The Broken Lands (6 page)

Guizi:
devil. It was Uncle Liao's favorite term for Mr. Burns, although sometimes he mixed it up with
yang guizi
—western devil, if he wanted to allude to Mr. Burns's white European heritage—and occasionally, when he was feeling less annoyed than usual,
laowai,
which just meant old outsider. Somehow it never seemed to occur to Liao—or at least, it seemed not to bother him—that, in the world outside the wagon, he and Jin were the outsiders.

“You know,” Burns said calmly, “every now and then we all forget that I own this company.”

The old man shoved past him and reached for Jin's hands. “How bad are they?”

“Hai hao.”
She closed her fingers over her burned palms. “I'm fine, Uncle Liao.”

“You need those hands for the display tonight.” Liao closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. “If the
yang guizi
had any conscience, he would already have gone for the burn cream,” he muttered with forced patience.

Mr. Burns winced and practically sprinted across the wagon for the medical kit. Liao ignored him. “You did well, Xiao Jin. Made crisis look like ballet.” The old man tapped her clenched fingers. “Come now, firefly.”

Reluctantly she allowed him to examine the damage. Mr. Burns hovered over her shoulder. “I'm sorry, Jin. I really am.”

“She's fine,” Liao barked, snatching the pot of medicinal cream from him. “She says she's fine, so she's fine.” Despite her annoyance, Jin caught Mr. Burns's eye and grinned as Liao rubbed medicine into her fingers, muttering under his breath, “Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult.”

Then: “What are you standing there for? Get the poor girl some bandages!” and Burns was springing across to the medicine kit again and Liao was giving her one of those little nods he probably thought were comforting.

They made for a strange family, but they were family nonetheless.

Liao had brought the wagon to a halt out of view of the strolling vacationers, behind a row of ornamental bushes that hid the hotel's livery stables. Once Jin's hands were properly bandaged, the three of them filed out into the light to survey the landscape.

“Where are we setting up for the display?” Mr. Burns asked.

“We?” Liao snapped. He narrowed his eyes and took another one of those long, even breaths. Jin stifled a smile; the breathing exercises were real, but when he did them like this, making a production of regaining his calm, it was like a polite way of rolling his eyes. Rolling his eyes, or maybe whacking Mr. Burns in the back of the head. “You think we're going to let
you
anywhere near anything?” He turned to Jin. “You choose.”

Jin tried to keep the pride off her face as she turned for a look around. Picking the spot where they set off the display was a critical part of the process. Liao had never let her decide before. “It would be nice to set them so they'll detonate over the water,” she mused. “Good reflections.”

She followed the beach with her eyes until she found a sheltered place a short distance to the east, between the Broken Land's two piers. “What about there? No one would see much of what we were doing. Maybe the hotel can move some of those potted trees over and give us a little more cover.”

Liao answered by way of a grunt. He had about fifty ways of making noises that weren't quite words yet conveyed meanings, and this was the one that Jin thought of as his pleased-but-trying-not-to-show-it grunt. “Perhaps the owner of the company should see the hotel staff about that.”

Mr. Burns sighed and shook his head. “Perhaps I should.” He turned to Jin, smoothing down his dark gray hair. “Tie straight?”

“Who cares?” Liao snapped.

“Yes.” Jin laughed.

Mr. Burns gave an exaggerated sigh and headed for the hotel. “Time to go to work, firefly,” Uncle Liao said, and Jin felt her heart swell the way it only did when it was time to make beautiful things out of explosives.

I
T WAS DAYTIME
, so the town of Red Hook was merely dirty, busy, and loud; seedy, rather than downright squalid. Walker and Bones strolled along the wharves, keeping more or less out of the way of stevedores, sailors, and merchants. In general, the denizens of the port ignored them anyway, despite Walker's natty gambler's getup and Bones's unseasonable felt coat. Most had an honest day's work to do and not enough day in which to do it. Most, but not all.

