“I see it,” he said suddenly, and yanked at a lever above his head. “I hope nobody’s down there. ”
The man in the first mate’s chair said, “If anyone’s there, they’ve heard us coming. If they haven’t got out of the way yet, it’s no one’s fault but their own. ” He might have been on the verge of adding more, but that’s when the ship began to stop in earnest, lurching almost belly-up until nothing but sky filled the windows in front of the captain and his crew.
Zeke was certain he was going to vomit again and there would be no stopping it, except that he didn’t have time. The earth caught up to the bottom side of the ship. It landed hard and almost bounced, but instead it got stuck in a groove and started to drag a trench that began at one wall and continued for another fifty yards until the whole contraption was tugged to a stop by the turf inside a compound.
When the world stopped rocking and the ship stopped—almost like it’d been parked on its side—Zeke staggered to his feet and clutched his head.
Something warm filled his glove, and he knew without looking that it was blood. He could feel the slit in his skin, jagged and throbbing. He knew it must look terrible, and perhaps it was terrible. Perhaps he’d killed himself by crashing his skull against the wall, or the door, or whatever he’d hit as the ship had perform its warbling descent. Wouldn’t that be a thing for his mother to hear? That her son had died in an airship crash, somewhere inside the walled city, where he had no business being and no excuse for his carelessness.
He tried to feel resigned about it, but he mustered self-pity and searing pain instead. His feet refused to fasten to the floor underneath him. He staggered, one arm smashed against his bleeding head and one hand held out to steady or ballast himself, or maybe search for an exit.
The ship had landed with a serious list to the left, which had crushed the side entryway through which Zeke had entered. The lot of them were effectively trapped.
Or so he thought, until the ship’s bottom hatch fell open a promising crack.
Eighteen
Lucy’s smile faded into a tight line that had a question to ask. “Let me ask you something, if that’s all right. ”
Briar said, “By all means. ” She worked her sore hand under dusty covers. They smelled clean, but old—as i
f they were kept in a cupboard and rarely used. “If I get to ask one next. ”
“Absolutely. ” Lucy waited for a piercing fuss of steam from the pipes to quiet itself, and then she lined up her words with care. “I don’t know if Jeremiah’s said anything to you about it or not, but there’s a certain man down here. We call him Dr. Minnericht, but I don’t rightly know if that’s his given name or not. He’s the man who made me this arm. ”
“Mr. Swakhammer might’ve mentioned him. ”
She wormed herself more deeply into her own blanket and said, “Good, good. He’s a scientist, this doctor. An inventor who turned up down here not long after the wall went up. We don’t know where he came from, exactly, and we don’t know what’s wrong with him. He always wears a mask, even in the clean air here underneath, so we don’t know what he looks like. Anyway, he’s real smart. He’s real good with mechanical things like this. ” She jiggled her shoulder again.
“And the tracks, and the Daisy. ”
“Yes, those things too. He’s quite a fellow. He can make something out of nothing, like nobody I ever heard of before. ” She added one more word, a word that strongly pointed at a question Briar had no intention of answering. “Almost. ”
Briar turned over on her side and leaned on her elbow. “Where are you going with this, Lucy?”
“Oh come on, now. You’re not dumb. Don’t you wonder?”
“No. ”
“Not even a little bit? It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? There’s a lot of talk down here that it might be—”
Briar said flatly, “It’s not. I can promise you that. ”
And Lucy’s eyes lowered, not with fatigue but with cunning that gave Briar a pang of paranoia. The barkeep said, “That’s a big promise, coming from a woman who’s never even seen our terrible old doctor. ”
She almost snapped, “I don’t need to see him. ” But instead she said slowly, measuring every word against Lucy’s eager eyes, “I don’t know who this Dr. Minnericht is, but he can’t be Leviticus. For all Levi was a wicked old fool, he was a wicked old fool who would’ve come for me if he’d been alive all this time. Or, if not for me, he’d come back for Zeke. ”
“He loved you that much?”
“Love? No. Not love, I don’t think. Possessiveness, maybe. I’m just one more thing that belongs to him, on paper. Zeke is one more thing that belongs to him, in blood. No. ” She shook her head. She uncrooked her elbow and lowered herself against the mattress, smushing the feather pillow and flattening it with her cheek. “He’d never let it stand. He would’ve come for us whether we wanted him to or not. ”
Lucy digested this, but Briar couldn’t read the conclusion from the other woman’s face. “I suppose you knew him better than anybody. ”
Briar agreed. “I suppose I did. But sometimes, I don’t think I ever knew him at all. It’s like that sometimes. People fool you. And I was a fool, so it was easy for him. ”
“You were just a girl. ”
“Same difference. Same result. But now it’s my turn. I get to ask a question. ”