The Broken Lands (42 page)

“This isn't possible,” he protested, staring at the cards.

Sam shrugged and smiled. “It's a miracle.” Except it wasn't. He'd figured out how to win. The cards had done their work, but only because Sam had seen what they could do.

The game was over. He had won.

Tesserian let out a cheer and clapped him on the back. “I believe you owe the boy his winnings.”

Walker got to his feet, freckles darkening on his skin, and held out his hand to Bones.

“Walker,” Bones said, menacingly.

Walker snapped his fingers. Bones rolled his oyster-shell eyes and put the punched-tin tinderbox into the gambler's hand. He tossed it to Sam. “I suggest you get to moving.”

Sam caught the little tinderbox in shaking hands. It was cool to the touch, but through the punches in the tin he could just make out a rosy glow.

Then he registered what Walker had said. “What?”

“I
said
, I suggest you get to
moving
.” He dusted off his suit trousers and rebuttoned his jacket. “We'll give you a half-hour head start.”

“What?”

“You won the game,” Walker said through bared teeth, “and for that I'm giving you what we agreed upon. If you had dared to try and win with that”—he turned over Sam's last card, the unused Liar—“I would have killed you right then.”

The gambler's fingers curled around the edges of the crate, as if he was forcing himself not to tear out Sam's throat that very minute. “But you didn't, so I'm going to give you what you won,
and
a little time.” There was a soft creak of protest from the wood. “But that's all.”

Sam swallowed hard. So he had known all along.

Walker smiled a horrible, angry smile. “Of course I knew, you little rat. I saw your clumsy palm-off. I was just arrogant enough to think I could beat you anyway. And for that, I'm coming after you, and I'm going to rip you to pieces before that girl's eyes. I'd get moving if I were you.”

Bones took his watch from his pocket and glanced at it. “Twenty-nine minutes left.”

Sam ran.

 

Far above, in the hotel, Susannah Asher, Tom Guyot, Ilana Ponzi, and Mr. Burns clustered around a window. They watched Sam spring up, knocking over the crate and scattering cards everywhere, and leap into a full-bore sprint away from Walker, Bones, and a third man they didn't know.

“I hope Mike's ready.” Susannah sighed. “I still don't feel right about not being there. At the bridge, I mean. I don't feel right about just . . . just sending people off like this and waiting around in safety, hoping they don't get themselves killed.”

Mr. Burns smiled at her. “That's what you're supposed to feel when you order people into battle. It's to your credit that it doesn't sit quite right in your heart.”

She dropped onto one of the couches and let her head fall into her hands. Ilana came to sit beside her. “Can I do anything for you, Susannah?”

“Will your mama be worrying about where you are right now?” Susannah asked, words muffled by her palms.

“No. I told her I was helping a friend catch up on her sewing and that I thought I'd stay the night.” She put her arm tentatively around the other girl's waist. “I'd like to wait with you, if that's all right. I don't want to be anywhere else, alone and wondering what's happening.”

Susannah nodded. “I wish we could see Jin's fireworks.”

Across the room, Tom watched the two girls with a sad expression on his face. He slipped a hand into his pocket and felt for the coin on his watch fob. Then he sat, picked up his guitar, and began to play.

U
P ON THE
Brooklyn tower, Jin watched Paul hand the crates of letters and a huge coil of fuse to Walter Mapp, who stood in the buggy. She tried not to notice the way it swayed as they moved.

“All set when you are,” Paul said.

Jin looked at Walter Mapp's outstretched hand and swallowed. She gave the contraption one last look and forced herself not to dwell on the fact that this little platform with its thin railing was going to be all that stood between her and a deadly plunge into the river.

“You'll do just fine,” Mapp said. “It looks awful, but it wasn't so bad climbing in.”

She nodded numbly. Her arm felt leaden, but she forced herself to reach for Mapp's hand and climb over the railing.

Her legs were shaking, bodily terror mingling with the quaking of muscles that were still exhausted from climbing the endless ladders half an hour before. The buggy swayed sickeningly. She was swinging free over the water. It felt like her heart was trying to break out of her chest.

