The Broken Lands (39 page)

“Then I have to get the Liar,” Sam murmured. “That's the only way.”

Across the table, Tesserian smiled. “Well, then, you just might have to cheat.”

Sam hated cheating. But he thought about Walker, and about Susannah and Con and Illy and all his friends, about the hundreds of thousands of people who could find themselves living in a hell on earth if he failed. Mostly, though, he thought about Jin.

He sighed and picked up the card and stared into the cleric's lined face. “Show me how.”

 

“I feel that perhaps I haven't fully gotten across to you how much I dislike this plan,” Walter Mapp grumbled as he paced across the parlor of the hotel suite.

“Could you stop pacing?” Mr. Burns asked. “You're putting the rest of us on edge.”

Mapp glanced at Burns, then at Tom Guyot and Susannah. He stopped and leaned heavily against the wall. “I think this plan is a disaster,” he said. “Just in case I didn't convey that clearly.”

“If you have a better one, I wish you'd tell it,” Susannah said coldly. “I don't like it, either. I don't like what it asks of Sam, and I
really
don't like what it asks of Jin. It goes entirely against my principles, this idea of using her as collateral in a bet.”

“There has to be another way.” Mapp looked across the room to where Tom sat staring at the pocket watch and the clip-edged coin that hung beside it on the fob. But Tom said nothing.

“I'm sure there is, but we haven't discovered it yet, and we don't really have time to wait,” Mr. Burns pointed out. “The second Jin has the formula worked out, we are going to have to get her past those two creatures and into Liao's laboratory, no matter what it takes, with no wasting of time. She's going to need every minute we can win for her.”

A rapid knocking sounded on the door. Burns strode across the room and peered out, then opened it for Ilana Ponzi to slip inside. “Sam's on his way up,” she announced breathlessly. A moment later there was another knock, and Burns opened the door for Sam. He nodded a quick hello to the assembled group.

Walter Mapp tapped Tom on the shoulder. “Let's chat,” he said quietly.

Tom sighed, got to his feet, and ambled after Mapp, away from where Sam was filling in Susannah and Mr. Burns on the events of his afternoon with Tesserian.

“This plan is a disaster,” Mapp said again, his voice low. “You're thinking the same thing, I know you are.”

“I surely am,” Tom replied, “but I still maintain using my favor's a worse idea.”

“A worse idea than Sam gambling with Walker? For Jin's
life,
and probably his own? And what Burns is suggesting she do if Sam actually wins? Do you have any idea how many ways this could go wrong, even if everything goes right? These are
children
.”

Now Tom gave Mapp a disappointed look. “Now, Mr. Mapp, you're acting like you've done forgot that age doesn't always know better than youth. You've lived long enough to know different. Have a little faith. Also, it ain't up to us.
They
speak for the city now. These children are trying to do something great, and you and me, we got to let them have their time before we swoop in thinking we know better. Plus, you ought to recall, we don't have a single clue what will really happen if we use this.” He slid the coin and watch back into his pocket. “Unless you want to tell me how perfect it went when you used yours, that is.”

Mapp regarded him silently for a moment, then said, “No, I guess I wouldn't tell that story quite that way.”

A third knock on the door interrupted their hushed discussion. This time it was Constantine. “You were right,” he said to Burns. “There was a fellow in the atrium. Watched when Sam left the hotel, then he left for a bit and came back and waited until Sam returned. Then he took off again.”

“So they know we're here,” Mapp muttered.

“It doesn't change the plan,” Burns said. “They're waiting for Jin, so they can use her to draw Liao and me out. Once she and Sam leave, they'll follow; that's when Mr. Mapp, you, and the rest head for the boat back at Norton's Point.”

Susannah turned to Constantine, who was pouring himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the beverage cart. “You're certain you can manage the boat? If not, now's the time to say so. I don't like being sequestered back here while everyone else is doing the dangerous work, anyway.”

“You may have to remind me which part hooks up to the horses.” Constantine smiled at her over his glass. “Joking. I'm your man, Miss Asher.”

“All right,” Susannah said, sounding faintly disappointed.

