The Broken Lands (33 page)

Sam slapped her fingers gently. “How many times have we told you not to do that? You give something away every time you move a card.”

“But is it
true?
”

“I don't know, Illy,” Sam said, cards on his knee. Then he sighed. “I believe it. I think that's maybe the best I can say.”

“I don't understand it, though,” the girl protested. “This is
America
. It's the
nineteenth
century
. This all still sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”

“From a kid who still believed in fairy tales up until last year—”

“Sing small, Con, or I'll tell my mother you broke her Palissy serving dish.”

“I don't even know what that is!”

“It's bad, that's all you need to know.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Can we get back to the topic at hand?” He looked at Constantine, then at Ilana. “Can I count on you tomorrow? Will you help us?”

“Of course we will,” Ilana said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Crazy or not, we're with you.”

“Go right ahead, speak for all of us.”

“I beg your pardon, Constantine, did I get your answer wrong?”

“No, Miss Wiseacre, you did not. Are we playing, or aren't we?” Con stretched out a foot and kicked Sam's leg. “Start us off.”

Sam worried the corner of the leftmost card in his hand between his thumb and forefinger. From their perch he could see west to the lights of Norton's Point, where the evening was well under way, and miles off to the east, the pale glow that he knew emanated from the Broken Land Hotel, where he had reluctantly left Jin in Susannah Asher's care with a promise to return in the morning to help assemble the fireworks for the message.

“It's such a little island,” he murmured. But he was thinking about what Ambrose and Tom had said, about how an attack upon New York and Brooklyn now, even in this modern year of 1877, could be enough to tear the United States apart.

Such a fragile thing, this country.

“Sam.” Ilana tapped his knee gently. “Play.”

I
GOT YOUR NOTE,”
Tycho McNulty said, rubbing his eyes as he held the door of the pharmacy open for Jin early the following morning. “Sorry to make you come all the way back here. One of my neighbors is having a difficult . . . er . . . con­finement.”

“I hope she's all right,” Jin said, following the pharmacist to his little dispensary. “I don't imagine you had time to think about my little project.”

“My neighbor will be fine in a few months.” McNulty smiled wearily. “And as for your project, actually, I did think it over. It was a treat, after the night I had.” He picked up a wrapped parcel from the counter. “Two pounds, fine ground. Should add a nice tone to the green you wanted, too.”

“Oh, that's marvelous.” Jin tucked the parcel into her bag.

“I don't get the impression this is for the Broken Land's display, is it?”

She looked up and saw worry on the pharmacist's face. “No, sir.”

“Are you in trouble?”

Jin started to say she wasn't, but then she discovered she didn't want to lie to McNulty. “Well, I've somehow gotten myself involved in stopping a plot to take over New York and Brooklyn,” she said tiredly. “My friend kissed me yesterday and I ran away crying like some little girl who's had her hair pulled. Then I think my uncle might have blown himself up trying to save us from a monster with two rows of teeth. And I didn't really sleep all that well last night, so that's a bother, too.”

McNulty listened with wide eyes, then burst into laughter. “Insomnia'll kill you,” he managed. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. This all sounds deadly serious. But then I didn't get much sleep, either.”

He walked to a bank of cabinets along one wall and opened the nearest. “I can't help you with saving the cities, and I certainly can't help you with boy difficulties.” After a moment's hunting inside the cabinet, he took out a little blue-glass jar. “But this is something I use when I'm too tired to think straight. A little on the eyelids, a little under the nose. Wakes me right up. Now that I think of it, it's also quite nice for when I'm working with noxious chemicals. Doesn't keep you from breathing them, but it keeps you from smelling them as much.”

Jin took the jar and opened it. The ointment inside was pinkish and smelled of peppermint and lemon and fresh-roasted coffee all at once. The first whiff that shot up her nose made her eyes fly wide open. “Wow,” she said, rubbing her nose. “That is . . . something.”

McNulty grinned. “It works.”

“I can already feel it.” Jin fumbled in her bag for money, but McNulty waved it off.

