Steamborn (16 page)

“Wait.” Shadowy fingers reached through the grate and Jacob stared, horrified as that nimble hand wrapped around the vacuum flask. He must have dropped it when he dove for the brick. Jacob leaned farther back into the shadows beside Alice.

“Do you recognize it?” Benedict asked, handing the flask to the city smith.

Newton rolled the flask between his hands and narrowed his eyes. “It was certainly made with some skill.”

Jacob turned his head. Alice’s eyes were as wide in the shadows as his must have been. He heard something creak below them, and the door opened.

“Send a patrol down,” Newton said. “It might be nothing, but I’d rather be sure of it.” The heavy door slammed closed once more.

“I think they’re gone,” Jacob whispered. “Thought we were going to get caught.”

“They want to send us out to die,” Alice hissed. “Just so they have fuel for their damn boilers?”

Jacob blinked. He’d almost never heard Alice curse before. She saved it for special occasions, which generally meant when she was very, very mad.

“Let’s go,” Alice whispered. “I don’t want to get caught by the patrol they’re sending.”

Jacob nodded and followed her into the darkness. He kept his left hand on the stone wall as they felt their way through the narrow tunnel. It took longer in the darkness, but they made their way around the huge stone pillar and the underground lake until they could no longer see the light from the grate behind them.

“Lantern should be safe now,” Jacob said.

He couldn’t
see
Alice in front of him, but he heard the rustling of her backpack and the quiet squeak of the lantern’s handle before she clicked the igniter. The lantern burst to life like a sun. Jacob squinted against the brightness. Alice pointed the lantern out across the lake. Something shifted up on the far wall and Jacob shivered. It didn’t look big, but he was tense enough that anything could make him jump.

They passed the wood coffins and continued up the sloping path. The pale stone coffins were a welcome sight as they made their way back through the twisting corridor of the dead. Alice paused at the mummies. She shined the light on them briefly and then walked back toward the entrance to the catacombs.

“I’d rather be with the mummies than those men,” Alice muttered.

“Me too.” Jacob could feel himself shaking when they finally made it back out of the catacombs. They’d be safer back in the train station. He was sure of it. “We need to get out of here.”

Alice nodded. The motion was jerky, and Jacob thought she might be just as scared as he was. “What if he recognized Charles’s flask?”

Jacob didn’t answer, but the thought hadn’t left his mind.

It wasn’t much longer before Alice’s light shone across the underground station. The table where they’d eaten was void of the dust that entombed everything else. Their footprints carved a living map, showing everywhere they’d walked before.

“Let’s just go home,” Jacob said.

Alice nodded and led the way past the broken carriage and back to the hallway with the collapsed staircase. Jacob glanced at the poster they’d seen when they’d first arrived. He wondered just how long the train station had been abandoned.

“I’ll go up first,” Jacob said as they stared up at the hatch with the spring bolt.

“What if those men are waiting for us?” Alice asked.

It was one of the reasons Jacob wanted to go up first, but he didn’t say that to Alice. “I doubt this is the only way into the catacombs. Besides, do you really think they saw us? I think they would have said something if they had.”

Alice nodded and aimed her lantern up at the hatch. Jacob climbed first, pausing with the heel of his boot hooked onto one rung and his ear close to the old spring bolt. Nothing but silence sounded overhead, so he pushed the hatch open. The relief he felt at the darkness blossomed in his chest.

“Clear,” he said, pulling himself into the cellar of the old inn. He pulled the hatch back and held it while Alice followed him up.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alice said, sweeping her lantern around the room once before snuffing it.

They made their way over to the cellar door and snuck out as quietly as they’d come in.

The streetlamps blazed overhead by the time Jacob had walked Alice home—with a promise to meet at Bat’s in the morning—and started back to the house. He stood beside his sleeping parents, contemplating waking them to tell them what he’d heard in in the catacombs. Instead he wandered down to the workshop. The lights were out. No one was awake. Did he just wait until morning? Would that be too late?

He sat down for a while before tucking
The Dead Scourge
under his pillow, unwilling to let it out of his reach before Charles had seen it. His fingers ran over the copper hinges and the raised silver skull. Sleep finally took him before he could decide on whether or not to wake Charles.

