Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century #1) 4

But the lift held, and it crawled upward into the darkness of yet another lightless place.

Zeke was stunned—every bit as stunned as Briar had been the first time she heard the Daisy. But his mother lifted him out more easily than she’d lifted the gun, and she pulled him off the platform, right into a door.

Without knowing what was behind it, she opened it swiftly, dragging the staggering boy in her wake and aiming her Spencer in a sweeping arc that covered the whole horizon.

The glowing orange bubbles of a dozen bonfires dotted the streets, and around each bonfire there was an empty ring of space. No one had ever told Briar that rotters would keep their distance from a flame, but it stood to reason, so she didn’t question it.

The fires were built up and fed by masked men who cared nothing for whatever fight still raged beneath the station. These men were reeling, but recovering. They’d heard the Daisy too, and they knew what it was when it sounded. They were far enough away, up here—and sheltered some by the crackling loudness of the fires—that only a few had actually fallen. Some of them shook their heads or boxed at their own ears, trying to shake away the dreadful power of Dr. Minnericht’s Doozy Dazer.

Briar hadn’t known they were up there. But if she had, likely as not she would’ve fired the Daisy anyway. After all, the living recovered faster than the dead.

Briar spied one ponytail, and then another two or three jutting out from the backs of gas masks. The Chinese quarter was out near the station at the wall’s edge; and these were its residents, defending the streets in order to protect themselves.

All of them ignored her. They ignored Zeke, too.

She told him, “Drop the Daisy.”

“But it’s—”

“We won’t get a chance to use it again. It’ll take too long to charge, and it will just slow us down. Now,” she said, because suddenly it occurred to her that she did not know. “We have to find this fort. Do you know where it is?”

She could barely see through the smoke and the Blight, and she wanted to ask someone for directions. But all the busy men, feeding their fires, did not look her way when she shouted for their attention. She doubted they spoke English.

Zeke tugged at her arm. “It’s not far away from here. Follow me.”

“Are you sure?” She dragged her feet, but he took her hand and started to pull her along.

He said, “I’m sure. Yeah, I’m sure. This is where Yaozu brought me, and I remember it from my maps. Come on. It’s back down this street, around this way. The fires help,” he added. “I can see where I’m going!”

“All right,” she told him, and she let him tow her away from the fires, and away from the strong-armed Chinamen with their masks and shovels.

Zeke rounded the nearest corner and drew up short.

Briar slammed into the back of him, pushing him forward two short steps—over a small sea of rotters. All of them were lying down, but some of them were beginning the first tentative flops and jerks of awakening. There were dozens of them, with maybe hundreds more behind them, beyond where the dark and the Blight would let Briar and Zeke see.

“Don’t stop,” she told him, and she took the lead. “We’ve got less than a minute. For God’s sake, boy. Run!”

He didn’t argue and didn’t pause; he only leaped after her—charging from body to body, seeking the street beneath them when he could find it. She led him in the direction he’d picked, setting an example by stomping on any heads or torsos that got in her way. She tripped once, sliding on a leg as if it were a log roll, but Zeke helped her recover and then they were off that street with its legion of irate, immobilized corpses.

“Go right,” he told her.

She was still in front, so she was both leading and following his directions. The smell inside her mask was an elixir of fear and hope, and rubber and glass and coal. She breathed it deeply because she had no choice; she was panting, forgetting so fast how hard it was to run and breathe at the same time while her head was bound by the apparatus. Zeke wheezed too, but he was younger, and maybe, in his way, stronger.

Briar didn’t know, but she hoped so.

The time they’d bought with the Daisy was all but up; and even if it wasn’t, they were getting so far from the blast site that the rotters wouldn’t have heard it, and it wouldn’t have stopped them.

Two streets more, and another turn.

Zeke stopped, and sought his bearings.

“Please tell me we aren’t lost,” Briar begged. She threw her back against the nearest wall and pulled Zeke back, urging him to do the same.

He said, “Not lost. No. There’s the tower, see? It’s the tallest thing here. And the fort was over this way. We’re right on top of it, just about.”

He was right. They felt their way through the gas-filled, starless dark until they found the front gate, buckled and latched from within. Briar pounded on it, knowing that she might be drawing the wrong kind of attention, but knowing also that it had to be worth the risk. They had to get inside, because the rotters were coming: She could hear them rallying far too close, and there was only so much farther she could run.

