offering a different product, and he makes it by stealing gas and bullying chemists. He ain’t a nice fellow, and seeing him teamed up with Caplan makes me worry.”

Angeline patted his shoulder again, approvingly this time. “You can sit down now, honey. I’ll take it from here.”

Relieved, Rector did just that—slinking off the counter and skulking back to the piano lid.

When he got there, Zeke punched him gently on the arm. “Stop shaking. You did fine.”

Angeline continued without him. “I believe that these men are bringing dynamite into the city, and they don’t just want it for the wall. They want to put all of you down like groundhogs, blowing up your tunnels and letting you choke on the gas.” A hum of voices rose around her as the assembled men grew worried and turned to one another. But Angeline talked over them until they quieted down. “But we have the advantage here. For one thing, they don’t know we’re on to them.”

Uncertain nods went around the room.

“And for another thing, we know the place better than they do. At best, they might have old maps from when the place was whole—but those don’t amount to much. For yet
another
thing, they know about the men at the Station”—she slipped a glance at Yaozu, who didn’t acknowledge it—“but they don’t know about the rest of us. Likely as not, they know there are some Chinese here—that rumor’s gone around enough. But they don’t know how
many,
and they don’t know how many friends they’ve got.”

More affirmative nods and murmurs rose and fell.

“Personally, I think we should rout the bastards before they’re able to dig in hard at the tower. But,” Angeline added with a raised finger, “it’s hard enough to get a handful of people—like me and the boys—out to the north end of the city. It’d be even harder to move enough men and arms for a fight.”