“My gift to you,” he said. “Wish I could do more. Go and save the world, Jin. I'll be rooting for you.”

“Thank you,” Jin said. She took a step toward the door, then hesitated and turned back. “Thank you, Mr. McNulty. I won't let you down.”

The pharmacist started in surprise. He patted her shoulder. “I don't have the foggiest of ideas what you're up against, Jin, but I'm the last person you could ever let down. I'm glad to have met you.”

 

Two hours later, Susannah Asher's hotel suite had been turned neatly into a fireworks factory. Making the little explosive lances that would be used to illuminate the letters was absurdly detailed, repetitive work. It was the kind of thing that even Jin, who loved making the components Fata Morgana used for its displays, found incredibly boring after the first hour. Of course, that was when she had to do it alone.

“Boy, I thought the card sharp stuff was neat, but this is even better.” Ilana twisted the tissue-paper end of an empty lance closed and passed it on to Sam, then started rolling paper around a thin dowel to form the next case. “Although I kind of wish I got to do the part with the stuff that actually explodes.”

Sam dipped the open end of the tube into a little dish of damp meal and passed it on to Constantine, who was ready with a funnel and a jar of mixed powders, filings, charcoal, sugar, and the fine-ground blend of chemicals that Tycho McNulty had concocted to create a slow-burning fire. He filled the lance and passed it on to Jin.

As they sat on the floor of the beautiful suite, late-morning sun fell onto the thick pile of the Turkish carpet. A cart littered with a silver coffee service stood, forgotten, along one wall.

“Can't help that boys are too clumsy to work with paper,” Jin murmured, twisting closed the other end of the lance and adding it to the nearly full crate beside her. Then she turned to check up on Mike, who sat on her other side amid the metal letters, tapping in sharp-ended spikes wherever there were gaps in the line of points that outlined their shapes.

“I can't believe these letters are in such good shape.” Jin took a finished one from him and ran her fingers over the spikes, checking for any that felt loose. “I don't even remember the last time we used them.”

“How are we doing?” Sam asked, without looking up.

“Another two dozen should do it,” Jin said. “I'll start wiring the fuses, but we're going to have to wait to put the lances on until we get to the bridge. Once the lances are in place, the letters will be too fragile to move by carriage. It would be too bumpy.” She resisted the urge to look out the window. If she looked, she would have a clear line of sight to the livery stable and Fata Morgana's wagon and tents.

Give me a signal, Uncle Liao. Let me know you're okay.

She had been repeating that silent wish over and over the night before as she had waited to fall asleep, and she had wished it again all this morning as her fingers had done their mindless work: measuring lengths of fuse, damping and blending fresh powders to refill Constantine's jar, closing off the lances.
Give me a signal. Give me a signal.

The signal, when it came, wasn't in the sky, but in the hallway. The doorbell rang. Everyone in the room tensed. Susannah, who had been sitting on the couch staring at the sheet of paper on which she'd been making lists of potential candidates to fill the four empty stewardships of the city, got to her feet and waved for the rest of them to be quiet. She peered out the peephole, then beckoned to Jin.

“It's no one I know,” she whispered.

Jin peered through the tiny lens into the hall and exhaled, relieved. “It's Mr. Burns.”

Sam was at her side in an instant. “Jin, Hawks told me not to talk to Burns, remember?”

“He's family.” Jin shook her head. “He's
my
family.” She opened the door and slipped out into the hallway, pulling it mostly closed behind her.

Mr. Burns stood with his hands in his pockets, the part in his hair straight and the spectacles on his nose crooked. He looked just like he always had. Part of her family—her strange family, stranger than she had ever guessed, but the only family she'd ever had. The family she loved. Jin hugged him hard.

He hugged her back, but only briefly. “Jin, sweetheart, there's no time. Can I come in?”

Inside, the work on the lances continued. Only Sam had stopped. He regarded Mr. Burns as he followed Jin into the suite, then he stood and trailed after the two of them through the parlor where Ilana, Constantine, and Mike were working and into the bedroom.