Mr. Burns cleared his throat. “That's settled, then. Mike drives Jin out to join you all at Norton's Point as soon as she has what she needs from the supply tent, then comes back for Sam, assuming the game isn't finished yet. When it ends, he'll drive Sam to the bridge.”

“And if Walker doesn't agree?” Mapp asked. “What if any one of the million things that could go wrong with this plan actually happen?”

Before anyone could answer, the bedroom door eased open. Jin stood there, the
Port-fire Book
in one hand and a sheet of paper covered in her cramped handwriting in the other.

“I have it,” she said, eyes bright and uncertain and excited. “But we really have to hurry.”

Once more a knock sounded on the door. Constantine opened it and Ambrose stood in the hall. He bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “I
heard
from a card-hustling little bird,” he announced, “that you needed someone
respectable
to help in pulling off this spectacle of yours.”

 

The lot beside the stables was quiet. There was no sign of the wild battle Sam and Jin had witnessed the night before; even the disordered gravel had been raked smooth.

The door to the wagon stood slightly ajar. Jin ran, feet crunching over the stones, and sprinted up the stairs with Sam a step behind. “Uncle?”

The wagon, of course, was empty. Jin left Sam standing at the top of the stairs and he watched her peek into each tent, one by one. “He's not here.”

“We didn't come expecting we'd find him, Jin.”

She nodded and slipped past him into the wagon again. Sam stayed in the doorway, eyeing the lot. He could hear Jin opening doors and cabinets, packing things into her rucksack to take to the laboratory tent.

Where are you, Walker?

Jin emerged again, bumping him with the rucksack and startling him out of his thoughts. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Her foot had just left the bottom step when Walker's unmistakable voice spoke out of nowhere. “Well, I really did think maybe this was going to turn out to be a waste of time, but it seems kids are just as stupid as they say.”

Jin froze. Sam spun, looking around for the speaker and losing his footing in the process. He stumbled down the stairs and turned to find the gambler in his immaculate white linen suit crouched on the wagon's roof.

“I know what you're thinking,” Walker said, leaning one elbow on his knee. “You're wondering how my suit looks so good after your little girlfriend's old man threw me around so very recently. The answer is, my will is stronger than the dirt's.”

He straightened, towering over them. “And if I care that much about whether my trousers are pressed, you should be just a bit panicked about how far I might be willing to go to get something much more important. Like a proper cinefaction. Where's your uncle, girl? Where's Burns?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Jin edging backwards. Walker must've spotted the movement, too. “Hold still right there, young lady,” he snapped. “Bones!”

The bald man in his long felt coat appeared from around the back of the tent farthest from the wagon. Jin glanced from Walker to the man called Bones, then at Sam. He nodded once, and she sprinted for Liao's laboratory.

Sam held his breath.
Please, please let us be right about the talismans . . .

Walker snarled and launched himself off the roof and over Sam's head. Bones wasn't quite as quick, but he was on the move only a second later. Still, Jin made it through the door flap before either of them got close. Once she was inside, neither man made any effort to follow her.

Walker rounded on Sam. “Congratulations, kid. You just graduated from annoying to hostage. You hear that, girl? Come out,” he snarled, “or I'll cut your boy here to ribbons.”

“Wait.” Sam put up a shaking hand. It was now or never. “I . . . I heard you gamble.”

“You—what?” Walker stalked closer. “What are you playing at?”

“Never mind,” Bones said warningly.

“I heard you're a proper gambler,” Sam said, speaking fast. “I play cards. I'll play you for our lives.”

“Walker,” Bones said coldly. “We're here for a conflagrationeer. We don't have time for this.”

“If you win, we surrender,” Sam persisted.

Walker stared at Sam with red-rimmed eyes and put his hands in his pockets. “And if you win, you go free?”

“If we win . . .” Sam hesitated. He glanced at Walker's waistcoat. Attached to a gleaming watch fob was a little cylinder of punched tin. A tinderbox. “If we win, we go free, and I get
that
.”

