Boneshaker

Happily he gasped himself back to life. “I can breathe! It stinks in here like shit, but I can breathe!”

“Even the freshest stuff smells like sulfur and smoke up here,” Rudy agreed. “Down below it’s not so bad, but the air up here gets stale because there’s nowhere for it to go. At least underground we force it to move.”

Zeke examined his mask and saw that his filters were changing colors. “I need new filters,” he observed. “I thought these were supposed to work fine for ten hours?”

“Son, how long you think you’ve been down here? That long, at least, I’ll tell you that much for sure. But that’s nothing to panic about. Filters are a pe

“I’ll remember,” Zeke said, since the advice seemed sensible.

Off in some unseen corner of the enormous, unfinished tower, both travelers heard a pinging crash. It echoed from loud to soft, and dissipated in the distance. Zeke demanded, “What was that?”

“Damned if I know,” Rudy said.

“It sounded like it was coming from inside.”

Rudy said, “Yeah, it did.” He tightened his grip on his cane and lifted it up off the floor so it’d be ready to fire, should the moment require it.

A second scuttling sound followed the first, and it was more unmistakable this time. It was the sound of something falling down the stairs behind them.

“I don’t like this,” Rudy grumbled. “We got to get back down.”

“We can’t!” Zeke whispered fiercely. “That noise came from downstairs! We’d be better off going up!”

“You’re an idiot. We head up, and we get trapped wherever the stairs run out.”

The argument ended there, because a different sound from a different direction blew louder and stranger up above. It was the sound of machinery and force; it was the swish and rattling sway of something huge coming close — all too quickly.

“What’s that —?”

Zeke couldn’t finish the question. From outside and above, an enormous airship with a billowing, flapping basket and hard metal tanks crashed against the side of the tower and bounced into another structure, then returned for a second broken landing. Windows shattered and the whole world heaved, just like it had when the earth quaked hours before.

Rudy jammed his mask back on over his face and Zeke did likewise, even though the act made him want to cry. Rudy ran to the stairs even as the building shuddered beneath their feet, and he commanded, “Down!”

And so he began to half run, half stumble downward into the darkness.

Zeke didn’t have the lantern anymore, and he didn’t know what had become of it. The hustling retreat of Rudy beating a rambling flight was as noisy as the beating air and the banging ship that assaulted the walls. But when Zeke reached the stairs and the rocking blackness sought to undermine him, he fought it. And he began to climb up.

And then there was more darkness than what he started with, and it was collapsing toward him, rushing like water, or earth, or the sky itself.

Thirteen

Briar downed first the one mug, then a second one filled with water. She asked about the beer.

“Do you want some?”

“No. I just wondered why it was an option.”

Swakhammer served himself a taller mug filled with sour-smelling ale and pulled up a chair across from Briar. He said, “Because it’s easier to turn Blight-bitter water into beer than it is to purify it. Distilling makes for a nasty brew, but it won’t kill you or turn you rotty.”

“I see,” she said, and it made perfect sense. But she couldn’t imagine swilling the urine-yellow beverage except under the most dire of circumstances. Even at a distance, it had a scent that would peel paint.

“It takes some getting used to,” he admitted. “But once you do, it’s not so bad. And you know, I never did catch your name.”

“Briar,” she offered.

“Briar what?”

She gave fast consideration to inventing a new identity, and discarded the idea just as quickly. Her experience with the Namaah Darlings captain and crew had been an encouragement. “It was Wilkes,” she said. “And now, it’s Wilkes again.”

“Briar Wilkes. So that makes you… all right. No wonder you were keeping it to yourself. Who let you down here — Cly?”

“That’s right. Captain Cly. He’s the one who dropped me down, on his way elsewhere. How’d you know?”

He took another swallow of beer and said, “Everybody knows how he escaped the Blight. It’s no secret. And he’s not the worst sort of guy. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. I trust he didn’t give you any trouble? ”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” she said.

He smiled, revealing a bottom row of teeth that fit together strangely. “I find that tough to believe. He’s a big son of a gun, ain’t he?”

“Enormous, yes, though you’re no small fry yourself. You gave me a hell of a scare, bursting in like that. As if your voice weren’t awful enough in that mask, it makes you look like a monster, too.”

“It does! I know it does. But it keeps me breathing better than that old contraption you were wearing, and the suit keeps the worst of the rotter bites from landing. They’ll eat you up whole, if they can catch you and bring you down.” He rose to refill his drink and stayed standing, striking a thoughtful pose with one arm folded and the other holding the mug. “So you’re Maynard’s girl. I thought you looked familiar, but I wouldn’t have placed you if you hadn’t said anything. And that makes your son who’s missing—”

“Ezekiel. His name’s Ezekiel, but he goes by Zeke.”

“Sure, sure. And Zeke is Maynard’s grandson. You think he’s making a point to tell people about it?”

Briar nodded. “He must be. He knows it might help him here, and he doesn’t realize — not fully, I don’t think — how it could also hurt him. Not that he’s Maynard’s, I mean. About his father.”

She sighed and asked for more water. While Swakhammer refilled the mug, she said, “It’s.not his fault. None of it’s his fault; it’s all mine. I should’ve told him… God. I never told him anything. And now he’s on this mission to root through the past and see if he can find anything that’s worth having.”

Another mug of stale water landed on the table in front of her. She took it, and drank down half its contents.

“So did Ezekiel come here looking for his father?”

“Looking for him? In a way, I suppose, he thinks he can prove his father was i

“Can he do it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can he do it? Can he prove Blue was i

She shook her head and almost laughed. “Oh no. Oh God no, he can’t. Levi was as guilty as Cain.” Almost immediately, she wished she hadn’t said that last part. She didn’t want her new companion to ask any questions, so she hurriedly added, “Maybe, deep down, Zeke knows it. Maybe he only wants to see where he came from, or see the damage for himself. He’s only a boy,” she said, and she tried hard to keep the exasperation out of her words. “Heaven only knows why he ever does anything.”

“He never knew his dad, I guess.”

“No. Thank God.”

Swakhammer leaned against the back of the chair across from Briar. “Why would you say that?”

“Because Levi never had a chance to corrupt him or change him.” That wasn’t all she could say, but it was all she could muster for this stranger. “I keep thinking, maybe one day this war back east will end — and then I can pack him up and head somewhere else, where nobody knows about either one of us. That would be better, wouldn’t it? It can’t be any worse than being here.”