Boneshaker

Finally, at Lucy’s request, Briar secured the arm as firmly as it could be caught. From that point on she walked in front when the going was tight. In this way, they hopscotched farther and farther south, until they’d come so close to the wall that its shape covered the sky when they emerged onto a new building’s rooftop.

“What was this place?” Briar asked. It didn’t look like the other rooftop vistas she’d seen so far; the floor was covered with plywood patches and the deeply rooted bases of metal poles. Overhead, a system of trapezes suspended walkways that moved at the pull of a handle.

“This place? Oh, I don’t know. I think it was a hotel, once upon a time. Now it’s… well, it’s almost like a train station. I don’t mean that there are any trains, because obviously there aren’t, but—”

“But it’s a junction,” Briar surmised.

She stood back from a nailed-down piece of wood sheeting as big as a wagon and held her lantern aloft so she could better read the message written across it in red paint. It was a list of instructions and pointing arrows, almost like a stationary compass.

“See?” Lucy said, pointing down at it. “We want to go to King Street. That arrow there next to it, that tells you which walkway you need to pull.”

“There, to the right?”

“Uh-huh. Beside it, see? There’s a lever. Give it a good hard tug.”

Briar pulled down hard on a lever that once was a broom handle; it had a green-painted end that matched the arrow pointing to it, which she thought was a nice touch. Somewhere up above, the clanging slide of a slipping chain was accompanied by the brittle protests of rusted metal. A sharp-edged shadow darted overhead and swayed, then settled, and lowered, and behind the shadow came a wood platform coated in pitch.

“It’s not too sticky,” Lucy said before Briar had a chance to ask.

“The tar keeps the wood from falling apart out here in the wet and the Blight; but it gets dusted with sawdust pretty often. Come on up. It’s sturdier than it looks.”

The platform was ringed on all four sides with a gated rail that opened front and back, and it now rested on a track that looked burly enough to support a herd of cattle.

“Go ahead,” Lucy told her. “Get on the lift. It’ll hold us both, and then some.”

Briar took the suggestion and Lucy climbed up behind her, wavering with a lack of balance until Briar steadied her. “We follow along this?”

“That’s right,” she said.

The walkway disappeared into another tangle of platforms, lifts, and other contraptions meant to move people. Eventually it terminated at an interchange, and Lucy pointed out the green arrow aiming at a path that began with four green boards. Her eyes shifted back and forth in her mask and she said, much more quietly, “Don’t look now, but we aren’t alone. Up on the roof, to the right; and down in the window on the left.”

Briar held her head still but followed the verbal directions. Lucy was right. Above them on the next roof over, a masked fellow with a long gun leaned into a corner and watched the women approach. Below them, one seamless glass window was blotched dark with the silhouette of a man with a covered face and a hat, also armed, and also hiding out in the open — not much caring if anyone saw him.

“Guards?” Briar asked.

“Don’t get too nervous about them. We’re coming up the right way, out in the open and plenty loud. They won’t bother us.”

“But they’re watching for newcomers, aren’t they?”

“Newcomers and rotters, and disgruntled clients,” Lucy said.

Briar pointed out, “I’m a newcomer.”

“Sure. But they know me.”

“Maybe I should ask them —,” she started to say.

Lucy interrupted. “Ask them what?”

“Ask them about Zeke. They’re watchmen, aren’t they? Maybe they saw my son while they were watching the streets.”

The barkeep shook her head. “Not yet. Not these men. They won’t talk to you, even if they can. They’re only mercenaries, most of them. And they aren’t friendly. Just leave ’em be.” She lowered her voice again, and marched straight ahead behind Briar.

Briar picked out a third armed man on another nearby rooftop, and then a fourth. She asked, “Are there always this many of them?”

Lucy was looking another direction, for she’d spotted yet a fifth. “Sometimes,” she said, but she sounded unconvinced by her own assessment. “This does seem like a lot for a welcome wagon. I wonder what’s going on.”

Briar didn’t find this particularly reassuring, but she resolutely refused to hold her gun any tighter or walk any faster along the narrow, pipe-and-wood-frame corridors that held her up over the Blight-poisoned streets. “No one’s aiming at us, at least,” she said.

“True enough. Maybe they’ve had some problems. Maybe they’re looking out for somebody else. Honey, could you do me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Stick a little closer by me. This part’s uneven, and it’s hard for me to straighten myself without my arm.”

Briar shifted her shoulder, twitching her satchel and gun until they wouldn’t clap Lucy in the face; then she put one arm around the other woman and helped her walk across the crooked beams. At the end of the way she pulled another lever, and another lift dropped down to meet them.

Lucy said, “This is the last of them. It’ll take us down, into the basement. Can you see the station over there?”

Briar squinted and thought that she might be able to spy a dark point and a circle crossed by two lines through the shifting sheets of curdled air. “Over there?”

“That’s right. That’s the clock tower, there. They’d just got it up when the Blight hit us all. This place right here,” she said as the gear-work mechanisms that held the platform aloft buckled and began to lower, “this was supposed to be a garage where the train cars were stored when no one needed them. It’s been turned into a lobby of sorts.”

“A lobby?”

“Sure. Think of it as a hotel. It’s pretty nice inside,” Lucy said. “Nicer than the Vaults, anyhow. Even down here, money has plenty to say — and Mi

One level at a time, the rickety lift dropped the women. Through the skeleton of the huge, stillborn station their stomachs raced to beat them to the bottom; and at the bottom, the doors opened into more startling bareness — more blank reminders that there were no trains, and no tickets, and no customers. This was a place that had never been brand-new, and now it felt more ancient than the wings of flies trapped in dirty amber.

A puff of dust accompanied the settling of the lift.

Briar sneezed, and Lucy lifted her arm to wipe her nose on her sleeve, but the mask kept her from success. “Come on, dear,” she said. “It’s not much farther, and the deeper we go, the more comfortable the station becomes.”

“How long has he lived here?” Briar asked as she followed Lucy off the lift.

“Oh, I don’t know. Ten years, maybe? He’s had quite a long time to spruce the place up to his liking, that’s for sure.”

They walked across flat stone without any shine or tiling, and their footsteps banged an a

“How do we get inside? Do we have to knock a special way, or pull a bell?” Briar asked, noting that the door had no external knobs or latches.

Lucy said, “Help me pull the arm out of this sling, will you?”

Briar assisted with the detangling, and then Lucy swung the arm three times against the rightmost door. The sound was sharp and clanging. It was the sound of metal on metal.

“The doors…”

“Steel, I think. Someone told me he made them out of a train car’s siding. But someone else told me he yanked them down from the entrance, so I don’t know where he got them, really.”