Boneshaker

Briar and Lucy staggered to their feet, quivering in their shoes. Both were disoriented, but Lucy said, “This way, I think.”

And with a crack and a snap, a red-white burst of light illuminated the crowded, dirty blocks with a glow that was almost blinding. “No need for dark or quiet now, is there?” Swakhammer said as he charged toward them, sizzling flare in hand. “You all right?”

“I think so,” Lucy said, despite what Briar had told her.

Swakhammer took Briar’s hand and Lucy’s arm and hauled them forward, stumbling, tripping over their own feet and the limbs of dead things that quivered where they’d fallen. “This is…” Briar’s boot caught on something squishy. She kicked free so she could run again. “The longest two blocks…” Her heel slipped against something wet and sticky. “Of my life.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Mind the step.”

“What step?” Briar asked.

“That one. Watch it. Going down.”

She saw it then, because it was right underneath her. A square of hard yellow light burned down inside the earth, at the bottom of a stairwell gap lined with bags full of something heavy and muffling, like sand. Briar leaned against them and used them to steady herself as she descended, but Lucy stuck to the middle. Something was wrong with her arm: Even in the half-light and the frantic motion of escape, Briar could see that it was leaking fluid and ticking oddly.

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.