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“I do not,” Rector admitted, resenting the look and its implications.
“Anyway, come on outside. I’ll introduce you around. ”
“Outside” was achieved by stepping through a doorframe that had no more door than the windows had glass. Beyond this exit the air was brighter and the milky gray sun was more pronounced. For the first time since falling down the chuckhole, Rector didn’t feel like he needed a lantern.
He blinked against this new light, weak though it was, and surveyed the scene with his usual measured uncertainty.
He saw no way out of the fort except the hole from whence he’d emerged. This was worth remarking on because the fort was—as far as he could see through the chalky gloom—ringed entirely with enormous tree trunks braced side by side and sealed with chinking.
The fort was not precisely rectangular. One wall was curved, and a second one had an indentation like it’d been built around something, but he couldn’t see what that might’ve been. And in the center of this ungeometric, courtyard-style space, two dirigibles were docked. Neither one looked like it belonged to any official nation, army, or custom, which told Rector that they were pirate ships. Both were fixed to a totem pole that must’ve been carved from a tree bigger than any he’d ever laid eyes on. Pieces of the pole were rotting off, dissolving to squishy mulch around the edges, but enough of the impressive log remained intact to keep the two airships bobbing gently a few feet off the earth.
Houjin saw him observing the operation, and said, “That pole won’t last, but it doesn’t have to. See?” He pointed at the nearest corner, where a great knot of right angles took shape through the fog. “Pipework docks, almost finished. ”
“Almost,” said someone behind them.
Rector swiveled with surprise, but Houjin just bobbed his head to acknowledge the newcomer. Without looking, he said, “That’s Kirby Troost. He’s the Naamah Darling’s engineer. ” Then he turned to Troost and asked, “Is Zeke up here?”
“Yeah, he’s over by the Chinatown entrance. ”
Rector and Kirby Troost sized up one another from a cautious distance. Troost was a smallish man, shorter than Rector by several inches, and he was wearing a mask, so there wasn’t much else to be said about him. But there was a posture to him, a forced casualness that Rector recognized and immediately mistrusted. He knew that posture, and often wore it himself. It was the posture of someone who’s up to something.
Troost said, “You must be the kid who went down the chuckhole. ”
“That’s me. ”
Neither one of them moved, or even blinked.
Houjin looked back and forth between them, sensing that something was afoot and he wasn’t a part of it. Rector could’ve told him, if he’d had the vocabulary to do so, that this is what happens when two shysters recognize each other.
But he didn’t have the words, and couldn’t have explained it even though he knew it somewhere deep in his core. So rather than bring it up, he said to Houjin, “Let’s go find Zeke, huh?”
“See you later, Troost!” Houjin declared over his shoulder, for he’d already taken off toward the corner the engineer had indicated.
Troost and Rector exchanged a wary nod, then Rector stepped back into Houjin’s familiar wake.
As he tagged along through the greasy-feeling fog, more details of the fort became clear. Along one wall was an overhang with boxes beneath it, sheltered from the damp overhead, if not the damp that pervaded the air. Beside the small room above the ladder, Rector spied a stack of cleanly split lumber coated with lacquer to keep it from disintegrating in the toxic air. Here and there, machines and machine parts were stored or stopped mid-process, though what they were for, Rector didn’t know.
He used these things, these little distractions, to keep himself from hyperventilating inside his mask. He focused on the improvements large and small; and the canvas, and pitch, and lined-up hammers and boxes of nails; and the mention of the Chinatown entrance, because that meant there was another way out of this fort—a place which suddenly felt very small and very close, even though it was so large that he couldn’t see the farthest walls and edges.
And then, a few yards ahead, Houjin drew up short in front of an elongated lean-to. “Hey Zeke, guess who’s up?” he said. The rustling, clinking noise inside the lean-to came to a halt.
“Really?” The voice was amazingly familiar for having said so little.
“He’s beat-up and slow, but he’ll live. Rector, you coming?”
“Right behind you. ”
He took a deep breath. It stung, and it filled his throat with the taste of rubber and powdery black filters. He exhaled the breath and used it to whisper, “No ghosts. ” The words echoed around inside the mask, and his warm, dank breath made the visor briefly foggy.
Ezekiel Wilkes climbed out from the interior of the lean-to.
