Her own hand throbbed, and she shuddered to think of pulling off the glove. She didn’t want to know, but she needed to know—and fast. If the rotter had bitten through the dense material, there wasn’t much time.
She skipped awkwardly down the cracked stairs and almost fell at the bottom, where the room leveled out. It was so bright down there, after the absolute darkness of the streets above; for a moment she could barely see anything except for the hot, sizzling glare of the furnace by the far corner.
“We lost Hank,” Lucy said.
Swakhammer didn’t require any further exposition. He reached up for the double doors that might’ve marked a storm cellar, and he turned a crank beside them. Slowly, the doors ratcheted inward; then, with a loud drop they banged down into place. A waxed strip of fabric snapped along the seam where the doors’ edges met. Once he’d secured it, he reached for a great crossbeam that leaned against the stairs. Lie lifted it up and set it into place.
“We got everybody else?”
“I think so,” she told him.
Briar’s eyes squinted, and adjusted. And yes, everyone else was present—bringing the count of room occupants to about fifteen. In addition to the crew from Maynard’s, a handful of Chinamen crossed their arms and whispered beside the furnace.
For a terrible second, Briar was afraid that she’d returned to the place where she’d first landed, and these must be the same men she’d threatened with her Spencer; but her reason returned, and she realized that, no—she was quite a ways off from the market, and from the first furnace room where she’d descended down the dirty yellow tube.
Coal dust floated in dark puffs, and a sucking, whooshing gush of air dragged itself through the room as the bellows began pumping beside the furnace, forcing fresh air down through another tube and out into the underground.
At first, Briar hadn’t seen the bellows or the tube, but yes, there they were. Just like in the other room, though the furnace was smaller here, and the mechanisms that moved the powerful devices looked different somehow. They were familiar in a strange, unsettling way.
Swakhammer saw her staring at the furnace and answered her unspoken question. “The other half of the train engine wasn’t any good. Someone dumped it at the fill down by the water. We dragged it in here and now it’s a big old bastard of a stove, ain’t it? Nothing in the underground can cook a batch of steam faster.”
She nodded. “Genius,” she said.
“Tell me about it.” Lucy sat down heavily on a thick wood table at the edge of the fire’s reach. She used the light to inspect her arm, which she could no longer control with any real skill. It jerked and lunged against the top of her thighs when she rested it there to try to assess the damage. A thin, pissing stream of lubricant shot out over her skirt and stained it. “Son of a bitch,” she said.
Varney, who had been wholly silent since leaving Maynard’s, came to sit beside her. He took her arm in his hands and turned it over, looking at it from one angle after another. “You busted it up, huh? It’s heavy as hell, I guess. And look, you lost the crossbow.”
“I know,” she said.
“But we’ll fix it up, don’t worry. It’s dented in, right here. And right here,” he added. “And maybe a line’s broke. But we’ll fix it up and it’ll be good like new.”
“Not tonight,” she said. Her fist shot open, then crushed closed of its own volition. “It’ll have to wait.” She turned to one of the Chinamen and addressed him in his own language.
He nodded and ducked out through one of the passages—returning seconds later with a belt. Lucy accepted it and handed it to Varney. “Truss me up, would you, darling? I don’t want to hurt nobody tonight, not without meaning to.”
While Varney fashioned a binding sling to hold the broken arm against her, Lucy gestured with her chin, indicating Briar. “It’s time now, baby. Better sooner than later.”
Swakhammer pulled his mask off and stuffed it in the crook of his elbow. He said, “What are you talking about?”
“Hank bit her. Or one of them did, right on the hand. She needs to pop that glove off and let us look.”
Briar swallowed hard. “I don’t know if it was Hank or not. I don’t think it went through. It’s bruised me up good, but I don’t think—”
“Take it off,” Swakhammer ordered. “Now. If it broke skin, the longer you wait, the worse it’ll be to fix.” He stepped toward her and reached for her hand, but she drew it away, clutching it up to her breasts.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t. I’ll do it. I’ll check it.”
“That’s fine, but I’m going to insist on seeing for myself.” There was no anger in his face, but there was no room for negotiation, either. He loomed up beside her and opened his arms as if he’d opened a door and was offering to let her go first. His fingers pointed at the old engine furnace, where the light was brightest and the heat was most intense.