The ones who did pay the two men notice made up a pretty good cross-section of the local lowlife: a few pickpockets and thieves, a few ladies of questionable intent, a few swindlers trying to pick up marks with shell games. Walker and Bones ignored them. Well, Bones ignored them, despite a few pointed glances at the carpetbag he carried. Walker kept an eye out for anyone who appeared too interested. Once or twice before, someone had tried to pick his pocket and he had seen to it that those would-be pickpockets had lost fingers in the process. He could never decide whether he found these encounters more amusing or frustrating. Bloodstains were hard to get out of the expensive suits he favored.

Past a row of brick warehouses Walker and Bones turned inland. They picked their way along the ruptured path of cobblestones that paved the narrow street, stepping over foul puddles of standing water, decomposing crates whose contents had long ago turned to sludge, the occasional scattering of rotted vegetable bits, rats, and the cats streaking after them.

Three blocks in, the shadows held everything but a thin, crooked strip of sky directly overhead. The warehouses gave way to row houses, leaning shanties that lined the cobblestone way. Faces peered out of begrimed windows overlooking the street. Walker and Bones halted where the street became a dead end, and looked up at the building that blocked their path.

It was an old, smoke-stained, gray stone structure with a steeple. It had once been a church, but now its windows were covered over with arches of red brick, all except for the triangle of multicolored glass over the heavy wooden doors. In the midday dark of the alley, the stained glass shone with golden light. If not for the grimness of the surroundings, that light might've seemed welcoming.

The name of the church, which had once been carved on the stone over the doors, had long ago been defaced. It had been chipped away to form a new surface for a single word:
Christophel
.

Walker examined the muck on one of his expensive shoes, sighed, climbed the damp stone stairs to the entrance, raised a fist, and pounded on the wood. “There's a bell,” Bones observed.

Walker cast a scowl over his shoulder. Then he banged again, harder. “High Walker and Bones for Basile Christophel,” he called.

“Well, imagine that,” spoke a cultured voice from the open end of the street. “Visitors from the road. I can't tell you how that delights me.”

The approaching man wore his beard in a neatly trimmed V. He was dressed even more sharply than Walker, if such a thing was possible. The fabric of his summer suit gleamed softly, expensively, in the meager light. His hat had been freshly brushed, and his shoes even wore the dirt they were collecting well. The walking stick that casually swept the occasional bits of debris out of his way was made of some heavily burnished wood, and the glint of brass shone from between olive-skinned fingers.

“Basile,” Bones said.

“Always a pleasure, Mr. Bones,” Basile Christophel said, extending his hand. “Although it never stops being strange, shaking a hand of dust and grit.” He glanced over Bones's shoulder at Walker. “Redgore. Or, wait. You go by the other name these days. What was it? Some bindery term, I seem to remember.”

“Walker is fine,” Walker said coldly. “Were you planning to invite us in?”

Christophel smiled. “Sure thing, friends.” He swept past Bones and up the stairs to where Walker stood, arms folded. “Come inside.”

 

“And remind me again why I want to help Jack Hellcoal. In fact, remind me again why
you
want to help him.”

Inside the bricked-up church, Basile Christophel leaned back in an overstuffed chair and regarded Walker and Bones over an engraved tea service. Walker stared back across his untouched cup. Bones watched the two of them with a gritty expression that was something akin to amusement.

“You want to help him because this city's going to be his regardless,” Walker said, his pointed fingernails scraping the tabletop on either side of his cup and saucer.

“I can't help but notice you ignored my second question, but we'll let that slide for the moment.” Christophel showed his teeth. It wasn't quite a smile. “So this place is going to be Jack's one way or the other? I don't believe you'd be here if you really thought that was the case.”

“Look for yourself. Jack's coming and you know it.” Walker returned the grin, showing not one but
two
rows of teeth, one behind the other. “If it was up to me, we wouldn't be here either way,” he continued, “but this softheaded idiot thought you'd want to be part of it, so here we are.”

