As the light tinkled down in shattered rays, sweeping the floor with white patterns that said strange things to the shadows, Briar remembered a mobile Levi had made when they’d talked about a baby.
She hadn’t known about Zeke when the Boneshaker had ravaged the city. She hadn’t yet suspected, but they’d planned.
And he’d made a lighted fixture—so clever and so sparkling that although she was no infant herself, she’d been fascinated with the trinket. She’d hung it in a corner of the parlor, intending to use it as a lamp until they had a nursery to put it in, though the nursery never happened.
But these lights were much larger, big enough to fill a bed. They would never fit in a corner or over a crib. Still, she couldn’t deny that the design was similar enough to startle her.
Minnericht saw her looking and said, “The first one is there. ” He nodded up at the center light, the biggest of the assortment. “It had been shipped to the station for use in the main terminal. You can see, it’s not like the rest. I found it on a car, boxed and covered in earth like everything else on the south quadrant of the city. The rest of them took some assembling. ”
“I bet,” she said. It was too much, this familiarity. It was too strange, the way he rambled the same way about the things that pleased him.
“It’s an experiment, I admit. Those two over there are powered by kerosene, but it’s a bit of a mess and they smell more strongly than could be called pleasant. The two on the right are run by electricity, which I think might prove the better option. But it’s tricky, and it can be just as dangerous as fire. ”
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, as much to break the spell of his mellow enthusiasm as from a desire to know.
“To a place where we can talk. ”
“We can talk right here. ”
He leaned his head in a mimed shrug and said, “True, but there’s nowhere to sit, and I’d prefer to be comfortable. Wouldn’t you
prefer to be comfortable?”
“Yes,” she said, though she knew it wasn’t going to happen.
It did not matter that he’d shifted back into the civilized personality that had slipped when she’d confronted him. Briar knew what waited on the other side of his social warmth, and it was marked with a black hand. It smelled like death, and it moaned for the flesh of the living; and she was not swayed by any of it.
Finally they came to a carved wooden door that was too dark to be stained and too ornate to be merely a piece of salvage. Made from ebony that grew the color of coffee, the door was marked with scenes from a war, and with soldiers in costumes that might have been Greek or Roman.
It would have taken Briar time to decipher the decoration fully, and Minnericht did not give her any time.
He whisked her past the door and into a room with a carpet thicker than oatmeal, but about the same color. A desk made from some lighter wood than the door hulked in front of a fireplace that looked like nothing Briar had ever seen before. It was made of glass and brick, with clear pipes that bubbled with boiling water, burbling like a creek and warming the room without any smoke or ash.
A round, red settee with plush dimples sat in front of the desk, at an angle; and an overstuffed armchair lurked beside it. “Pick one,” Minnericht invited.
She picked the armchair.
It swallowed her with squeaky, slick leather and brass rivets.
He took a seat behind the desk, assuming authority as if it were his birthright. He folded his hands together and rested them on the top of the table.
Briar felt herself getting hot, starting with the spots behind her ears. She knew without looking that she was flushing, and that the dark pink was blossoming down her neck and across her breasts. She was glad for her coat and her high-collared shirt. At least he could only see the color in her cheeks, and he might assume that she was merely warm.
Behind the doctor, the bright tube fireplace hummed and gurgled, occasionally spitting small burps of steam.
He looked her in the eye and said, “It’s a ridiculous little game we’re playing here, isn’t it, Briar?”
The easiness with which he used her name made her teeth grind, but she refused to be drawn in. “It certainly is. I’ve asked you a simple question and you’re disinterested in helping me, even though I think you can. ”
“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it. You know who I am, and you’re pretending you don’t, and I can’t imagine why. ” He templed his fingers and let the structure fall, patting his hands against the desk surface in an impatient sort of patter. “You recognize me,” he insisted.
“I don’t. ”
He tried a different approach. “Why would you hide him from me? Ezekiel must’ve been born… so shortly after the walls went up, or right around that time. I’ve not been much of a secret inside here. Even the child had heard that I survived; I find it difficult to believe that you did not. ”
Had she mentioned Zeke’s name? She was almost certain she hadn’t, and so far as she knew Zeke had never implied that he thought his father might have survived. “I don’t know who you are. ” She stuck to her story and kept her words as flat as if she’d let all the air out of them. “And my son knows that his father is dead. You know, it’s very improper for you to—”
“Improper? You’re no one to speak to me of improper behavior, woman. You left, when you ought to have stayed with your family; you fled when your duty was to linger. ”