The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (30 page)

“I have some thoughts on this matter.”

It was Yaozu. All the chatter, and all the rising pretense of excitement, went as stone quiet as if it’d been shot dead.

For the first time Rector could recall, Angeline looked uncertain. She didn’t respond except to stare at him tensely from the edge of the bar.

Yaozu stepped forward as much as he was able. “I do not want these men inside this city any more than the rest of you do. I am here to be of assistance.” He was vastly outnumbered by the Doornails, and was widely known as the man who’d stabbed the princess last year—so even people who hadn’t been sure about him before that hadn’t cared much for him since. But he said “Pardon me,” and he came forward. Rector thought there might be ill to be said of the man, but he wasn’t a coward.

The crowd parted, men leaning backwards to clear a path as if they were afraid to touch him. When he reached Angeline’s feet, he stared up and her and asked, “May I say a few words?”

The room held its breath, and Angeline took a deep one. Then she said, “If they’re helpful words, then you should probably share them.” Then she hopped down off the bar to linger at its end with Lucy O’Gunning and Briar Wilkes, retreating to the little knot of femininity that accounted for every woman Rector knew of in the underground save for Mercy Lynch, over by her daddy.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Yaozu murmured. He turned around and jumped backwards onto the bar with a quick little leap that left him sitting on its edge. He climbed to a standing position and assumed Angeline’s spot at the center of everyone’s gaze.

“All the way here from King Street Station, I considered this problem—and I considered what we know. We know the broad strokes of their plan, yes. But we need more information before we begin countermeasures. First we should spy on the newcomers and make sure we know their strength and their resources.”

Someone complained aloud, “But they’re going to blow us up!” and immediately shrank in upon himself, as if he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“A valid concern, yes,” Yaozu conceded. “However, the strategic use of dynamite is more complicated than throwing the sticks down a hole and lighting a match. I know of this man, Otis Caplan. He isn’t an idiot, and he’ll want to use his explosives wisely. He’ll survey his intended targets and take his time selecting them.”

Andan Cly asked, “How much time, do you think?”

“Houjin said they had no plans before tomorrow night, when their reinforcements arrive, so we can assume we have another day or two. Perhaps forty-eight hours. And when they do make their move, they’ll attack the Station, not the Vaults. It’s their primary goal, and the only firmly occupied place they’re aware of.”

A reluctant but positive hum considered this, and accepted it.

“This is not to say that we should dawdle. We need men—or women”—he quickly amended—“who are familiar with danger and prepared to come very close to it. We need people who can move quietly, and who know the area with great precision.”

Doctor Wong frowned. “But the north side,” he said in heavily accented English. He switched to Chinese to ask the rest of his question, and Yaozu replied in kind. Then, to everyone else, Yaozu said, “It’s true that the area is a wasteland—that’s why our enemies chose it. If they’d been smart enough to fix the hole in the wall, even with a flawed, temporary barrier, we might not have noticed their presence so soon. But their carelessness is our good fortune.

“So that leaves the question: How many of you know the north wall area well enough to monitor it, and the men who’ve settled in there?”

Angeline let out a little cough.

“Obviously Princess Angeline is familiar with the terrain. Anyone else?”

Houjin’s translation provided a soft echo.

A burly man with a fluffy beard put up his hand. “I knew the spot, years ago. I knew it well. I worked at the sawmill, before it burned. My boss had a home up there.”

Intrigued, Yaozu asked, “And you regularly visited your employer’s home?”

He shrugged. “I was a foreman. I delivered messages and supplies to Mr. Yesler. I saw the tower while they were building it. The park layout’s pretty straightforward,” he assured the room at large. “Several streets, all running alongside one another. They dead-end … well, at the wall, I suppose. But they used to dead-end at the park, right around the tower.”

Angeline added, “And the wall runs right behind that tower, over the cemetery. Cuts it in two.”

The lumber man said, “All right, I can imagine that.”

“What’s your name?” Yaozu asked.

“Terrence Miller. By coincidence.”

“Excellent. Anyone else? We have Princess Angeline, and Mr. Miller.”

