The Broken Lands (17 page)

“Brambles grow where an army has been,”
Jin said quietly.
“Bad years follow a great war.”
She looked at Tom. “So what do we do? What
can
we do?”

Tom gave her a sad smile. “It should never fall to the children,” he said. “Ain't right that you found that body, ain't right that it's painted in your head, sweetheart. We'll find some way.”

Walter Mapp looked evenly at Tom. “Then you're willing to help.”

“'Course I am. Any which way I can.”

Mapp cleared his throat. “I have an idea about
how
you could help.”

A moment's quiet followed then, while the two musicians looked at each other across the tabletop. Then Tom Guyot reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch. He laid the old timepiece on the table. “You're talking about this.”

Walter Mapp nodded.

Sam glanced at Jin, utterly confused. An old watch?

Tom sighed. “Anything but that.”

“I used mine five or six lifetimes back,” Mapp said quietly. “Otherwise I'd lay it down right this minute.”

“Now, I don't think that's true,” Tom said, a note of reproach in his voice. “You've been walking longer than I have, so I figure you thought long and hard before you spent yours. I bet you used it on just the right thing at just the right time. And I bet, Mr. Mapp, I just
bet
you gave it all the best thinking you had before you did.”

Before you spent yours?
How did you spend a watch? Sam glanced at Ambrose. The newspaperman was watching the ex­change with a look of horrified fascination on his face. He caught Sam looking at him, rearranged his expression into one of not-very-convincing confusion, and shrugged. No help from that quarter.

Then Sam looked again at the timepiece on its coiled fob and spotted something he hadn't noticed before. There was a coin hanging like a charm from the fob's clip: greenish, with a hole in the center and uneven edges.

Mapp shoved back his hat, folded his arms, and glared at Tom. “Do you really think you'll ever find a better reason to use it than this?”

“I don't rightly know,” Tom retorted, “but I 'spect I deserve a minute to think it over.”

“What is that?” Sam interrupted, pointing at the coin.

Both Tom and Mapp jumped as if they'd forgotten there was anyone else in the room. “A favor,” Tom said at last. He slid the watch off the table and pocketed it. Walter Mapp made a noise of frustration.

“A favor from . . . who?” Sam persisted. “Can it help?”

Instead of answering, Tom looked to Walter Mapp. “It . . . could,” Mapp said reluctantly.

Tom nodded. “Ain't no way to know until we try. Thing is, once we try calling in this favor, well, the rest of it's out of our hands and into somebody else's.”

“Whose?”

“Somebody even Mr. Mapp ain't sure we want involved,” Tom said. “Not if we can find another way.” He looked across the table at the pianist. “Look here, I'm not going anyplace. If it comes down to it, heck, I won't say no. But at least let's try finding some other means aforehand. You and I both know using a favor ain't as simple as making a wish and having it come true just so.”

Mapp sighed again. “Can't call that a lie. All right. It'll be our last-ditch effort, if it comes to it—and if, when it's time, you agree.”

“I want to help,” Jin interrupted. “It's the only way I'll be able to stop seeing it.”

Her voice was even, unhesitating, but her hands were still curled into those tight fists that made her scars shine white as bone.

Jin caught Sam looking. Before she could hide her hand in her lap, he caught hold of it. She flinched, but allowed him to uncurl her fingers on the tabletop. Momentarily forgetting that there were three pairs of eyes watching, he left his palm over hers for just a moment, wishing he could find a way to make it seem casual somehow.

He couldn't, of course, so he took his hand back.

Ambrose's eyes were on the glass he was refilling, but Tom smiled and Walter Mapp gave him a little nod of approval before glancing around the table.

“All right, then.” The pianist raised his glass. “We save New York in order to save the country. Anybody see any problems with that?”

 

“Do you feel better about things at all?”

The lights of the hotel cast long shadows before them as Sam and Jin descended the pink marble stairs to the circular drive. “It's something,” Jin said carefully. She didn't actually feel any better at all, but she didn't want to admit it, nor lie outright. “It's better than nothing. And what was all that with Mr. Guyot and Mr. Mapp and the favor?”

