The Broken Lands (24 page)

“All that, and we don't even know who they were,” Jin said dully. “They didn't do anything to deserve it, they had no idea what was happening, they just—” Her voice broke, and she stared silently at the flaking paint on the shutters. “And my uncle would never—even Mr. Burns, not even if he could . . . Anyhow, it isn't as if
anyone
could make sense of it.”

The book.
Of course. The one Burns had inherited, but that he couldn't make heads or tails of. The one Jin's uncle was hired to interpret. That had been the memory nagging at Sam.

“You mean that book,” Sam whispered. “The one you told me about.” Jin nodded shortly. “You think either of them knows what's really in it?” Sam asked quietly.

“No, of course not.”

But her hands were still clenched tightly, a gesture Sam was coming to realize meant she was holding something back. “Jin, what is it?”

She hesitated, glanced over her shoulder at the three men waiting at the table behind them. “I used a formula out of it for the display last night,” she whispered. “A few formulas, actually. I read through that stupid book all the time, and I found a formula that I thought I could make sense of, and it worked. They all worked. That's how I got the fireworks to burn underwater.” Her voice was beginning to take on an edge of panic.

“What does that matter?” Sam whispered.

“I don't believe for a minute that either Uncle Liao or Mr. Burns knows what that book is. But both Uncle Liao and I have made some of the formulas in it work.” She paused, looking at him expectantly. “Sam,
what if that makes us . . . ?
”

“Makes you what? Conflagrationeers, whatever that means?”

She exhaled, hard. “I don't know. But it can't be good, knowing what I know; that I've made some of those formulas work. It just feels . . . wrong somehow, now that I know what sorts of things that book is used for.”

He understood why she was worried. Still, Sam felt she was missing a major point—namely, the fact that all three members of Fata Morgana were in mortal danger as long as they stayed in the vicinity of the city of New York. “You have to warn your uncle,” he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. He swallowed. “You have to leave town.”

Jin said nothing. She stared at the shutters a moment longer, then strode back to the table and took her seat. “Please excuse me for disrupting,” she said evenly. “I would like to hear the rest of what you have to say.”

Walter Mapp sighed. “It had better not come to that.” He took off his hat and scratched his head and chin. “Yeah, Jim, I'm with you. There's another headcutter in Coney Island, too, Tom Guyot. He'll help us, so far as he can, but he's an old man. And he has a friend, a newspaperman, who knows a thing or two about Ja—about
him
. Might know more than he's told so far.”

“Another headcutter?” Hawks mused. “Well, well. The coincidences just carry on, don't they? I suppose you'd have told me if he had a favor to spare.”

Mapp gave a noncommittal lift of his shoulders. “Could be that it's not a coincidence he's here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad news.”

“What's a headcutter?” Sam asked, unable to keep quiet any longer.

Mapp chuckled. “Among musicians, we call a contest a
headcutting
. There are a lot of us among the roamers on the roads, and somewhere along the way, a contest with the Devil came to be called by the same name.”

“Well . . .” Sam looked from Mapp to Hawks. “So, which one are we talking about? A musical duel, or a literal contest with the Devil?”

“Funnily enough,” Mapp said, grinning, “in Tom's case and mine alike, the answer is . . . both.”

“So what now?” Jin cut in, impatiently.

“I presume someone needs to warn Fata Morgana,” Mapp said. “Probably best you don't go, sunshine. If their most logical move is to use you to force your uncle's hand, you'd better stay out of sight.”

“I could go,” Sam volunteered. “Can Jin stay here?”

“I don't need a nursemaid,” Jin muttered.

“Jin—”

She flung up her hand. “Point taken, Sam. But it's insulting. You should expect me to grumble about it.”

“I need to send messages to the remaining two of my . . . colleagues,” Hawks said. “They are both here in Brooklyn.”

Jin spoke up immediately. “I can do that, can't I?”

Mapp turned to her with raised eyebrows. “You know your way around Brooklyn, do you?”

“I
meant—”

“I
know
what you meant. Let me explain to you what
I
meant when I said you'd better stay out of sight.”