“Better open your eyes, Jin,” Mapp said. She hadn't realized they were closed.

Paul leaned down and put his hand on a rope that ran parallel and underneath the steel cable the buggy hung from. “This is how you move: haul on this rope. Just that simple. It moves when you pull, and stops when you stop. Understand?”

She nodded. “Crystal clear,” Mapp said.

Paul looked at Jin dubiously. “You ready for me to cast you off?”

She nodded again before she had a chance to give in to every instinct and beg for him to pull her out again. There was another horrifying back-and-forth sway as Paul undid the moorings that held them close in to the tower. Then she and Walter Mapp were alone.

“You ready for this, kiddo?” Mapp's growly voice asked. Jin nodded again. He chuckled. “I'll know you're telling the truth when you keep your eyes open and let go of me.”

She took a few long, deep breaths, willing herself to be able to feel her hands and feet again, willing her heart to slow its panicked beating, willing the buggy to stop moving so she could think about something other than the river below. Bit by tiny bit, she started to calm down. She opened her eyes and made herself let go of Mapp's hand, one numb finger at a time.

“All right,” she whispered. “All right.” She spoke louder the second time, and hearing her own voice—which sounded much more confident than she actually felt—brought a bit more clarity to her mind.

She took the giant coil of fuse and hung it crosswise over her neck and shoulder. While Paul and Mapp had been stowing the crates, Jin had tied one end of it to an iron ring set in the granite of the tower; what remained was, hopefully, enough to stretch all the way across the bridge, and it was
heavy
. Jin unspooled a few lengths, then took a deep breath.

“Ready now, Jin?”

“Yes.” Then she and Walter Mapp grasped the rope under the cable and hauled on it together. The buggy moved jerkily away from the tower, and little by little the slack in the fuse disappeared. Jin focused all her attention on this; watching it slowly grow taut as she pulled the rope kept her mind off where she was, the wind that repeatedly shoved them, the water so far below.

When the slack was just about gone and the loops she'd played out had turned into a nearly straight line, she came to a red spot on the white fuse, the first of the guide marks that Constantine, who knew the dimensions of the center span like the inside of his own palm, had made to show Jin where to put the letters.

“Please let his measurements be right,” she whispered. Her words were lost in the wind over the river.

Mapp took the first frame carefully from the crate and handed it to her. It already had a hook and a bit of cord at the top, and with only a short, terror-inducing stretch—Mapp held on to her waist, but it was small comfort—she was able to hook it on the cable with quivering fingers and knot the cord to secure it. Ilana had left both ends of the fuse dangling a few inches past the bottom of the frame; Jin took the ends and knotted them around the long fuse she wore coiled over her shoulder. Then she stood back and looked at what she'd done. The letter now dangled from the cable, just behind the buggy. The long fuse Jin had been playing out behind her, the one that was attached to the ring back on the tower, hung below the letter, connected to it by the two short ends.

“One down,” Jin murmured. She unspooled a few more lengths of fuse, took another deep, calming breath, and then she and Mapp began hauling the buggy down the cable to the next stop.

Letter by letter they made their way across the central span. It never got any easier to look down, and the constant buffeting of the wind threatened several times to make her nauseated with motion sickness. But at last she got the final letter into place. The fuse now ran the length of the span behind her, hanging below each letter and connecting one to the next. Together they pulled themselves hand over hand the rest of the way across to the New York tower.

“You made it!” Constantine shouted, waving like a maniac. Next to him Ambrose—Mr. Mayor, she reminded herself—stood looking pleased and proud.

Constantine and another workman reached out with poles tipped with hooks to catch the buggy's handrails. Jin dropped her aching arms and leaned into Mapp's shoulder while they were hauled in close to the granite wall.