“No idea.” Sam shrugged. “Can I walk you to the wagon?”

“I suppose.”

They took the same route back, through the shadows between the ornamental trees and the light falling from the upper windows. They walked in silence, until Sam stepped on something.

Jin caught his arm as he stumbled. “Are you all right?”

The gesture must've surprised him as much as it did her. He didn't even look to see what he had tripped over. “I'm okay, thanks.”

Then she glanced over his shoulder, squinting at the dark shape at the base of one of the potted trees. Her heart started hammering. Sam turned, too, and took a step back toward it.

Jin's hand tightened on his arm. “Stop.”

The shape was a foot.

“Don't,” she whispered. “Don't go any closer.”

Sam unwound her fingers carefully from his elbow. “Stay here.”

“Sam,
don't
—”

“Just wait here.” He took a step toward the trees, just close enough to see what she had already noticed: the foot was bare. “Jin, go on to the wagon,” he said unsteadily. “Get your uncle. I'll go get someone from the hotel. It's probably nothing, probably some drunk fellow passed out.”

Jin nodded, stumbled backwards. “Hurry,” she said, then took off at a run.

She sprinted across the gravel to the Fata Morgana wagon and flung open the door. Uncle Liao and Mr. Burns were sitting at the little dining table over their evening cups of tea. “C-come quick,” she stammered. “There's a—”

The look on her face must've been horrible, because they were moving before she could manage the word
body.
Jin led them back to the row of trees, where they met Sam leading Walter Mapp, Tom Guyot, and Ambrose from the opposite direction.

Jin and Sam stood a short distance away as the rest of them clustered around their grim discovery. She wrapped her arms about herself silently, her face stony.

Walter Mapp stumbled backwards, then sprinted around to the front of the hotel. Tom Guyot turned toward them, his dark face gone ashy and his eyes haunted. “You two stay back, now,” he said, voice cracking.

“What is it?” Sam asked. “I didn't really—”

“A riddle,” Ambrose said leadenly, turning away from the trees to face Sam and Jin. He was pale. “How might a man be naked and still wear rags?”

Jin made a whimpering noise. She barely recognized her own voice as she murmured, “Rags . . .”

Mr. Burns lurched away from the potted trees and disappeared around the corner. From the other side of the building came the sound of retching as Walter Mapp reappeared with two men in hotel livery. “Right there,” he said, pointing.

Almost immediately, one of the two wavered on his feet. It actually looked like he might faint. The other took one look and turned, waving his arms weakly. “Okay, folks. Clear the . . . aw, hell. Go. Just go.”

Jin caught Walter Mapp's sleeve and pulled him closer. “Is it . . . ?”

Mapp's face was haunted. “Same thing. Yes. Right down to the writing on the wall.” He turned to Tom Guyot, who was worrying the green coin on his watch fob with shaking fingers. “Don't you think about it. What you said before was right, Tom, and I was wrong to push you. We have some time before we start thinking about using that. Put it away.”

Liao strode toward Sam and gave him a sharp once-over. “You are the boy from this afternoon, yes?”

Jin tore her eyes away from the naked, protruding foot as Sam swallowed and answered, “Yes, sir. Sam Noctiluca.”

The old man nodded once. “Take Jin and go.”

Jin started. “Uncle Liao—”

“No arguing. I will send our signal when I wish you to come back.” Liao put a gnarled hand on her shoulder. “There is much in your life I could not protect you from, firefly, and I know you will never believe you need my protection. Do this because it makes my heart easier. Do it for me, because I wish I could keep you from seeing the evils of the world. It is a little thing, to humor an old man,
shi bu shi
?”

Jin nodded.
“Shi.”
She turned to Sam, wiping her eyes. “Let's go.”

T
HE DOOR
of the old church opened before Walker had fin­ished knocking. “My, my,” Basile Christophel drawled, leaning on the doorframe. “You have been busy, haven't you?”

“Show us,” Walker said shortly.

“With pleasure. Come right in.”