When morning broke, half-blinding Jacob as he squinted across the room, he was surprised to see the doctor packing his bag and leaving the room.

The doctor nodded at him.

“You made it out of the Lowlands?” Jacob asked. “I’m glad.”

“As am I.” The doctor had a nice smile, but he looked uncomfortable, or anxious. Jacob couldn’t place it.

He turned and looked at his parents after the doctor left. His father stared at a small bottle of medicine. His mother had her hand on his shoulder, but she was keeping her distance. Jacob knew what it meant. She only kept her distance like that when his dad was angry about something.

“What happened?” Jacob asked.

His dad looked up. “They raised the price of my medicine. Doc says the supply line has been cut off, and what’s still in town is going to get more expensive.”

“I was afraid of that,” Charles said as he walked into the room, wiping his hands on a dark towel. Jacob was surprised to see Alice behind him. Charles tucked the oily rag into an open pocket on his leather vest. He turned his head, as though he meant to see through the walls, all the way to the Lowlands.

“Supply and demand,” Jacob’s dad said. “Or it’s just another instance of the Highlanders holding us down.”

Charles sighed. “I normally wouldn’t argue with that, but what do they gain? If the Lowlanders all get sick, it’s going to spread into the Highborn people as well.” Charles harrumphed. “I don’t care how thick-headed Parliament can be; they don’t want that.”

Jacob barely kept his mouth shut about what he and Alice had overheard, but his dad was already upset, and he didn’t want to make it worse.

“Maybe you’re right, Charles,” Jacob’s mom said. “Either way, what can we do? We barely have the money to afford Peter’s medicine as it is.”

Charles looked at Jacob and cocked an eyebrow. Jacob looked away. He understood what Charles was saying without saying it.
Don’t even think about stealing again.
This was one time he’d have to let Charles down. His dad needed medicine, and nothing was going to keep it from him.

“Did the coins from Festival help?” Jacob asked, glancing between his parents.

“Of course they did,” his mom said. “They bought a full bottle. Thank you for that.”

His dad gave her an odd look before nodding in agreement. Jacob knew what it meant. It helped, but not enough.

Jacob took a deep breath and looked at Charles. “Can I show you something in the lab?”

Charles shrugged. “Sure, let’s go. Alice is waiting in the lab.” The old man turned and led the way out of the room.

“Alice is here? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did.”

Jacob tucked the
The Dead Scourge
under his arm and followed Charles down the hall and out into the little lab. When the door opened and Alice looked up from the workbench, Jacob asked, “When did you get here?”

“Did you tell anyone what we heard?”

Jacob shook his head.

“What you heard where?” Bat asked, his bulky form filling the doorway behind Jacob a moment later.

“That’s not important,” Jacob said. He pulled the book out from under his arm and slid it onto the bench beside Charles.

Charles glanced at it and then his head jerked back toward the table. “Where did you get that?”

“It’s …” Jacob glanced between Alice and Bat. He didn’t think it would hurt if Bat knew about their find. “There’s an old bookstore in the abandoned station by the catacombs.”

“How did you even—” Bat started to say, but Charles silenced him with a sharp look over his wire-rimmed spectacles.

“Well then,” Charles said. “I suppose you found your way under the streets.”

Jacob nodded. “This book though, it’s written like they were actually there. In the Deadlands.”

Charles slid the heavy book off the desk and ran his fingers over the silver skull. “That’s because he was, Jacob. Some things … some people believe there are things that should be forgotten and lost to time.

“Like the Forgotten in the book?” Alice asked.

Charles sighed and flipped through a few pages. “Yes, like them.”

“Miss Penny never taught us about them,” Alice said.

Jacob nodded his agreement. “All she ever taught us was the men who lost the war died in the deserts.”

Charles slid the book back to Jacob. “Son, you’ll learn that people tend to omit the things they’re most ashamed of. Or most terrified of. The Forgotten were exiled at the end of the war for their crimes.” Charles glanced up at Bat.