Captain Cly was elbowing Houjin, who finally gave in and said, “I remember everywhere we went, and could find my way around. I’m good with directions.”

“That you are,” Yaozu said approvingly. “You’ve only been there once?”

“Just the once.”

“Your recent visit probably makes you as good a guide as Mr. Miller, who hasn’t been in years, if I judge his implication correctly. Between the three of you, could you make a map? Something we could pass out to those who might join you?”

Angeline told him, “We could. We will.”

“Good, good. We’ll need to educate a few chosen people about the terrain.”

“Only a few people?” Lucy O’Gunning asked.

“For now, only a few. And if possible, we should send out a party this afternoon. We can’t waste time.”

“But then what?” Lucy pressed.

He paused. “It depends on what we learn. If we can take a few days to gather ourselves and ready our defense, so much the better. If we can’t, then we rush our plans and hope for the best.”

“So you
do
have a plan?” Houjin sounded positively hopeful.

Yaozu gave him a chilly smile. “Yes. But it’s not a plan I can enact alone. I’ll need the whole underground to assist. And that’s only fair, isn’t it? Since it’s the whole underground we mean to save. They’ll come for the Station first, yes, but they’ll come for the rest of you eventually. Or the Vaults will collapse upon themselves without my people—and my finances—to restore them.”

Grudgingly, Briar Wilkes said, “That’s true.”

“Thank you, Sheriff Wilkes,” Yaozu said with carefully presented deference. “We all must agree to work together, and we must understand that the solution will not be clean, tidy, or peaceful.”

Kirby Troost, one of the men from the
Naamah Darling,
said, “I think we’ve got that part figured out. I, for one, am tickled pink at the prospect of dirty, untidy, and violent. So what do you intend for us to do, anyhow?”

Cly nudged the little man gently, as if he was concerned that too much had been said. But Troost stood his ground, and stared levelly at the Chinese man on the bar.

“Mr. Troost. You’re an engineer, aren’t you?”

“Close enough.”

“I’ll want a word with you later. You, too, Houjin. I have a team of my own at the Station, but I’ll need all the mechanical heads I can put together.” Then he concluded, “Between us, I believe that we can best them.
Entirely.
”

Twenty-two

The city mobilized. Houjin was carted off with Yaozu—he didn’t leave with Cly’s permission, exactly, but the captain didn’t attempt to stop him. Angeline disappeared out the back of Maynard’s as soon as Yaozu had finished speaking, as if she’d forgotten something and only just remembered it, but Rector suspected that she was trying to avoid the man altogether.

The remaining crew of the
Naamah Darling
went up to Fort Decatur to prepare the ship for launch and reconnaissance—and a potential supply run as well, if it could be made quickly enough. Zeke vanished with the captain, as if the boy could replace Houjin (a thought that made even Rector laugh), and Briar Wilkes left right behind them. Lucy O’Gunning began cleaning the bar, Swakhammer and his daughter went out the back door chatting, and there was nobody else left who Rector knew well enough to ask,
What should I do? Where should I go?

Everyone ignored him, so he went back to the Vaults. It was either that or the Station, and he didn’t know anyone there except for Bishop and Yaozu, and neither one of them seemed too likely to take him under their wing. Or even give him the time of day, without duress.

But the Vaults were easy, and not very far away. He’d figured out the path by now, and while he’d been jaunting through the facilities with Zeke he’d spied a room that nobody seemed to be using. Since he doubted that Mercy Lynch would beat him back, he let himself into the sickroom, gathered his belongings, and relocated to the other space on the next floor down.

This new room was dark, but all the rooms were dark. It was scantily furnished, but again, none of the rooms were poshly appointed as far as he knew—except maybe out at the Station, where Yaozu had enough money to appoint whatever he pleased.

Rector wondered if he ought to find his way out to the Station, after all.

The Doornails had been pretty nice to him, so far as nice went. Except maybe the nurse, who hadn’t been nice, but she’d saved his life. And maybe Cly or Briar Wilkes, who’d been none too welcoming—but hadn’t chased him out of the fort, either. But Zeke was all right, same as ever. And Houjin was tolerable, once you figured him out. And Angeline was fine by him, if you ignore the fact that he’d never expected to call a woman old enough to be his grandmother some kind of friend.