In the basement room, the tallow-coated table shone like a starry sky. Clusters of glowing ash like nebulae had sprouted south of Brooklyn, with golden webbing reaching back to where the daemon Bios waded through the tallow with its hatpin and smoldering cheroot brain.

Christophel gestured at the two glowing clusters. “I presume these are the sites of whatever mayhem you undertook. You can likely disregard the activity there—people are talking locally. What you want to see are the conversations that aren't just local concern and gossip.”

He pointed to a smaller cluster to the north. “This one, for instance. Now, it could be this is nothing more than a Brooklyn newspaper discussing yet another case of bad behavior in that wretched den of iniquity that is Coney Island . . . but news doesn't usually travel that quickly. I think this is worth investigating.”

“How do we find it?”

Christophel produced a pincushion from one of the compartments in the letterbox cabinet and drove a pin through the center of the glowing ash to spear the map beneath it. The red-gold glow intensified to a cold white and burned away an irregular circle of tallow to reveal the place the pin had marked.

“Atlantic Avenue and Court Street,” Christophel remarked. “I can't give you a more precise location than that, but somewhere right thereabouts, you should find one of your pillars.”

Bones had wandered to the other side of the table. “What about this one?” he asked, nodding at a cluster of cinders still farther north in New York.

Christophel grinned. “Ah. Yes. Now this one is
very
inter­esting.”

“Well, don't keep us waiting,” Walker grumbled. “Do your pin trick, show us where it is.”

“I don't have to do the pin trick to tell you where
that
is,” Christophel said with a smirk. But he pushed a second pin into the cluster anyway and the three of them watched the tallow melt away. “It's Tammany Hall. Looks like one of your pillars is a Democrat.”

“Tammany Hall,” Bones mused. “All I know about Tammany is that it's where that Tweed fellow had his headquarters.”

“Tweed's in jail,” Christophel told him. “The current boss is Honest John Kelly. Probably no better or worse than Tweed, but for the moment playing it smarter.” He tapped the pin. “I think this ought to be your first stop. If you have any chance to, shall we say, win any of the pillars over to your cause, this one is your best bet. It takes a certain amount of . . . pragmatism . . . to work for Tammany. You may find you can do business with this fellow, whoever he is.”

“Two out of ten,” Bones murmured. “One from each city. That's not bad for half a day's work.”

“Especially if one of them can be convinced to help us find the rest,” Walker added.

“I've been thinking about that.” Christophel leaned back against the desk and folded his arms. “I don't think you're looking for ten. I think you're looking for five.”

“Five per city,” Walker corrected.

“I understand that, but I also understand Brooklyn and New York.” Christophel nodded at the outlines drawn in the tallow. “You're really not talking about two cities. You're talking about one city cut in two by a river, and that river is about to be bridged. It's only a matter of time before the two are consolidated.”

Walker and Bones exchanged a glance. “Are you saying this,” Walker said carefully, “because it's logical, or because you know it to be true?”

Christophel grinned. “Both. Of course, anything is possible, and I can see all of those possibilities, but there just aren't that many versions in which it doesn't occur. The probability of your . . . experience . . . being one of the versions in which consolidation
doesn't
happen . . .” His eyes glazed over.

Walker gave Bones a warning look. Bones put up a hand and waited.

“Oh . . . so very unlikely,” Christophel murmured. His expression sharpened, and he smiled at Walker. “No. You're looking for five. I'm certain.”

“Well, that would make life easier,” Bones said. He looked at Walker, who still had a rigid expression on his face, and spoke with deliberate casualness. “Wouldn't you say?”

Walker forced a twitch of a smile. “I'll say it would.”

Bones nodded his head once. “Tammany Hall it is. Where do we go?”

“East Fourteenth Street. I'd get right on your way.” Christophel looked at the cinder stars glittering in the tallow. “The cluster's still growing. Your man's there, and talking. You could perhaps catch a couple birds in one stop.”

“It'll take us hours to get there,” Walker protested. “Won't the place be empty this late, anyhow?”