The Broken Lands (25 page)

To the right of the workbench and cabinets, exactly where Jin had told him to look, was a glass-fronted bookcase held closed with little hooks. The green pebbly leatherbound volume Jin had told him to look for was on the second shelf.

He stuck the note between its pages and tucked it into the back of his trousers. He shifted the rest of the books on the shelf just enough to hide the gap where
The Conflagrationeer's Port-fire Book
had been; then, before climbing out again, he paused to take a quick look through the front window to make sure he was still alone.

He wasn't. Two men were crossing the gravel drive toward the wagon. There was absolutely nothing to justify the sudden sense of ill ease that swept over Sam at the sight of them, but it was undeniable.

Something about the way the redheaded man moved, maybe? Even at a distance Sam could tell he was dressed in expensive clothes; he looked right at home on the grounds of the Broken Land, except for the fact that no guests would venture back here by the stables. There was something about his gait, though, that just didn't look right. It was too smooth—there were none of the little human motions and gestures that people made when they walked. Those subtle gestures let you read a fellow when he sat down to play cards, and everyone made them—but not this man. He didn't flex his fingers or put his hands in his pockets or scratch his head or fiddle with his suit cuffs or do anything but walk with coiled elegance straight for the wagon.

The other man looked odd, too—if only because he wore a long felt coat that was entirely inappropriate for a beautiful summer morning. His sallow skin glittered slightly in the sun, as if a fine sweat covered his bald head.

There was no way out, not without being seen. Sam eased himself away from the window, crossed the wagon, and closed the curtain on the other side to keep them from spotting the open roof hatch the way he had.

Bang bang bang bang bang.
“Hello?” a voice barked. “Anyone at home?”

More quietly, a second voice: “I'll check the tents.”

“Fine.”
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.
“Burns! Open up!”

Sam blinked, remembering what James Hawks had said.
Find Liao, not Burns. You understand?

The door rattled, making Sam's heart stop for a moment. One more round of banging, then the knocker's grumbling voice drifted away to join the second man, just barely within earshot but not close enough for Sam to make out what they were saying.

They could be anyone,
Sam told himself.
They could work for the hotel. You have no reason to think they have anything to do with this.

He crept to a different window and slowly pushed one corner of the curtain aside. The redheaded man was smoking and pacing just outside the second of the three tents that surrounded the wagon. A moment later his companion emerged, shaking his head. Then he pointed at the tent nearest the wagon, which stood on a low wooden platform.

When the man in the coat went to push open the flap, something strange happened. It wouldn't budge.

The two men looked at each other. The one with the cigarette elbowed past the other and yanked at the tent flap. Nothing happened. He shoved at it, throwing one shoulder into it as if it were a proper door. The oiled fabric gave just enough for him to bounce off it, as if it had been made of India rubber.

A hushed conversation took place. The bald man bent and tried to lift up the hem of the tent, with no more success. The two separated, walking around it in opposite directions. A few moments later, they reappeared. This time the conversation was louder and more heated.

The man in the white suit dropped his head back and stared at the sky, exhaling a mouthful of smoke. Then they strode back the way they had come and disappeared out of sight.

Sam took two breaths to work up his nerve, double-checked to make sure they were gone, then jumped for the hatch and pulled himself out and onto the roof. He slid the hatch closed, dropped back to the ground, and sprinted for West Brighton.

W
ELL, THIS IS
inconvenient.” Bones settled back into one of the plush velvet couches in the Broken Land's atrium. “Would you stop that, please?”

Walker stopped pacing and rolled his head on his neck. “We only have until tomorrow night.”

“Yes, Walker, I'm aware. So we come back tonight for the fireworks show, and we talk to Burns afterward. It's inconvenient, but it isn't world-ending.”

“I don't like this place,” Walker said, casting a dark-circled eye around the room and sizing up the guests strolling in and out in their summer finery. “There's something off about it.”

“Stop fidgeting.”

“It feels—”

“Walker,” Bones hissed, “you're attracting attention.”

