The Broken Lands (27 page)

“Jin, are you coming?” Sam asked, clambering down to the street. “Hurry up.”

“Yes, I'm coming.” Tucking the green leather book under one arm, she followed him up the walk, studying the bridge over her shoulder all the way up the stoop to the front door.

Sam rang the doorbell and they waited. Jin glanced at the street behind them, expecting the four-in-hand coach to turn the corner onto Columbia Heights at any moment. Beside her Sam fidgeted, straightening his cuffs and checking to be sure that he had Hawks's envelopes in his pocket and trying to impose order on his unruly hair until Jin elbowed him to make him stop.

At last, the door opened, and a man in an impeccable suit peered out at them. “The tradesman's entrance is to the left and around the back.”

It was all Jin could do not to grab his perfect lapels and screech at him to get out of their way, that two killers were coming and they were all going to die badly if they didn't get out of that house fast.

To his credit, Sam managed not to fidget under the doorman's gaze or burst into the panicked warnings Jin was barely managing to hold in. He stood up a little straighter and recited what he'd been practicing in the carriage for the last twenty minutes. “We're here with a personal message for Miss Arabella van Cortelen. We are to deliver it to her, and to her alone. I understand that this is unusual, and that your job is to tell us it isn't possible, but if you would please check with Miss van Cortelen before you turn us away, we would be very grateful.”

During this speech, Jin watched the doorman's face go from doubtful to indignant to curious. He glanced over their shoulder at the handsome runabout, now a bit dustier thanks to its mad dash from Red Hook, and its livery-coated coachman (at some point before arriving in Columbia Heights, Mike had changed his weird tailcoat for a plain driving coat with a little gold braid at the shoulders).

“What shall I tell Miss van Cortelen about . . . the nature of this message?” the doorman asked cautiously.

Jin bit her lip to keep from saying,
Tell her it's about freakish murderers coming to tear her to pieces.

“Please tell her we are here on behalf of the city,” Sam said with unnerving calm, repeating the second bit of Hawks's instructions.

The doorman gave the two of them another long, searching look—while the words
They're coming, they're coming, they're coming
looped in Jin's brain
—
then nodded and closed the door.

They weren't kept waiting long. The door opened again a moment later, and this time, a girl of about eighteen stood on the other side. She was dressed in a domestic's plain and neat calico dress and apron. She had beautiful gray eyes and light red-brown ringlets, and she was black.

“Miss Arabella will be glad to see you.” She smiled. “Please come along this way.”

They followed the girl inside, through a foyer full of freshly cut flowers and antiques to a lush parlor facing the street.

A young woman and a blond man who had been deep in conversation on a tufted sofa fell silent and rose to their feet. “You have a message for me?” The woman was lovely and willowy, and wore her reddish-blond hair in an elegant pile of curls. “Why don't you sit down,” she suggested. “You look like you've had a long day already.”

Well,
that
was a surprise. Whatever she'd been expecting, Jin hadn't thought she'd be invited in like a guest. She trailed behind Sam as he crossed the gorgeous room to the couch opposite where the two had been sitting.

“I think,” Sam said, his voice awkward and apologetic, “that we're supposed to give this message to you alone. And we have to hurry.”

“You said you speak for the city.” Arabella van Cortelen lowered herself gracefully back to her seat. “Mr. Sawyer does as well. It's possible you've come to give me the same warning he has.”

Sawyer
. The name had sounded familiar, and now Jin remembered where she'd heard it. “Mr. Hawks mentioned a man named Sawyer, didn't he?”

Sam took Hawks's envelopes from his pocket. He handed one to the young woman and glanced at the blond man. “There's one here for you, too. I guess you were going to be my next stop.”

Sawyer leaned forward to take his letter. “You came from Hawks? Took him long enough. He said he'd warn her about Jack's men first thing, and here it is the next day . . .”

Jin flinched at the mention of the name, and beside her she felt Sam do the same.

