“Briar’s all right, since that’s what you’re really asking.” Swakhammer said, “Come on, I’ll walk with you, and introduce you to my tyrant offspring.”
Cly fell into step beside Jeremiah, and together they strolled around the next corner, down to the next flight of stairs. “Is something wrong with one of the boys?”
“Zeke got himself scratched up. Those kids were out in the hill blocks — they’d gone through Chinatown and let themselves up near one of the pump rooms, poking around at the big houses up on the hill, or what’s left of them.”
“Scavenging?”
“Playing around, is my guess. Boys do dumb stuff. Anyhow, he fell on something — or fell in something. I’m not too clear on the particulars, but they can give you the story.”
“Will he be okay?”
“Looks like it. He’ll be walking around like me for a while, dragging one foot behind him. But he didn’t break anything, so he’ll wind up with a scar and not much more for his trouble. As long as it doesn’t fester.”
By way of announcing himself, Swakhammer leaned forward and knocked on a door that was halfway open. He poked his head around it. “Everybody decent?” he asked. It was a joke between him and his daughter, after she’d walked in on him while the doctor was helping him bathe. Ever after, he’d insisted that she knock and confirm decency before entering.
But she usually didn’t.
“Decent as we’ll ever be,” Mercy Swakhammer Lynch called back her father’s own favorite response. “Didn’t you say you were headed topside?”
“I did,” he confirmed as he stepped inside. “But then I ran into this guy, and I realized you hadn’t met him yet — so I figured I’d show you off.”
“Show me off?”
Andan Cly followed Jeremiah Swakhammer inside, doing his best to make himself look smaller. An exercise in futility, given that he could’ve reached up and placed both elbows flat on the ceiling, but he hunched anyway.
The room was large and quite bright, due to Mercy’s insistence that she couldn’t work in the dark, goddammit, and a place with so much potential for injury and illness ought to have some kind of clinic … or if nothing else, a room that could serve as one in a pinch. She’d picked the empty “apartment” next to her own sleeping quarters and stocked it with every gas lamp, oil lamp, candle contraption, and electric lantern at hand, and with the help of Dr. Wong, she’d gotten the place more or less serviceable.
Now she was staring intently at Zeke’s leg as he lay flat on a table, grimacing for his life. She wore a set of lenses strapped to her face, helping the light show her what the trouble was. When she looked up at her father and his friend, her eyes were as big and strange as an owl’s.
“Hi, there,” Cly said to her. “It’s … not Miss Swakhammer, is it? Jerry said you were married, once.”
“Widowed,” she said. “It’s Mrs. Lynch if you like, or Mercy if you can’t be bothered.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Cly. I have a ship, and I swing through every now and again. If you ever need anything, you can let me know, and I’ll try to pick it up for you.”
“Thank you for the offer. I’ll likely take you up on it one of these days.” She used the back of her hand to shove a stray bit of hair out of her face. Her locks were lighter than Jeremiah’s, on the dark side of blond and worn in a braid that was knotted at the back of her neck. Even though she was seated, Cly could see that there was something of her father in her shape. She was too sturdy to be called slender, and her strong, straight shoulders were a direct inheritance.
Zeke made a muffled umph noise when she dived back in with the needle, stitching a long, jagged gash with swift, sure strokes. He said, “Sorry.”
Mercy said, “You’re doing just fine. I’ve seen bigger, older men be worse babies than you by a long shot.” It was probably true. Before coming to Seattle at her father’s behest, she’d worked in a Richmond hospital, patching up wounded veterans.
Zeke knew this, and he said between gasps, “I could be a soldier, you know.”
“What are you now, sixteen or seventeen?”
“Sixteen.”
She nodded, and squinted. “Old enough,” she said, but something in her tone suggested she’d seen younger. “I don’t recommend it, though.”
“I ain’t looking to join up,” Zeke assured her, then bit back another yelp.
Cly noted that Zeke’s mother was not present, but he assumed she’d return before long. He went over to a seat — in the form of an old church pew someone had hauled down to the underground — and made himself comfortable. Swakhammer joined him. Between the pair of them, they occupied almost half of it.
“It’s just as well you’re not interested in fighting,” Cly told the boy. “You’d give your momma a fit.”
Zeke gave a pained laugh that ended in a gulp. “Shit, Captain. You know her. She’d probably sign up and come to war after me.”
“I do admit, there is a precedent,” he said. He leaned back and made a halfhearted effort to get comfortable. “What happened to you, anyway? And where’s your partner in crime?”
Mercy answered the second question before Zeke could unclench his jaw again to answer the first. “Houjin went back to Dr. Wong’s to pick up some balm for the bruising that’s going to come with this cut. Mostly I needed him out from underfoot. He was hovering like a hen.”
“Feeling guilty,” Zeke mumbled. “He’s the one who dared me.”
“Dared you to what?” asked Cly.
Zeke sighed, a ragged sound that was drawn in time to the needle threading through his skin. He craned his head around to look at the men on the pew, giving himself an excuse not to watch what was happening to his leg. “We went hiking up the hill, where there aren’t so many rotters. Hardly any of them, really. But there are a lot of big houses, where the merchants and sawmill fellows used to live — and Houjin said some of them hadn’t been bothered since the blight.”