As he sat on the edge of the dry, uncomfortable bed, he asked himself what he
really
wanted and found no answer except a dull pang of hunger for sap, which he’d effectively concluded that he couldn’t have anymore, regardless of how much he wanted it.

(Something about the dismembered pile of bones and meat. Something about the moaning, lonely grunts and wails of the rotters. Something about being so close to it all, and Yaozu running an operation with no use for users, now or ever.)

All right then. No more sap. Not for now.

He considered sharing this unhappy conclusion with Zeke or Houjin, or even Mercy Lynch—since she was so keen to hear all about sap and its effects—but he wasn’t certain he could stick with the resolution, if in fact this was a resolution at all. He didn’t know. He’d never made one before.

All he knew was that he’d gone a stretch without sap and he was thinking clearer than he had in a very long time, and feeling better than when he’d been on the outside—persistent Blight gas be damned. He was hungry more often than not, but he’d always been hungry outside—and now he knew where to find food, and no one would swat him with a belt if they caught him taking any. He was tired, but he’d often been tired before, and now he had a place to sleep that he didn’t share with anyone else. Maybe it didn’t lock, and maybe it didn’t belong to him in any concrete way apart from possession being so much of the law down here, but it was his and no one was fighting him for it.

If he were to try his luck at the Station, he might find the population less accommodating, or more competitive, which was his true worry. Bishop had suggested that the Station would be filled with men more like himself, inclined to crime, drug use, and cheating behavior, and that sounded tricky. It was easier, he suspected, to be the only person of his sort. Better a big fish in a small pond.

But when he looked around the tiny, dingy, dark, and utilitarian room … it did not feel much different from the orphanage. It felt like a lateral move, and not a step up. Even if it was his, and his alone.

He was mulling this over when he heard a violent clatter and a keening, simpering sound that made his ears want to close up. He hopped to his feet and poked his head out into the hall, and there he saw Angeline wrestling with something that was too large for her to easily carry.

When she saw him, she smiled and set her burden down with a grunt. “Red!” she exclaimed, panting roughly as she caught her breath. “Come give me a hand with this, would you?”

“What … what is it?” he asked, coming closer only because she was so unafraid—and it wouldn’t do for him to cringe away like a coward.

“Silly boy—it’s the cage we set out the other day. And inside it…” She drew aside a moth-eaten blanket that’d been covering the cage. “I’ve got Zeke’s fox.”

The creature snapped and hissed, crawling in a circle as if trying to create a smaller and smaller ball of fox—something tiny enough to fit through the mesh and escape. Angeline dropped the blanket again, and the persistent fuss of the animal’s crying tapered off.

“Why is it Zeke’s fox?” Rector asked.

“Because he’s the one who wanted to save it. Him and me, I guess, but I don’t plan to look after it, and I expect he will. Help me carry this,” she directed.

Rector did so, but he made sure to grab a good handful of blanket before putting his fingers anywhere within potential biting distance.

He needn’t have worried. The fox cowered away from both of them.

“Where are we taking it?” he asked as he lumbered beside her, walking sideways to keep from dropping the cage and fox both.

“I thought one of these extra rooms down here might do the trick. Same as you, I expect,” she said. “You picked one out? Is that what you’re doing down here?” She sidled as they walked, the cage held between them.

“Yes, ma’am,” he admitted. “Miss Mercy threw me out of the sickroom.”

“You ain’t sick no more.”

“Sure, but I didn’t have noplace else to go.”

She stopped beside a half-open door. “Here—this room over here ought to be fine for the fox, for now. You didn’t see anybody else around? Not that I think anyone’d need the space, but you never know.”

“No, I think I’m the only one down here. But we can always shut the door and … um … and put a sign on it.”

“Not sure how much good that’d do.” She pushed the door open with her hip and backed into the room, drawing the cage and Rector along behind her. “Half the folks down here can’t read. But if the idea of a snarling fox who’s all sick with Blight doesn’t keep ’em out, they deserve to get bit. I’ll pass the word around upstairs.”

Rector accompanied her to the far wall, where they deposited the fox.