The satchel that hung across her chest and beat against her hip was perilously light, and she couldn’t bring herself to see how much ammunition was left. The answer was “not much,” and any more knowledge than that would only make her sick to her stomach.

Zeke joined in beside her, knocking against the fort’s door with his fists and his feet.

Then, from behind the blocked door came the sound of heavy things being set aside and shoved to the ground. The rows of logs that made up the fort’s wall and doors began to move, and the crack between the wood opened enough to let inside one woman and one boy, just before the first huffing rotter scouts turned the corner and charged.

Twenty-eight

Briar recognized the men by their shapes, because she could not see their faces.

Fang, a slight and perfectly motionless man.

Captain Cly, a giant who could be mistaken for no one else.

Light did not flood the walled compound, but it pooled enough to see by. Lanterns were strung the way the Chinese placed them, bound by ropes and lighting the pathways from above. Two men worked with a tool that spit fire and sparks, and a third pumped a steam generator that gasped and huffed hot clouds, sealing up the torn seams on the Naamah Darling.

It surprised Briar, how she almost hadn’t seen it through the pudding-thick air, but there it was: nearly majestic, despite its multitude of patches.

She said to Cly, “I thought you weren’t passing through again for a while?”

He said, “I didn’t intend to.” He cocked a thumb at another man, who had his back turned and was watching the ongoing repairs. “But old Crog got himself in a bind.”

“Got myself in a bind?” The captain spun and glowered so hard that Briar could see it behind his mask’s visor. “I got myself into no bind at all. Some miserable goddamned son of a bitch thief flew off with the Free Crow!”

“Hello, erm… Captain Hainey,” she said. “I’m very sorry to hear about that.”

“You’re sorry; I’m sorry. All God’s children are sorry” he said angrily. “The most powerful ship for miles, in any direction. The only warship ever successfully stolen from either side, and someone had the temerity to steal it from me! And you’d better count your lucky stars, ma’am,” he said, pointing a finger at Briar.

“Oh, I do. Every day, as of late,” she assured him. “For what?”

“With the Free Crow gone,” Hainey replied, “I’d have no way to lift you out, and heaven knows who else you might’ve met. But this big bastard agreed to help me catch the bird, so here we are.”

Cly added, “As you can see, it didn’t work out for Crog, but I’m glad to see we caught you, at least. We took a little damage,” he said, cocking his head to indicate the workmen, who had turned off their tools and were sliding down ropes that descended from the side of the ship. “You could ask your boy about that. What were you doing on board the Free Crow, anyway? I’ve been trying to figure that out ever since I realized who you were.”

Zeke, who’d been keeping quiet in hopes of being ignored, said sheepishly, “They told me the ship was called the Clementine. And I was only trying to get outside, back to the Outskirts. Miss Angeline set it up for me. She said they’d take me out and set me down. I didn’t know it was a stolen ship, or nothing,” he fibbed.

“Well, it is a stolen ship, or something. I stole it first, fair and square as a stamp on a letter. I changed it up. I made it worth flying. I made her into the Free Crow, and she’s mine as sure as I’m the one who built her from the rudder up!”

“I’m real sorry,” Zeke said weakly.

“So Angeline’s the one who put you up to it, is she? But she knows most of us who fly in and out of here,” Cly said, scratching idly at a spot where his mask wasn’t quite big enough to comfortably fit over his ear. “I don’t think she’d set you up blind, with a captain she don’t know.”

Zeke said, “She said she knew him. But I didn’t think she knew him real well.”

“Where is she, then?” Croggon Hainey all but shouted his demand. “Where is that crazy old Indian?”

“She’s on her way back to the Vaults,” Briar said, trying to inject some finality into the statement. “And we need to see about taking off. Things are bad back there, over at the station, and the badness is going to spread.”

Hainey said, “I ain’t worried. This fort’ll keep out almost anything. I’m gonna go find that woman and—”

And because he was trying to be helpful, Zeke said, “Mister, the captain’s name was Brink. He was a red-haired guy, with a bunch of tattoos on his arms.”

Hainey froze while he absorbed this information, and then his arms flew up again—and he began to punch at the air. “Brink! Brink! I know that old horse’s ass!” He turned around, still kicking and striking at everything and nothing, and wandered back toward the ship, swearing and making threats that Brink couldn’t hear.