Swakhammer shook his head. “I find that unlikely.”
“You never know,” the boy replied, a hint of his opportunistic optimism shining through even now. “And even if someone had already gotten inside, people miss things. So we thought we’d go take a look.”
Mercy murmured, “And how’d that work out for you?”
“We found a whole drawer full of viewing glass.” He referred to glass that had been polarized, so even trace amounts of blight gas could be detected. This glass was helpful to have around for the sake of detecting leaks, but it was worthless aboveground — given that the gas was absolutely everywhere. “And we found some canvas, a whole bunch of it folded up inside a wagon.”
“Would this be the same wagon you fell through?” Mercy asked.
“I thought it’d hold! It was one of the old covered kind, abandoned back behind a real tall house near the wall’s east edge. Someone had been using it to store junk, but junk is sometimes useful. Houjin said he wouldn’t climb inside it, and I said he was chicken. So he dared me to do it instead, and I did. But the floor didn’t hold, and—” He gestured at his leg without peeking at Mercy’s activities.
The nurse paused and reached for a rag inside a bowl of water. She wrung it out with one hand and wiped at the wounds, which had mostly stopped bleeding. “And congratulations, fearless explorer. For your reward, you get thirty stitches.” She lifted his leg by the ankle and turned it over to get a better look at his calf. “Maybe more than that.”
He groaned. “My mother says she’s going to kill me, but she’ll wait until I can run again, so I can have a head start.”
“Mighty generous of her,” the captain said. “Considering all the times she’s told you not to go exploring on the hill.”
“Exploring on the hill by myself. I wasn’t by myself. Momma said I was obeying the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Apparently that ain’t good enough.”
“Speaking of your mother, where’s she at?” Cly said with all the nonchalance he could muster. “I thought she’d
be here, pacing around you.”
From the doorway, Briar Wilkes responded. “I went to hit up the bottommost storage room, looking for a pair of pants no one wanted so I could cut off one of the legs.” She held up a pair of Levi’s that had probably once belonged to a logger. “They’ll swim on you, so you’ll have to belt ’em. But I don’t think anyone will miss these things, and if anybody does, he can take it up with me. Hello, Jeremiah.”
Andan Cly stood up, but Swakhammer only nodded in her direction. He figured she wouldn’t begrudge him the gesture, since his leg was still on the mend. But the captain couldn’t stop himself, and didn’t try.
“Weren’t you down here just last week?”
“It’s a slow season, and I felt like coming back.”
“You must be the strangest man alive,” she teased.
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m just looking for the company of my own kind.” He smiled, and since he was up, wandered over to Zeke’s leg to take a look at the damage. The boy’s skin was snagged and torn, but his muscles were intact, and Mercy Lynch was a formidable seamstress.
Zeke winced as the curved needle dipped again, and shuddered as the thread slipped through his skin.
Cly said, “Before long, you’ll have one hell of a scar to show off. Girls love scars.”
“They do?”
“They’re always a conversation-starter.”
“I just bet they are.” Briar only half stifled her smile as she added, “Except, come to think of it, I don’t believe we’ve ever heard any stories about your scars. I assume you have some, somewhere.”
Cly tried not to look at her and mostly failed, his gaze darting back and forth between the morbid sight of Zeke’s mangled leg and the petite, curly-haired object of his truer interest. “None of mine are very interesting.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” she pressed. Her eyes followed him as he shuffled from foot to foot.
“Captain,” Mercy Lynch said sharply. “You’re standing in my light. Am I going to have to send you errand-running like your junior crew member?”
“Um—”
Before he could form a smarter reply, the nurse declared, “All of y’all, this is silly. I don’t need an audience, and neither does my patient. Everybody out, except you, Miz Wilkes, if you’d care to stay and look after him.”
“Funny thing is, I don’t care to,” she said. She brought the pants over to Zeke, who stretched out his hand and took them. “I’m glad he’s all right, and I’m glad you’re here to take care of him — but I’m still none too pleased with him, and anyway I don’t think he needs the comforting.”
“I could use a shot of whiskey,” Zeke tried, because hope springs eternal.
“You could use a boot to the rear end, but you’re not going to get that, either. Yet.”
Mercy said, “I’m sorry I don’t have any ether or anything. I know this doesn’t feel very good.”
“It’s not that bad,” Zeke fibbed.
“You’re a liar. Still, I wish I could give you something for the pain. I think I’ll put that at number one on my wish list, Captain.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You offered to make a supply run, and I’m telling you about a supply I could use.”
“Oh. Sure. Just put it down on paper, and I’ll take it with me when I leave.”
“You’re leaving right now,” she reminded him. “But come back in an hour. I’ll have him finished up by then, and I’ll start considering my inventory. Now, what’s everyone standing around for? Didn’t I ask for peace and quiet?”
“Yes, ma’am!” Swakhammer said to his daughter with exaggerated deference. “I’ll pick up my sorry old bones and be on my way.”
Captain Cly stood aside to let Swakhammer pass, which also allowed Briar to slip out underneath his arm on her way back to the door. He stopped her by saying her name the way he always did. “Hey, Wilkes.”