“Ah. Well, isn't that just perfectly politic of you.” He tapped his fingers on his knees. “So what is it, exactly, that you need from me?”

“We don't
need
—”

Christophel sighed and turned to Bones. “What do you need, Bones?”

Bones ignored Walker's look of annoyance. “There are several ways to take a town. The best one is to take the pillars, the ones that make a place more than just a cluster of folk by a road. The pillars of a city are the people who hold the place together, and carry it through history.”

Christophel's eyes flickered. “Who?”

“You're the local,” Walker said. “You tell us. That's why we're—”

“Each city has five,” Bones interrupted, “and they shift from generation to generation. There is always a keeper of sanctuary, a keeper of lore, and a smith. The other two could be anyone.”

Christophel nodded slowly. “I see. And when you say the best way is to
take
them . . . ?”

“It's what you think. Win them to our cause or remove them by force, and the town loses its center. Then we replace them with pillars of our own.”

“And you don't know who you're looking for.”

“There are other ways to do it,” Walker snapped.

“But your colleague says this is the
best
way,” Christophel retorted, “which is why you came to me, so perhaps you could stop acting as if I somehow dragged you here against your will. I'm not passing judgment. I just want to understand the situation.”

“We were hoping you might have some insight into who we're looking for,” Bones said. “Walker's right—there are other ways to do it, and we're prepared to change our strategy if necessary. But yes, we would prefer this method.”

Christophel picked up his cup and took a thoughtful sip. “Well, off the top of my head, no, I don't suppose I know who these pillars are. Let me think about it for a couple of days. Maybe I can puzzle it out. There are . . . people I could ask.”

Walker stood up with a growl of frustration and stalked a few paces away. Bones shook his head. “Excuse my colleague, but we have two days in which to do this before Jack arrives. He will be expecting more progress than that. We don't have time to wait.” He put sallow hands on the table and stood. “We thank you for your time, Basile.”

Christophel regarded him for a moment. “There is a faster way, Mr. Bones.”

A few yards away, Walker stiffened. Bones paused as he pushed his chair under the table. “A faster way to do what, exactly?”

“To find the pillars. It could be done as quickly as the end of the day, if you are willing to let them know you're here.”

“Why would we do that?” Walker asked stiffly. “To say nothing of how we
could
do that
,
when we have no idea who they are or how to find them.”

“How you make your presence—and by extension, Jack's—known in Brooklyn and New York is up to you. But for my purposes, all you'd have to do is that: make your presence known, and visibly enough to get the pillars of the cities talking about you. Not everyone, mind you. You can't just go on a rampage, or the system won't work. You need to bring yourselves to the attention of your targets, or at least to the kind of people who are likely to get word to them.”

“Well, that sounds like no difficulty at all,” Walker said sarcastically.

“When you say
system,
” Bones interrupted, “what, precisely, are you talking about?”

“What you need,” Christophel said slowly, “is a way to search the city quickly. I have . . . things at my disposal that are capable of that. You could think of them as something akin to spies, if you like. But they have a very specific sort of logic—they aren't like human spies who can make decisions about what kind of information is useful and what kind isn't. They need to be told very precisely what to look for, what to listen for. If I set them to listening for certain phrases, certain conversations that you think your pillars would be likely to have, whenever my spies hear any of those conversations or phrases, they'll report back.”

“We don't know what they talk about,” Walker protested. “We don't even know if they talk to each other.”

“But if there was a threat to the city, they'd talk—at least about that threat, wouldn't they?”

“How the hell should
I
know what they'd do?”

“Yes,” Bones said. “They would. That's why they exist, to protect the city.”

Christophel nodded. “So you get them talking about something we can predict and listen for.
You
.”

“But then they know about us,” Walker argued.

“But they wouldn't know that you knew about
them
.”