“You should’ve started with that,” Andan said.
“With what?”
“With how you’re Maynard’s girl. Why didn’t you?”
She said, “Because to claim him as my father marks me as Blue’s widow. I didn’t know if the cost would outweigh the benefit.”
“Fair enough,” he said. And he stood.
It took him a few seconds. There was a lot of him to stand.
By the time he was on his feet, underneath the belly of the Naamah Darling, he stood taller than any man Briar had ever seen in her life. Seven and a half feet from toes to top and thickly muscled, Andan Cly was more than simply huge. He was terrifying. He was not an attractive man to begin with, but when his plain, workman looks were combined with his sheer size, it was all Briar could do not to run.
“You afraid of me now?” he asked. He pulled a pair of gloves out of his pockets and stretched them over his huge hands.
“Should I be afraid of you?” she asked.
He snapped the second glove into place and bent over to pick up his bottle. “No,” he told her. His eyes shifted to her buckle again. “Your daddy used to wear that.”
“He wore a lot of things.”
“He didn’t get buried in all of them.” Andan held out his hand to her and she shook it. Her fingers rattled around in the cavern of his grasp. “You’re welcome aboard the Naamah Darling, Miss Wilkes. Maybe I’m doing wrong in taking you—it might not be the right way to pay an old debt, since I’m a little scared I’m going to get you killed—but you’re going to get inside one way or another, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Then best I can do is get you ready, I suppose.” He kicked a thumb up at the boilers and said, “The thrusters will be hot before long. I can take you up and over.”
“For… for an old debt?”
“It’s a big old debt. I was there in the station, when the Blight shut down the world. Me and my brother, we carried your dad back home. He didn’t have to do it.” He was shaking his head again. “He didn’t owe us a thing. But he let us out, and now, Miss Wilkes, if you won’t have it any other way… I’m going to let you in.”
Eight
Zeke reluctantly followed Rudy’s orders; he shut his mouth and listened. Down below, somewhere on the street, he thought he heard something shuffle or scrape. But he saw nothing, and he wondered if Rudy was only trying to scare him. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Good. If you see them, it’s probably too late to get away from them.”
“Them?”
Rudy said, “Rotters. You ever seen one?”
“Yes,” Zeke lied. “I seen plenty.”
“Plenty? Where’ve you seen plenty, over there in the Outskirts? I doubt you’ve ever seen one or two together, and if you have, then I’m a liar and that’s fine. But in here, there’s more than one or two. We’ve got them in packs, like dogs. And by Minnericht’s best count, there are at least a few thousand of them—all crammed together inside this place with nowhere to go and nothing to eat.”
Zeke didn’t want to let Rudy see him shudder or worry, so he said, “Thousands, huh? That’s a lot. But who’s Minnericht, and how long did it take him to count them all?”
“Don’t get smart with me, you little bastard,” Rudy said, and he tipped the bottle toward his mouth again in that futile gesture that wanted a drink and couldn’t have it. “I’m just trying to be the good guy and lend you a hand. If you don’t want it, then you can jump off the building and play tag with the walking dead and see if I give a damn. Here’s a hint: I won’t.”
“I don’t care!” Zeke almost shouted again, and when Rudy jumped off the ledge Zeke jumped too, backward and almost back down the hole where the ladder had led him onto the roof.
Rudy shoved his heavy-looking cane up underneath Zeke’s chin and said, “Shut your mouth. I won’t ask you twice because I won’t have to. You make a stink and bring out the rotters, and I’ll push you into the street myself. Make trouble for yourself, if that’s what you’re going to do, but leave me out of it. I was just enjoying the peace and quiet when you came along, and if you wrench that up for me, I’ll have your head off for it.”
Without taking his eyes off Rudy, Zeke fumbled with his bag, trying to retrieve his gun. With a fast flip of his wrist, Rudy used his cane to pick the strap off Zeke’s shoulder and knock the whole bag to the floor.
“This isn’t the Outskirts, junior. You act like a fool out there, maybe someone takes a switch to you or pops you in the jaw. You make problems in here, and you’ll be rotter shit before dawn.”
“It’s a long way till dawn tomorrow,” Zeke gasped against the cane’s tip, which was still shoved against his neck.