“Cly?”
“Suppose I could have a word with you? For a minute, if you can spare it.”
“I was headed down to Chinatown to scare up some supper. You care to join me?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “I mean, sure. Fang’s probably down there anyway, and Houjin will wander over once Mercy shoos him away again — or that’s my guess. I’ll be leaving for a long trip soon, and if he wants to come, he’ll have to get himself ready.”
“A long trip?” Briar repeated. “How long, and are you taking off soon?”
“Might be gone a few weeks, but I’ll stick around until morning. Everybody and his brother wants to add something to my shopping list.”
“Have you been offering?”
“I suppose I might’ve been.”
“Then it’s nobody’s fault but your own.” She bumped her shoulder against him, and he pretended to recoil — as if she’d knocked him so hard, she’d sent him off balance.
They made a funny pair, walking together back up the way Andan had come. Him so tall, he had to duck at every doorway. Her so comparatively small that the top of her head barely reached his chest. The captain felt conspicuous beside Briar Wilkes; he felt his height more acutely than usual when he had to crane his neck to look down at her, and she had to twist herself to look up at him.
But he liked it when she did.
Once upon a time, she’d been a notorious girl — a pretty teenager who’d run away from home to marry a man twice her age. But sixteen years, widowhood, hard work, and raising a son alone had taken away the imperious tilt of her nose. (Cly remembered it from a drawing he’d seen, a wedding announcement he recalled from ages ago.) The intervening time had worn away her wealth, her softness, and her youth — but not the symmetry of her face. And for everything the years had claimed, they had given something in return.
At thirty-six, she was a patient and confident woman.
She was also the sheriff of Seattle, insomuch as the walled city had one. Her father had been a lawman who died a folk hero, obeying the spirit of the law if not the letter.
She’d never intended to replace him. She’d intended to live and die a rich man’s wife in a house with expensive furnishings and silver cutlery, pampering a brood of well-dressed children who played the piano and learned to ride horses with perfect posture. But time had had other ideas, and now she wore her father’s hat, his badge, and his belt buckle engraved with his initials, MW. And even the underground’s newcomers knew who she must be, whether they recognized her as Maynard’s daughter or not.
Cly lifted the big vault door and held it up while Briar climbed past it, into the subterranean underworld that passed for “outside.” He followed her, asking, “What’s the fastest way to get where we’re going? I’m still learning my way around down here.”
She paused with her hands on her hips, checking the signs and finding her bearings. “This way’s fastest in the long run. The other two ways I know are roundabout, and I don’t know the tunnels so well myself. Every time I think I’ve got my directions figured out, I turn around and wind up lost.”
“You’ve been lost down here?”
“Sure. These days I carry one of Frank Creat’s compasses and it helps me a lot, but sometimes I just have to find my way topside and look around to figure out where I am.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Cly said. “All those rotters up there. All that gas.”
“That’s what the masks are for, and the rotters aren’t so hard to avoid, once you know what lures them. As long as you stay off the streets, it’s not so much trouble to stay out of their way. Nobody’s seen any down here since Minnericht died. No coincidence, if you ask me.” She started off down a wood-slat trail with a sign that said KING STREET on it. Chinatown was shortly beyond the train station. “You worry too much,” she told him.
“Do you take Swakhammer’s Daisy with you?” he asked, meaning the sonic weapon that could stun the rotters into submission, if only for a few minutes at a time.
“Lord, no. I can hardly lift that thing
.”
Falling into step beside her, Cly argued, “Then it sounds like I’m worrying just the right amount. I don’t like it, you all alone up there.”
“I could show you the topside way, if you want,” she offered. “We could go left at the fork instead, and come up through the old Continental Hotel. From there, we could go rooftop to rooftop all the way to Chinatown, almost. You’d see it’s not so bad.”
“You’re only trying to make me feel better.”
“Is it working?” she asked, looking up at him with a gleam in her eye.
“No. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stick to the underside. I don’t like wearing gas masks, and I don’t like rotters.”
“Then you took a terrible wrong turn someplace, because you’re sure as hell in the wrong city, Captain.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. The surface here isn’t much to look at, but the underground is a sight to see. And…” He stopped himself from saying more.
“And?”
“And I know plenty of great people down here,” he finished weakly. Then, to change the subject while he still could, he said, “By the way, there’s a shorter way to Chinatown.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“I only just learned about it. Yaozu told me about it on the way from Maynard’s.”
Briar was silent for a moment. Their feet made conspicuous and uninterrupted stomping sounds on the hollow sidewalks, until she finally said, “Yaozu, eh? I didn’t know you two were buddies.”
“Not buddies,” he was quick to counter. “I don’t know him hardly at all, and I won’t lie — it was plenty odd. He came up to me in the bar, and said he wanted a word.”
“And what did he really want?”
“He wanted to hire me,” he explained, and then he told her about Yaozu’s plans for civic improvement.
By the time he was finished laying it out, carefully choosing his words and how he presented the situation, they’d hiked to the outer edge of Chinatown. “Where do you want to stop?” he asked. He knew of only three eateries in the Chinese district.
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