Walker followed Bones's gaze to the foot of the wide marble stairs, where a blond man in a suit was watching them. He returned the man's stare with an insolent tilt of his head until the fellow stalked out of the hotel.

“This place is getting to me,” he muttered.

“We'll have to come back here tonight for the show.” Bones stood and stretched. “In the meantime, we need to speak to Christophel.”

Walker groaned.

“There's nothing for it,” Bones pointed out. “Hawks has disappeared. Sawyer has disappeared. Overcaste doesn't know who the fifth is. We need Bios again. It's worked so far.”

“So far,” Walker repeated shortly. “And we still have a long way to go.” But he shrugged and followed Bones out of the atrium to a waiting carriage in the driveway.

Frederick Overcaste looked down from the driver's box. “Where now?”

“Red Hook,” Bones replied. “The docks.”

 

Sam burst onto Mammon's Alley, where the sheer volume of pedestrians forced him to stop running just seconds before his lungs burst into flame.

Three Five Points b'hoys lazed out in front of the Reverend Dram. They watched him with amused expressions as he limped up to the door. “Pleasant constitutional?” the one on the left inquired.

“Shove off,” Sam mumbled, wiping the sweat from his face.

The fellow on the right whistled through a broken front tooth. “Good thing we're on your side, kid.”

And who knew how long that state of affairs would last?
Don't bait the ruffians,
Sam told himself as he slipped inside.

Walter Mapp and James Hawks looked up from the table as he entered. “I think I almost got caught by Ja—by his guys,” Sam said before either one could speak. He glanced around. “Where's Jin?”

Hawks ignored that. “The Fata Morgana people?”

“Nobody was there. Then I—” Sam hesitated, leaning his hands on his knees and gulping air to make it look like he was just catching his breath.
The Conflagrationeer's Port-fire Book
was still hidden under his shirt in the waistband of his trousers. He didn't know if he wanted to tell anyone he'd taken it.

“Sorry,” he said breathlessly. “I just ran something like three miles.”

“Jasper,” Mapp called, “get the kid some water, will you? Go on, Sam.”

“I talked to a fellow in the stable, and he said someone drove them out to New York,” Sam continued. “I figured they wouldn't be back for hours, so I was about to leave, and then I saw these two men. I hid—I guess I was feeling like I looked suspicious.” That much, at least, was true. “They went right up to the wagon, knocked a bunch of times, and . . .”

“And?”

Sam hesitated again, and looked at Hawks. “And one of them called for Mr. Burns by name.”

Hawks gave Mapp a look. “What did they look like?”

“One's got dark red hair and freckles. The other one's bald and he was wearing a long coat.”

Hawks banged his hand on the table, then got up and paced a few steps away and back. “I take it those are the same ones you saw?” Mapp asked.

“Indeed,” Hawks said. “What about that Tom Guyot fellow?”

“I left a message,” Sam said. “It was all I could do.” Jasper Wills handed him a glass of water. He gulped half of it down, choked, sputtered, and drank the rest. “Where's Jin?”

“Upstairs. Said she wanted to take a nap,” Mapp told him.

“Where?”

The pianist shook his head. “She said not to wake her up. Not even when you got back, not even if you asked.”

“But she—wait a—
what?
”

“Not joking, Sam. I think she's more bothered than she wants to admit.”

He felt thwarted. Why would Jin have told them that? And there was no way to insist to see her, no way to explain himself, without giving up the book.

Bang bang bang!
Sam just about jumped out of his skin, half-expecting the harsh voice of the redheaded man to follow the knock, but it was only a fourth b'hoy, rapping at the door before peering inside and catching Hawks's eye.

“It is here?” Hawks asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I've arranged a carriage.” Hawks rose, picked up three envelopes that had been sitting on the table, and held them out to Sam. “Instructions for you, and messages for the others. Mike will drive you.”

The fellow peering through the door touched his knuckles to the slick, oiled hair at his temple in a little salute.

“But if Jin's that bothered, I really should—”

Walter Mapp put a hand on his shoulder. “Sam, she'll be fine. She's not fragile, and we don't have time to waste.”