Miss van Cortelen put a hand on Sawyer's arm to silence him. “You mentioned that time was short,” she said to Sam. “You can speak in front of Mr. Sawyer. He saw Jack's creatures for himself last night.”

“They're coming here,” Jin blurted. “They're on their way, and every time you say his name you help them find you.”

“It's true,” Sam said quickly. “They're on their way here. We left well before they did—we think—but they're tracking you, all of you, by somehow
hearing
when anyone talks about him. They killed people just to make you say his name, and you've been saying it today and now they know where you are.”

Sawyer blanched. “Oh, good Lord—”

Arabella van Cortelen gave him a sharp glare. “I suppose the mystery of why Hawks said to stay away is solved.”

“You both have to get out of this house,” Jin insisted. “Are you listening? They're coming here,
now
.”

“I know a place we can go,” Sawyer said.

The young woman shook her head. “No. We can't be found together. You should never have come here in the first place.”

“Take our carriage,” Sam suggested. “We'll find another way back.”

“No.” Arabella folded up her letter. “Susannah?”

The maid strode across the room to her side. Jin had entirely forgotten she was still there.

“Take this,” Arabella said, handing her the letter. “Go with these two back to Hawks and let him know we're safe. The letter will prove you came from me.”

Then she stood and hugged the girl tightly. To her surprise, Jin realized both women were crying.

“Thank you,” Susannah whispered.

“It's my honor,” Arabella whispered back. “Now go. Get on your way.” She glanced at Sawyer. “You, too, as soon as they're gone.”

Wiping her eyes, Susannah headed for the foyer with Sam and Jin on her heels. Jin took one last look out the front window as she passed out of the room, just in time to see the four-in-hand carriage pull up to the curb behind the runabout.

 

“Stop!” Jin shoved past Sam and grabbed Susannah's wrist as she was about to open the door. “They're here!”

Susannah made an about-face and headed down the hall. “Cellar.”

In the front parlor, Sam heard Arabella van Cortelen hurriedly directing Sawyer to the tradesman's door.

“We can't just leave them,” Jin protested as the first tattoo of surprisingly polite knocking sounded behind them.

“We must,” the other girl said over her shoulder as they passed through a dining room and into the kitchen.

“But shouldn't we—shouldn't we do something? Try and protect them?”

“With what?” Sam asked, trying not to sound unkind. “Did you happen to bring explosives with you?”

“No, but . . . shouldn't we at least try to help them hide?”

“No.” The maid darted around a huge worktable and opened a door beside the stove. “And we must hope Miss Arabella can convince Sawyer to leave without attempting anything too heroic. He should've been right behind us if he was leaving by the tradesman's door.”

The next round of knocks was louder, so much so that they were audible even in the kitchen. Sam hesitated. It did seem wrong to abandon the two when so much rested on keeping them safe from Jack's men.

Then from the front of the house came a dreadful crash and clatter: the door being driven in by an unimaginably strong blow.

With a single choked sob, Susannah hiked up her skirts and plunged into the cellar.

There was no more time; they had to hope Arabella had known what she was doing when she sent them away. Sam grabbed Jin's arm and shoved her after Susannah, then followed and pulled the door shut behind him.

At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves surrounded by kegs and row after row of shelves of liquor. “This way,” Susannah whispered. “Try not to knock anything over.” Then she slipped sideways between one of the racks and the wall behind it and disappeared with Jin close on her heels.

From somewhere above, loud voices. Sam swallowed, tried not to think too hard about whether they were more like screams than shouts, and followed.

They edged along in a single file behind the shelves until Susannah, and then Jin, disappeared again. A moment later, just before he reached the back wall, Sam came upon a narrow brick passage just tall enough for them to walk upright. He moved around the corner into it. There, the two girls were having a brief, whispered conference, and when they'd moved few yards further in, Jin took out her pocket lighter to give them a bit of illumination.

They followed the passage to a set of uneven stone stairs that took them down and down and down, then ended at a pile of rubble and stone that looked like some sort of cave-in. “What happened?” Sam whispered. “Are we trapped?”