Jin dropped her head onto the tabletop in frustration.

“Sam's the best choice for delivering any messages,” Jasper suggested. “He's at the invisible age, and he knows how to conduct himself.”

“The invisible age?” Sam mumbled. “Oddly, I know exactly what you mean by that. Sure, I'll do whatever you need.”

“All right, then.” Mapp stretched in his chair. “What say we send Sam with a warning to Fata Morgana first, and maybe see if he can find Tom Guyot.” He turned to Hawks. “That sound like a plan to you?”

Hawks nodded. “Go quickly. Mr. Mapp, do you think the newspaperman could tell us more if he wanted to?”

“Hard to say. Maybe. No harm in asking.”

“All right.” Hawks turned back to Sam. “If you can, see about finding him, too. When you get back I'll have more messages ready for you, and one of my boys can drive you to Brooklyn.”

“Will do.” Sam took Jin's arm and drew her a little distance away from the table. “Anything you want me to say, in particular?”

She sighed. “Tell Uncle Liao I'm safe. Tell him I said to be safe, too, and not do anything stupid. And Sam?” Her voice dropped so that he had to lean in close, close enough for the scent of resins and gunpowder to waft over him again. “Get the book,” she whispered. “It's in a little cabinet with glass doors in the wagon, next to the workbench. It has a pebbly green leather cover, you can't miss it. Bring it back with you.”

Her eyes were wide and worried. Sam reached for her fingers and squeezed them. “It's going to be fine. Anybody who tries to play rough with your uncle's going to regret it.”

She cracked the smallest of smiles and squeezed his hand back. “Go.”

Sam was at the door when Hawks's voice stopped him. “Sam. Just a moment. In case I forget when you come back.” The man from the Bowery strode to his side, drawing a billfold from his pocket. “You are going to have to travel as quickly as you can. Got someplace you can carry this?”

Sam tried not to look shocked at the amount of greenbacks the saloonkeeper had with him. He'd never seen that much cash in one place in his entire life. He fumbled in his pockets and came up with a little bag he used when he didn't want to haul his whole kit around, just big enough for a deck of cards and some dice.

Hawks took a sheaf of bills from the mass of greenbacks. “Find Liao,” he said quietly as he tucked the money into Sam's bag and then added a handful of coins from his pocket. “
Not Burns
. You understand?”

Sam frowned. “The instruction, yes. The reason, no.”

“That's good enough for me. Off you go.”

 

Sam trotted into the hotel and up to the concierge's desk, remembering Tom's words and willing himself to look like he belonged.

The concierge wasn't remotely fooled.

“I . . . er . . . need to leave a message for two of your guests,” Sam mumbled, trying not to be intimidated by the man's arched eyebrows.

“For whom?”

“For a man named Tom Guyot. And a fellow called Ambrose.”

“Are you acquainted with Mr. Guyot?” the concierge asked severely. “We try not to disturb our guests unnecessarily.”

“I'm—well, yeah, we're acquainted,” Sam said, starting to get annoyed. He straightened up and worked on looking insulted. “I had lunch here with the two of them just yesterday.”

Eyebrows still dubiously arched, the concierge passed two sheets of paper across the desk and waited while Sam scrawled,
Mr. Guyot, please come to the Reverend Dram right away! Very important. Sam Noctiluca and Walter Mapp
. He wrote out a similar message for Ambrose, then folded the pages and handed them back. The concierge took them with an expression that clearly said he was surprised Sam could write at all.

But there was no time to waste, so Sam ignored it. “It's really important. Can you, I don't know, rush them along?”

The concierge simply raised his eyebrows, impossibly, another quarter inch and slid the messages into one of the letter cubbies on the wall behind his desk. Sam stared at him, cursed silently to himself, then turned on his heel and stalked across the atrium toward the door.

About halfway across the room, someone stopped him. “You're the boy I saw at the fireworks with Sergeant Guyot and Major Bierce, aren't you?”

It was one of the haunted-looking men Sam assumed were the Resaca veterans, a man with bright blue eyes and heavy sideburns and maps of old worry lines around his mouth and eyes. He wore a little sprig of briar in his lapel. The military ranks threw Sam for a minute, but it wasn't hard to figure out who the fellow was talking about. “Er. Yeah.”