“Fine,” Briar said. She took herself over to the edge, as close to the warmth as she could stand it; and she knelt down against a soot-stained stair to remove her mask and her hat. Then—using her teeth to tug at the wrist strap—she pulled off her glove.
She stared at the back of her hand and saw a half-moon of blue-red bruising on the flesh below her smallest finger. Holding the hand up close, and turning it to best catch the light, she peered at it hard.
“Well?” Swakhammer demanded, taking her hand into his own and flipping it up so he could see it, too.
“Well, I think it’s all right,” she said. She did not jerk her hand away. She let him look, because she wanted his opinion—even if she deeply feared it.
The whole room stopped breathing—except for the bellows. They gusted and gasped, and the yellow tube between the furnace and the table shuddered with the intake and outrush of air.
Swakhammer said, after a pause, “I think you’re right. I think you lucked out. Those must be some good gloves.” He released a big breath he’d been stashing in his chest and let go of her hand.
“They’re good gloves,” she agreed, so relieved that she couldn’t think of anything else to add. She cradled her hurt hand and shifted her weight so she could sit on the step instead of kneeling there.
Willard joined Varney at Lucy’s side. He said to no one in particular, “It’s a shame about Hank. How’d we lose him?” The question wasn’t broken or grieving, but it wasn’t happy. It was more than merely curious.
“His mask,” Lucy supplied. “Wasn’t on him good. It got loose, and he took in too much Blight.”
Willard said, “I suppose it happens.”
“All the damn time. But he was too drunk to be careful, and you see now what it gets you. Will, help me with this mask, will you, man?” Lucy changed the subject. She twisted her neck and tried to convince her hand to work, but it only fluttered against her sternum. “Help me take it off.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He reached behind her, unbuckled her mask, and pried it off her skull. Then he tackled his own. Soon everyone was barefaced again.
The Chinamen hung back by the furnace, dark eyed and patient, waiting for their work space to empty again. Swakhammer noticed first, the way they lingered with unspoken impatience. He said, “We should get out of their way. These bellows need to run another two hours yet before the downside’s fresh enough to last the night.”
He gave a duck of his head that wasn’t quite a bow and wasn’t quite a nod, and he said a few words in another tongue. He didn’t say the words smoothly or quickly, as if they were sharp in his mouth, but Briar gathered that it was an expression of thanks and a request for pardon.
The leather-aproned, smooth-faced Chinamen appeared to appreciate the effort. They smiled tightly and bobbed their heads back, failing to conceal their relief as the group evacuated down a secondary tunnel.
Varney and Willard stayed close on either side of Lucy, and Swakhammer led the way with Briar beside him. The rest of them—Frank, Ed, Allen, David, Squiddy, Joe, Mackie, and Tim—brought up the rear. They marched together in silence, except for Frank and Ed, who were grousing about Hank.
Frank said, “It’s horseshit, is what it is. And turnabout’s fair play. We ought to go to the edges of the station and turn a few rotters loose down there, at Minnericht’s own front door.”
Ed agreed. “We could go in through the Chinese quarters. They’d let us, I bet. They’d let us if we told ’em what we were up to.”
“And the airmen who hang down at the fort, over by the tower. We could see if any of them are game to raise a little ruckus,” Frank proposed.
But Lucy hushed them from the front of the line. “Knock it off, you two. Don’t you go dragging other folks into your harebrained schemes. Nobody’s going down to the station. Nobody’s tempting fate, or rotters, or the doctor. We don’t need any more trouble.”
Briar thought it was Mackie who quietly complained, “Well how much trouble do we have to swallow before we say it’s enough?”
Lucy said, “More than this.” But she didn’t put much weight behind it.
Mackie mumbled a final word. “I’d like to see how he feels about rotters in his own parlor, biting on his own friends.” He might’ve said more, but Lucy stopped and turned around and stared him down until he closed his mouth.
With rounded walls and sealed, sucking doors that opened and closed like dirty airlocks, the corridor drifted gently down and over to the left.
“These are the Vaults?” Briar asked.
Swakhammer said, “Not exactly. There’s only one real vault, but the name stuck. The rest of what’s back here is mostly where people sleep. Think of it as a big apartment building, turned upside down. Not that many folks live here, really. Most of the people that do live inside the walls have taken up residence at the edges—near Denny Hill, where the nice old houses have big, deep basements.”