He struggled over a stack of crates and stepped into the open with a wrench in his hand. There was a gas mask covering most of his face, just like everybody else, but Rector would’ve known him anywhere. Still skinnier than he ought to be, and still wearing a shock of ratty brown hair that would never lie down, Zeke might’ve been a smidge taller than the last time Rector had seen him, but maybe not. His eyes were the same, crinkled around the corners from too much defensive laughter. The Outskirts hadn’t been kind to this kid, the son of the man who’d destroyed the city. Rector hoped the Underground liked him better.
Zeke’s eyes lit up at the sight of a familiar face. “Rector! Hot damn, I never thought I’d see you inside here. ”
He scrambled the rest of the way out of the lean-to, a structure which was deeper and more cluttered than it appeared at first glance. Zeke jabbed the wrench into his belt and hesitated. Finally he thrust out a hand and seized Rector’s, pumping it up and down like he’d found a long-lost brother.
Much to Rector’s surprise, his supernatural unease about this meeting evaporated, only to be replaced with something equally bad: a deep-seated sense of embarrassment that he would’ve been hard-pressed to explain. He didn’t deserve this welcome, not from a kid he’d sent off to die. Not from a kid he’d never treated well, even if others had treated him worse. Not from a kid he’d never even liked that much, and had mostly tolerated out of a dull sense of pity.
“Zeke,” he responded awkwardly, trying to infuse the greeting with a fraction of the other boy’s enthusiasm. “It’s been a while. Between you and me, I can’t believe you’re still alive. ” It was all he could think of to say, and he had no intention of ever telling Zeke how profoundly true it was. As it was, the words stumbled over one another, and came out with a stutter.
Zeke didn’t notice Rector’s discomfort. He laughed. “You and me both. So I guess Houjin’s been showing you the ropes, huh? He knows this place better than I do. Probably better than anybody. ”
“Yeah, he’s showed me … uh … everything between here and the Vaults. ”
“Did he get you something to eat?”
“Yep. Met that Angeline woman, too. ”
“The princess? She’s a real character, ain’t she?” Then someone called out Zeke’s name and he responded. “Yes, Captain?”
From further back through the blurry banks of clotted air, someone hollered. “You got that wrench for me yet, or do I have to come get it myself?”
“No sir, I’ve got it. I’m coming. ” To Rector, he said, “You can meet Captain Cly, and Fang, and Troost—”
“Already met that one. ”
“Then you can meet the other two. Huey, thanks for bringing him up! I’m real glad to see him. ”
Houjin said, “I thought you might be!” brightly, though he was looking off behind Zeke’s shoulder. “How’s it holding up?”
Zeke followed his gaze, and understood. “So far, so good. ” Then he explained, “The Chinatown entrance is a little weak right now. The day before yesterday, we had a cave-
in. It didn’t do much damage, except that it let in some Blight. I don’t think anybody got sick from it, though. Anyways, come on, Rector. Huey, you coming, too?”
“Might as well!”
Together the three of them—led by Houjin, who was fastest on his feet—went plowing through the thick air, back toward the docked dirigibles and behind them. There, hidden by the ships and the miasma of Blight, Rector spied Kirby Troost with another man. This other man was lying on his back on top of a wooden bench, reaching under one of the dirigible’s back engines.
“Is this the one you wanted?” Zeke asked as he handed over the wrench.
The prone man reached up with one astoundingly long arm and accepted the wrench. He didn’t look at it, but he grasped it with his hand and felt its contours. “This is it, thanks. ”
“Fourth try’s what did it,” Troost said under his breath.
Zeke overheard, and objected. “It’s not like they’re marked or anything. ”
From under the dirigible the big man said, “Let him alone, Troost. ”
“Captain Cly, if you’ve got a minute, you should come out and meet my friend Rector. I knew him in the Outskirts, and he’s all right. ”
The captain slid down off the brace, which turned out to be the back half of a church pew.
And to think, in Zeke’s hand that wrench had looked big.
Even seated on the ground, Captain Cly was nearly as tall as those who surrounded him. He was long-waisted and nearly bald, with buzzed-short hair that was a darkish shade of blond. He didn’t require any further description. Rector would never have mistaken a man that size for anybody else. No wonder he’d been Houjin and Angeline’s first point of reference when Rector had told them about the monster at the chuckhole—but no. Not a chance it was him.
“So you’re Rector, huh?” the captain asked, looking him up and down the same as Troost had, minutes before. “Quite a head of hair you’ve got. ”