Large hands reached out, grasped her arms, and lifted her over the railing, and her feet were, blessedly, on solid stone again. Ambrose began to clap his hands, and a group of scattered sightseers and workmen, maybe four or five altogether, joined in the applause. She managed to stay on her feet long enough for a weak smile while she made certain she was a safe distance from the edge. Then she dropped unceremoniously to sit cross-legged on the granite.

Her entire body shook. Her legs still ached from the climb, her arms burned from hauling that cursed rope, her chest hurt for no reason she could figure out, and the idea of getting into the buggy on the other cable and hauling it all the way back made her want to vomit.

Constantine crouched beside her and rubbed her back. “You did brilliantly,” he told her. “We're all so proud. Wish Sam and Susannah could've been here to see.” Jin leaned her head against his arm and took deep breaths.

Let the bellows be smooth and deep.
Little by little, she started to feel under control again.

The sun was low over the rooftops of New York. Jin fumbled a knife from her pocket and cut the fuse she'd been playing out. “Can you find a place to secure this?” The plan was that she would light the south-facing fuse and Constantine would light the other, but this way they each had access to the end of both, just in case. Jin had learned from long experience that it was always better to have a backup plan.

She sucked in two more breaths and stood up. Her legs quivered, and the wind was just as brutal as before, but she managed to make it across the tower without falling to where the other buggy waited. “Are your frames ready, Constantine?”

He nodded. “All set, along with the coil of fuse. Are you ready to go back out there, or do you need to rest?”

“I think if I rest I'll remember how scary it is. Right now I'm too tired to think about it.”

Constantine nodded again, unspooled a few loops from the coil, and held on to the end. “I'll find a place to secure this one, too. Mr. Mapp, she's ready,” he called.

While Walter Mapp climbed in, one of the workmen, older than the rest, held out his hand to Jin. “Watching you out there made me wish to be young again,” he said with a sad smile. “I'll always be proud to be able to say I worked on this bridge, but I wish I had the nerves to do what you just did. You'll have that memory your whole life, young lady.” He turned to Ambrose, who stood nearby looking like he wished it were appropriate for the mayor of Brooklyn to hug a Chinese fireworker girl. “I think we were all wondering why on earth you bothered coming up, Mr. Mayor,” the old workman said, “but you were right. That was a sight to see.”

Jin managed an exhausted smile. “Just for you, sir, I'll try and look down at least once this time.” She gave Ambrose a tired wink.

She made sure there was enough play in the fuse, took a few calming breaths, and reached for Mapp's hands.

The second climb in was no better than the first, but before she could worry much about it, Constantine released the buggy, and they were out in midair again.

 

“See anyone?” Sam called.

Mike swiveled to peer over the roof of the runabout. “Not yet.”

They were barreling through the little towns between Grave­send and Brooklyn as fast as Mike's bay horses would go. Sam's half-hour start was long up. All he could do now was hope they could get to the Brooklyn anchorage of the bridge with enough time for him to get across the footpath to the tower and reach Jin before Walker and Bones showed up.

He stared at the tinderbox cradled in his palms. Such a small thing to carry so much power. He thought back to what Walter Mapp had said this past Thursday, which seemed like a lifetime ago:
Nothing feels like something till after everything's over.

At the front of the carriage, Mike turned again. This time he flinched. “Someone's back there.”

Sam leaned out the side. They were passing through open farmland now in the falling dark. He could see a light behind them, maybe a mile off.

“How far to go?” he called.

Mike's shoulders rose and fell. “Another hour, maybe? If the horses can keep this pace, which I doubt.”

Sam stared down at the tinderbox. Such a small thing.

 

By the time Jin hauled herself, arms weak as jelly, close enough for Paul to catch the buggy with his hook and reel it in, the sky was beginning to darken.

“I am impressed,” Paul said warmly as he pulled her out and set her on firm footing again. “I've seen grown men panic, get themselves stuck midway, refuse to go in the first place. Well done, the both of you.”

Jin had the end of the fuse clamped between her teeth. As soon as she was free of the buggy, she tied it off and spat several times to clear the taste of the chemical primer from her mouth. Then she sat, hard, and dropped her head to her knees.