“You know what I mean. Now are you going to keep it down, or is this going to get ugly?”
“It’s already ugly,” Zeke gasped again.
Rudy withdrew the cane and scowled about it. He dropped its tip back onto the floor and leaned against it, propping himself up on that one hand, balanced on the top of that cane. In his other hand he still held the bottle, even though it was all but empty.
“I don’t know why I even bothered,” he grumbled, and backed away. “Do you want to go see that house, or not?”
“I do.”
“Then if you want to live long enough to set eyes on it, you’re going to travel on my terms, do I make myself clear? You’re going to keep your voice down and your mouth shut unless I tell you it’s all right to talk, and you’re going to stay close. I’m not pretending, and I’m not trying to scare you when I say it’s dangerous down there—and I don’t think you’ll survive an hour by yourself. You can try it if you like and I won’t stop you. But you’ll be better off to stick with me. It’s up to you.“
Zeke picked up his bag and hugged it while he tried to decide. There were many things about the situation that he did not like.
First of all, he had little patience for being told what to do by anyone, much less a stranger who appeared to be inebriated and looking to become further inebriated at the nearest opportunity. Second, he had deep-seated doubts as to why this man who’d initially greeted him with threats of bodily harm might be moved to help. Zeke didn’t trust Rudy, and he didn’t believe much of what Rudy had told him.
And furthermore, he didn’t like him.
But when he looked out over the side of the roof and saw only the swirling, billowing air the color of soot and rotting citrus, and when he looked up at the taller buildings and saw the gold-glittering eyes of a hundred wary black birds watching back… he reconsidered his stance on going it alone.
“Those birds,” he said slowly. “Have they been there all this time?”
Rudy said, “Sure.” He tipped his bottle upside down and dumped the contents over the side of the building—then set the glassware aside. “They’re the gods of this place, insomuch as anything is.”
Zeke scanned the ledges, windows, and architectural lips where the blue-black feathers and glass-beaded eyes glistened against the watery light of the new day. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rudy walked to the nearest small bridge and climbed up onto the ledge beside it. With a wave, he suggested that Zeke follow. He said, “They’re everywhere, and they see everything. Sometimes they’re helpful, and sometimes they attack you—and you never know which, or why. We don’t understand them, and we’re not sure we like them. But”—he shrugged—“there they are. You coming or not?”
“I’m coming,” Zeke said, though for a moment he made no move to follow.
Something was working against his feet, and he didn’t know what it was until the building beneath him started to quiver. “Rudy?” Zeke asked, as if this was something the other man was doing, and he ought to stop it.
The shaking went harder and faster, and Rudy said, “Earthquake. It’s an earthquake, kid—that’s all. Hang on.”
“To what?”
“To anything.”
Zeke retreated from the hole in the roof and ducked down in the corner near where Rudy was crouching and holding onto the edge, waiting. Zeke waited too, clinging to himself and to the wall, praying that it didn’t get any worse and that the place he knelt would continue to stand.
“Just wait it out,” Rudy said. He didn’t sound perfectly confident, but he didn’t sound surprised, either. He braced his body against the bricks and even put out a hand to hold Zeke down.
Zeke didn’t think that it made him any safer, but he was glad to have Rudy there all the same. He took Rudy’s hand and used it to pull his way closer to the man and the wall. When the rumbling ruckus peaked, the boy closed his eyes, because he did not know what else to do.
“First quake?” Rudy said conversationally. He didn’t release his squeeze on Zeke’s hand and arm, though.
“First real one,” the boy said. His teeth knocked together when he tried to talk, so he crushed his mouth shut.
And it was over, as quickly as it had begun. That’s not to say that the knocking, breaking waves of motion stopped in a perfect moment; but they tapered sharply and then fizzled to a wobble, and then a faint shudder.
The whole thing had lasted perhaps two minutes.
Zeke’s legs felt like pudding. He tried to pull himself up, and using the wall and Rudy’s arm, he succeeded enough to stand. His knees nearly folded, but he locked them. He stood up straight and waited, knowing that the rushing noise and the jostling floors might return at any second.
They didn’t.
The noise had dwindled, and where it was once a full-on roar he could now hear only the crackling of old bricks settling and the patter of loosened masonry hitting the pavement.
“That was…” Zeke said. “That was…”