“Behind you,” Susannah answered. “Under the stairs.”

It was almost invisible in the flickering light; just another deep shadow in a dark place. Susannah brushed past them, crouched, and climbed down, feet first, into what turned out to be a small hole. “There's a ladder,” she said. “Find it with your toes.” And then she was gone.

Sam turned to Jin, standing behind him with her book clutched against her chest and the tiny flame flitting back and forth over her face as she breathed in and out. “You first.”

“I really don't know what we're doing anymore,” she murmured. She doused the light, pocketed it, and climbed awkwardly into the hole after Susannah.

By the time Sam reached the bottom of the ladder, it felt like the temperature had gone up a good ten degrees. A few yards away, a light flared. Susannah handed a lantern to Jin and lit a second one for herself. It was just enough light to show that they were in a cylindrical space with red brick walls and a dirt floor ribbed with evenly spaced ridges.

“Where are we?” Sam whispered.

“Arabella's father built it as part of an underground train thoroughfare, but he didn't manage to acquire the right-of- way, so it never became more than a mile or so of tunnel. Be careful,” Susannah warned as he nearly went sprawling. “There used to be railroad ties there. If you walk in the middle, it's smoother.”

“Why didn't she—Miss van Cortelen—why didn't she come with us?” Jin asked. “The lanterns—she must've been planning for this kind of emergency.”

“We aren't here to hide,” Susannah's voice drifted back. “There's a grate about a mile down that will let us out near the docks at Fulton Street.” She glanced over her shoulder at Sam and Jin, her face miserable in the lantern light. “And the plan was never for Miss Arabella to use this.”

Of course. Sam nearly sprawled headlong again as the sudden realization made him forget to pay attention to the rippled ground underfoot.

“It's you, isn't it?” he asked, eyes wide. “Arabella van Cortelen doesn't speak for the city, does she?
You do.
”

“Yes.”

“But you're . . . I mean . . .” Jin turned back to Sam, a helpless expression on her face.

“I'm a Negro,” Susannah said quietly. “Yes. I promise you, if the people of the city had been in a position to vote on it, things might've gone much differently, but here we are.”

“Did Mr. Sawyer know?” Jin asked.

Susannah shook her head. “No one knew but Arabella and me, and anyhow Sawyer didn't stay behind because of who he thought she was. He's in love with her, and thanks to that, he's probably dead.” She sighed. “We should have told him the truth. Now it's down to Hawks and me, and I can't think of what to do except make the same stupid mistake Sawyer did. We shouldn't be in the same place until this is over, but I don't know where else to go. I can't stay down here when they're right over my head, and I can't hide while the city's in danger. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.”

They walked on, following the vague promise of fresh air and Susannah's swishing skirts, until light dawned at the far end of the passage.

Early-afternoon sun sliced through an iron grate before them. Sam pushed it open, lowered himself down a brick wall until his feet came to rest on the bank of the East River, and reached up to help Susannah and Jin out. They stood on a short section of weedy ground beside a rickety, overgrown pier. The wall rose up behind them, its face broken only by the opening they'd just climbed through.

“I think the Fulton ferry house should be just a little ways up to our right,” Sam said, peering northward. “We can hire somebody there to take us to Coney.”

But Susannah pointed south. “This way.”

“I'm sure we're below Fulton Street. We should go right.”

“This way,” she repeated sharply, and stepped carefully across the crumbling pier to a tiny, hidden inlet grown over with rushes. A mast was just visible among them. “We can sail down to Coney Island in this.” She began pulling grasses away to reveal a little skiff with furled sails.

“I don't know how to work a boat,” Sam warned.

“
I
know how to sail it,” Susannah said patiently. “It isn't much of an escape plan if I can't work the parts, is it? I just need a moment or two to ready it.” She went to work, and a few minutes later she was hauling up the first canvas sail.

Jin stood facing upriver, the
Conflagrationeer's Port-fire Book
wrapped in her arms, and her eyes on the huge, skeletal form of the bridge and its two huge stone towers.