“And did I hear that you're looking for them now?”

His eyes were eerily sharp. Sam flinched. “Er. Yeah,” he repeated.

“I know where to find them. Would you like me to pass your letter along?”

“Oh. Sure. Thank you.” Sam begged another two sheets of paper from the concierge and wrote out his messages again while the soldier waited. “Did you . . . did you serve with them?”

“Yes.” A look of sorrow crossed the man's face. “At Shiloh, and then at Resaca, back when Major Bierce was a first lieutenant and Sergeant Guyot was just Tom.”

After he finished writing and folded the pages, Sam tried to think of something else to say. For the second time he realized that he didn't actually know much about the war. “A lot of people died at Shiloh, huh?”

Of course, the moment he said that, he wanted to slap himself on the forehead. This man had survived the carnage, but he had probably seen a lot of his friends die. Why would he want to talk about it with a stupid kid who didn't really even understand what, apart from slavery, the fighting had been about?

But if the soldier was bothered, he didn't show it. “Twenty-five thousand killed, wounded, or missing at Shiloh,” he answered, his words vaguely singsong, like the way someone might recite a litany in church. “Another eight thousand at Resaca.”

Twenty-five thousand in casualties and losses? That was like wiping all of Gravesend and Coney Island off the map on a busy summer Sunday, when it seemed like the whole world was crowded into town. It was shocking, absolutely impossible to understand.

The soldier held out his callused hand for the messages. “I'll see it done,” he said with a shadow of a smile, and then he was gone, leaving Sam to wonder what it meant to have witnessed that kind of bloodshed. Jin could barely wipe the memory of the body in the alley from her mind, even for a minute. Just the thought of the bare foot he'd tripped over made Sam sick to his stomach, and he hadn't even seen any of the gory bits.

Behind the hotel, the Fata Morgana wagon was quiet, and appeared deserted. Sam knocked on the door and waited. No answer. He peered inside each of the three tents, but they were empty, too. Sam knocked at the wagon again, then jogged down toward the water, where Jin and Liao had set off the previous night's display. Still no sign of anyone.

He tried the livery stable next. The only person inside the huge barn was a kid working on the axle of a carriage. “'Scuse me,” Sam called. “You seen the fireworks people around lately?”

The kid leaned out from behind one of the wheels. “Yeah. They hired a coach and driver about an hour ago.”

“Any idea where they were going?”

“New York, somewhere. All I know.”

Sam cursed quietly. Even the quickest route to Manhattan took a couple of hours. They'd be gone until late afternoon at the earliest. “Thanks.”

Well, they'd have to be back in time for that evening's display, anyhow. In the meantime, Sam wandered back to the wagon. There was still the matter of Jin's book.

Feeling a bit like a thief, he tried the door. Locked, of course. He walked around the wagon, eyeing the curtained windows in the hopes of finding one open. Still no luck—until he found a window on the back, opposite the door, with curtains that were parted enough for him to peer in. It wasn't unlocked, but it gave Sam a glimpse of the ceiling inside.

Or, more accurately, it gave him a glimpse of the
hatch
in the ceiling, the one Jin had been perched over the morning Sam had first seen her, tossing fire into the air.

“Well,” he murmured to himself, “it's something to try.” And with a glance around to make sure there was no one to see him acting like a burglar, he jumped up, grabbed the overhanging cornice, and levered himself over it and onto the top of the wagon. He crept over the pitched roof, curled his fingers around the edges of the hatch door, and pulled.

It moved.

“Oh, thank God,” he muttered. Then, with one last look around, he opened it just far enough for him to slip through, and dropped inside.

It was not the most graceful landing, but since there was no one there, it didn't much matter. Sam picked himself up and took in his surroundings. There was the workbench under the window with the parted curtains, flanked on each side by cabinets bolted to the walls. There was a note addressed to Jin on the workbench. Sam paused to read the first line—
Gone for supplies; will return by afternoon
—and picked it up to take back with him.