“If you call having a difference of opinion a crime,” Bat muttered. “Those men didn’t deserve what they got.”

“Neither did their families.” Charles turned back to Jacob. “Read the book. I knew Archibald in the war. He was a good man. I hope he still is.”

“What happened to him?” Alice asked.

Charles laced his fingers together and leaned on the workbench. “His book was declared an act of treason. It told a story different from the one our government had written into our history books, and they didn’t take kindly to it. Oh, I can understand that on one hand. It was only a few years after the war, and we were holding the city together by threads at best.”

“What did they do to him?”

Charles looked at Alice and then returned his gaze to the bench. He rolled a small bronze cylinder between his fingers. “They sentenced him to exile in the Deadlands.”

“In the book it sounds like there are people out there, though.” Jacob opened to the first pages. “It sounds like they have metalsmiths.”

“They do,” Charles said. He looked at Bat.

Bat cursed. “Yes, they do, but they’re madmen.”

“They are … different,” Charles said.

“Keep that book hidden,” Bat said to Jacob. “I doubt many people would realize what it is at a glance, but I don’t want to see you in trouble over it.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to take it from him,” Charles said, eying Bat.

The larger man shook his head slowly. “Our history shouldn’t be lost to our children. They should know the good and the terrible.” Bat turned around and walked back inside the house.

Charles watched him go. The old man’s forehead wrinkled, and Jacob had only seen it like that when Charles was thinking hard. “He’s changed.”

“Bat?” Alice asked.

Charles nodded. “He’s always been a government man. Used to work close with Parliament.” Charles tapped the bronze cylinder on the workbench and set it down. “I’m honestly surprised he didn’t take that book.”

“Why?” Jacob asked, running his fingers over the old hinges.

“To burn it.”

“What?” Alice stepped over beside Jacob. “That’s crazy. Why would anyone want to burn a book? Much less an old history book.”

“Some people would consider it dangerous, Alice.”

“It’s just a book,” she said. “It can’t be nearly as dangerous as the men we heard talking in the catacombs.”

Charles jerked his head up and his eyes locked onto Alice. “What are you talking about?”

Alice looked at Jacob. He shrugged. Jacob wasn’t sure what they should say and what they shouldn’t, and Alice’s guess was as good as his. Alice’s guesses were usually better than his, actually.

Charles leaned back against the bench while Alice spoke. His eyebrows slowly drew down as she made it further into the story, telling him about the man named Newton and the plan to send the Lowlanders outside the walls.

“Gods,” Charles said as he leaned over and pushed the door to the house open. “Bat! Bat, get back out here.”

Bat’s footsteps echoed on the wooden floors as he approached the lab. Jacob could tell he had been there before the door had opened.

“Who’s Benedict?”

“Who?” Bat asked. He looked down for a moment and then shrugged. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

“He was with a large man, probably the city smith himself from what the kids have told me.”

Bat shook his head slowly. “Maybe one of the smith’s apprentices? I honestly don’t know.”

“With a top hat and a pinstripe suit?” Charles said. “I doubt that very much. Alice has told me a very disturbing story.” Charles paused and glanced at the kids before turning his attention back to Bat. “It sounds like the man in the top hat was against it, but someone is planning to remove the Lowlanders from the city walls.”

“That’s insane,” Bat said with a wave of his hand. “I can’t believe they’d do that. I know there’s segregation in the city—hell, there’s a bloody wall that literally divides us all—but to throw people back into an unprotected town?” He shook his head. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I heard it too,” Jacob said. “We’re not making it up.”

“They’ve no reason to lie,” Charles said. “The kids gain nothing. What motivation is there?”

Bat ran his hand through his hair and frowned.

“Tell Bat what you heard Newton ask, Alice. He needs to know.”

“He asked the other man … I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but it was something like ‘Do you think those bugs showed up on their own?’”

Jacob stood up and pointed at Alice. “Oh, remember what else he said? If Dauschen allies with the Deadlands, then none of it will matter.”

Bat took a step backwards like he’d been punched. He stared at Charles. “Who could herd the bugs like that?”

Charles nodded. “The only answers that make any sense terrify me.”