Walker looked where Sam was pointing and burst into grating laughter. “Why on earth would I agree to that? Do you have any idea what that is?”

Sam thought about lying, maybe saying he could pawn a watch fob for a month's boarding fees. But trying to lie to this man was folly. He would see through it in an instant.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I know what it is. And you should agree to it because, if you win, not only will we surrender, but Jin will perform the cinefaction for you. We win, we go free and you fail. But if you win, you get what you want.”

Walker glanced at the tent into which Jin had disappeared. “She can do it?”

Sam nodded. “She's a conflagrationeer, just like her uncle.”

“You don't say.” The gambler grinned. “Well, then.”

“Walker,” Bones said again, warningly.

“I heard you the first time,” Walker snapped, his black eyes sizing Sam up. “What do you play?”

“Lots of things. Monte, stuss, a couple more interesting games I picked up back in the tenements.” Sam spoke nonchalantly, trying to seem like maybe he was boasting and not wanting to sound like it.

“More interesting ones, huh?” The gambler's eyes glittered.

“Might know some you don't, actually.”

A few feet away, Bones made an impatient noise. “I doubt it,” he muttered.

Sam ignored him and held Walker's stare. It wasn't easy; he looked
murderous
. It was made worse because he was holding absolutely still. How did anyone mistake him for a human? Sam wondered. Walker's stillness was just as unnatural as everything else about him.

And then: “You're on,” he snapped. Bones groaned.

Sam supposed he ought to feel relieved, but he didn't. “You agree to my terms?”

Walker chuckled. “Yes, I agree to your
terms
. I'll even let you choose the game.”

Well, that took care of one technicality Sam hadn't quite figured out how to fix. “And is
he
going to abide by them?” He nodded at Bones.

Bones snorted and said nothing. “He'll abide by them,” Walker said.

A heaviness settled over Sam's heart and gut. There was no going back now. “Then I suppose we're on.”

The gambler unhooked the fob from his buttonhole and tossed it to Bones. “Choose the game,” he said to Sam.

Sam took Alsae Tesserian's deck from his pocket and held it out. “What do you say to a few hands of Santine?”

Walker blinked, and for a moment the freckles on his face went just a fraction darker. It was subtle, but Sam figured the fact that he had any visible reaction at all meant Tesserian's strategy was working.

The gambler stared at the upturned face of Saint Philo­mena. “Well, well. That
is
a more interesting game.” His black eyes flicked up at Sam. “You've been out on the road?”

Sam shook his head.

“Where'd you learn Santine, then?” He nodded at the cards in Sam's hand. “Where'd you get yourself a deck?”

Sam hesitated. He'd been so fixated on learning the game that it hadn't occurred to him to wonder how to answer this inevitable question.

Fortunately, someone else had that figured out. “I taught him.” A grinning Al Tesserian leaned against the side of the wagon. “Kid's what you might call my protégé. He won that deck from me fair and square.”

“Your
protégé?
He
won it from you?
” Walker looked from Sam to Tesserian and back. “Tesserian, where did you even
come
from? Didn't I leave you somewhere back in Missouri?”

“Wouldn't miss this,” the sharper replied. “Feel like a proud father, I do. Got cigars and champagne ready and everything.”

Walker said nothing, but Bones was beginning to look properly aggravated. “Really?” he asked his comrade. “We're really going to do this?”

“Find us a table,” Walker said coolly. “This little pipsqueak wants a game.”

I
NSIDE THE TENT
, Jin ignored the throbbing in her feet from her dash to safety as she rifled through Uncle Liao's chest of supplies. If she'd had any doubts before about whether or not her uncle had been practicing some kind of alchemy, they were gone now. Because he'd always mentioned it in ways related to fireworking, Jin had never realized before just how much he really knew about
waidan
. How much, it turned out,
she
knew about it, because Mr. Burns had been right. When Liao spoke, Jin paid attention.

In the largest drawer she found lumps wrapped in silk with labels tied to them with string. She selected two just a bit bigger than her fist and set them aside. Then she started ransacking the smaller drawers, which were full of jars upon jars of chemicals and powders.