“Let's go, Captain,” Mike called from the doorway. “We're blocking the street. Not exactly inconspicuous.”

Sam sighed and took Hawks's envelopes. “Fine. When she wakes up tell her . . . tell her I'll have something for her when I get back.”

Mapp raised an eyebrow, but he nodded. “Go.”

He got as far as the doorway, then did a double take at the fancy little runabout blocking traffic. “Where the heck did you get this?”

The fellow called Mike sprang up into the coachman's seat. “Mr. Hawks said we might be in neighborhoods where it would be best to look sharp.” He glanced dubiously around, letting Sam know this was not one of the neighborhoods Mr. Hawks had been referring to. He was probably only about Constantine's age, seventeen or eighteen, and, Sam guessed, Irish, although there wasn't much of a brogue to give him away.

Odd, Sam thought, what different worlds they came from.

He opened the envelope with his instructions and checked the addresses. “Seems that way.” Then he looked from the posh carriage and its two gleaming bays to the older boy's outlandish clothes.

“I got another coat,” Mike said patiently. “We aren't complete heathens in the Points. Now, where the hell are we going?”

“Brooklyn,” Sam answered, clambering into the runabout. “Looks like the first stop's Columbia Heights.”

With the other three b'hoys clearing folks out of the way, Mike guided the carriage onto Surf Avenue, heading east for the toll road that connected Coney Island to the mainland. Just before the turn onto the shell-paved thoroughfare, a bigger, four-in-hand carriage came barreling full-tilt at them.

Mike yanked on the reins, hauling the bays to a protesting halt just in time to avoid being run off the road, and causing something to go flying off the roof.

The coach was tearing along so fast that when it took the turn onto the shell road it nearly overturned. Sam leaned out for a look just in time to catch in the four-in-hand's window the face of the red-haired man he'd seen behind the Broken Land.

“That's him,” he yelped.

“Well, if that ain't the strangest.” Mike turned with an odd look on his face. “I could swear that was Frederick Overcaste driving that thing.”

“Who's that?”

“Tammany heeler. He's a . . .” Mike paused. “. . . a colleague of Mr. Hawks's.”

“A colleague? Like the kind of colleague we're going to deliver messages to?”

Mike nodded and gathered the reins to get the horses moving again.

“Something fell off the roof,” Sam called. “Was it anything we should—”

“Nothing up there but traveling blankets. Leave them.”

He snapped the reins, and just as the bays started trotting along again, a very aggravated-looking Jin climbed in next to Sam. “Ouch, by the way,” she mumbled, dusting herself off.

“What are—how on earth did you get onto the
roof?
”

The horses stopped again. “Where the hell did she come from?” Mike demanded.

“I guess we have another passenger.” Sam grinned. He leaned out the window again, watched the four-in-hand plowing through the toll gate, and considered. “Follow them,” he said at last. “We'll go to Columbia Heights afterward.”

Mike shot him a disgruntled look. “Is that what Mr. Hawks told you to do?”

“Mr. Hawks didn't know we were going to get this kind of chance,” Sam countered. “What did he tell
you
to do?”

The older boy mumbled an elaborate series of swear words, from which Sam understood that Hawks had basically instructed Mike to do whatever Sam told him, and flicked the reins.

“Nobody was there at your wagon, but I snuck in and found this for you.” Sam took Jin's book from under his shirt and held it out. “One of the grooms in the stable said they went into New York,” he added. “They left a note. It's in there.”

She read the message quickly and nodded. “There's a place in New York where you can get decent fireworking supplies.” She pocketed it, opened the book on her lap, and started flipping through.

“There's something else, though.” Sam told her about the two men who'd come knocking, about how the red-haired man had called for Mr. Burns. Jin listened with wide eyes.

“That doesn't mean anything,” she protested. “He could just . . . everybody we work for always asks for Mr. Burns, either because they want to deal with the owner or because they want to deal with the one who's white. It doesn't mean he's in with Ja— with
his
men.”