“Is Uncle Liao all right?” Jin demanded as soon as the door had shut behind them.

Burns hesitated, then nodded. “I don't know what it would take to do actual damage to your uncle, but I'm sure it's more than these fools have at their disposal.”

Jin's face crumpled. “But you haven't seen him?”

He shook his head slowly. “No.”

“So you know?” Sam asked. “You know what's happening? What . . .
they . . .
are?”

“Of course.” Mr. Burns perched on the windowsill and regarded the two of them. “I've been running from creatures like these for longer than you would believe.” He smiled sadly at Jin. “I know this is going to sound preposterous when you and I both know I'm not to be trusted with a slow match, but they're looking for me.”

“Because of your book?”

“Because of who I am. Because of what I can do. Or, more correctly, what I ought to be able to do.” Mr. Burns put a hand on her shoulder. “And I can tell you how to do it, too.”

Jin shook her head. “No. I'm not a—”

“A conflagrationeer? Yes, you are, and I'm sure you've already figured that out. And you must be, Jin. Listen.” He nodded back the way they had come. “I know what you're working on out there, and it's a good start. But you can do more.” He smiled thinly. “A conflagrationeer could do more.”

Jin bristled at the word. “They're listening,” Sam warned.

“Of course they are.” Mr. Burns waved a hand dismissively. “But you're about to take care of that. You know how a city is claimed?”

Hawks had said something about that. The fire bit, the cinefaction, had only been part of it. “By blood, by fire, and by naming,” Jin recalled. “They need a con—they need you for the fire.”

“Well, they need
someone
for the fire. But they aren't the only ones who can claim the city with it.”

Jin frowned. “I don't understand.”

Mr. Burns smiled. “The adept who performs the cinefaction can claim the city for whatever party he or she chooses. You understand what I'm saying, Jin? You can stop this madness tonight.”

This was going in two equally unpleasant directions. Hadn't he just admitted that he was a conflagrationeer? By that logic, it had to be Mr. Burns whom Jack's men were really looking for, not Uncle Liao—and the mistaken identity might well have gotten him killed.

“
You
stop it!” she snapped, balling her hands into fists. “This isn't my mess to fix! It isn't my madness to stop, and it wasn't Uncle Liao's, either, and now . . .” She shook her head, not quite willing to finish the thought. “You say you've been running from men like this all these years? So you knew they were out there, then?”

“Well, not these men
specifically,
but—”

Anger and fear and exhaustion bubbled up. “Well, then why don't you already have a plan?” Sam put a hand on her arm, but she shrugged him off. “And we've been traveling together all this time . . . When were you going to tell us about it all? No—I don't care about that.
Why don't you already have a plan?
”

“I do,” Mr. Burns said calmly. “But the plan has always involved either you or Liao, because despite what I am, I am a very, very bad artificier. I haven't been lying to you about that. You know I haven't.”

Grudgingly, Jin had to admit that was the one part of all of this that she did believe was as simple as it seemed. It would have been difficult to fake Mr. Burns's level of ineptitude with explosives. She sighed. “Tell me what your plan is.”

“It's simple,” Mr. Burns said. “Do what they want.”

Jin stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Do what they want,” he repeated. “Perform the cinefaction, but claim the city for its own people instead of for Jack Hellcoal.”

She stared at him for a moment longer, then out of nowhere she found herself laughing. It was either that or cry again, and she was so tired of crying. “Oh, is that all?”

He nodded. “That's all. Well . . .” He made a careless gesture. “Well, of course it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic outline.”

“Of course.”

“Hey, Jin?” Ilana called from the parlor. “Shall we just keep on at the lances out here?” The younger girl eased the door open and poked her head inside. “I figured out how to close them up the way you did.”

“Yes, and I guess I'd better show you how to wire the fuses, too.” She folded her arms and stared at Mr. Burns. “It looks like Mr. Burns and I have some things to discuss.”