Richard said, “You can take your masks off now, if you want to. The air’s all right back here.” He pried off his own and stuffed it up under his arm, displaying a broad nose marred with dimpled scars—and a set of hollow cheeks so deep they could’ve stored plums.
Briar helped Lucy first, stashing the barkeep’s mask inside her sling. She pulled her mask off too, and stuck it into her satchel. “I’m ready whenever you are,” she announced.
“Come on, then.” He pushed the flap aside and nearly blinded Briar with the light behind the veil.
“I should’ve warned you,” Lucy said with a squint. “Dr. Minnericht has a thing about light. He loves it, and he likes to make it. He’s been working on making lamps that run on electricity or gas, and not just oil. And this is where he tests them.”
Briar let her eyes adjust and she took a look around. Lamps of all shapes and sizes blazed around the room on pillars and poles. They were strapped to the walls and to each other, and bundled into groups. Some functioned with an obvious power source, and their lemony flames cast a traditional glow; but others broadcast beams made of stranger stuff. Here and there a lamp burned blue and white, or created a greenish halo.
“I’ll go tell him you’re here. Miss Lucy, you and your friend want to wait in the car?”
“Sure,” she said.
“You know the way.”
And he was gone, disappeared around a corner. The open and shut of a door said he was going quite a ways away, so Briar turned to Lucy and said, “What car?”
“He means the old train car. Or one of them in particular. Minnericht cleaned them out, and he puts furniture in them or uses them for storage, or work space. Some of them he turns into little hotel rooms, here under the street.”
Briar asked, “How’d he get the railway cars down under the street? And what were they doing here, since the station wasn’t finished when the walls went up?”
Lucy strolled past a row of candlesticks that were surely waiting to set the place ablaze. She said, “We had trains coming and going before the whole station was done. I think several of the cars dropped down here during the quake. But I couldn’t say for sure. Hell, maybe he dragged them down himself, or paid somebody to do it. Baby, could you get that door for me?”
Briar leaned on a latch, and another set of double doors yawned themselves apart. Beyond them there was nothing but darkness, or so it seemed after the noontime brilliance of the lighting room. But glass-covered torches flickered insistently in the opaque blackness, and warmly glowing sheets of tarnished metal threw dim patches of light against the walls and ceiling.
When Briar lifted her head she saw too much above her, too close.
Lucy saw her looking. “Don’t worry about that. I know it looks like a cave-in, and it is. But it happened ages ago, and it hasn’t moved any farther since. He’s braced it up, and he’s reinforced the cars underneath it.”
“So these cars are buried?”
“Some of them. Here. Look, darling. This is the one where he takes visitors. This is where he lets me meet him, at least. Maybe we do it here because this is where he stores his extra tools—I don’t know. But this is where we’re going.”
She cocked her head toward a door that Briar almost missed, for it was obscured by rubble and dirt. A trestle of railroad ties framed it like an arch, and next to this door there were two others, one on each side.
“The middle one,” Lucy said.
Briar took this as a cue to open the door. It felt like such a fragile thing, after all the heavily braced portals she’d passed through recently. The latch was only a tiny bar that fit in the palm of her hand. She held it softly, for fear of breaking it. It clicked and the door swung out.
She held it open while Lucy let herself inside, where more shimmering lamps illuminated an intimidating array of trinkets, tools, and assorted devices whose function Briar could not begin to guess. The interior seats had been removed, though a handful had been repositioned to line the far wall instead of occupying space in rows. In the center, running lengthwise through the railroad car, a long table was almost totally buried by the bizarre items that were stacked upon it.
“What is all this?” she asked.
“They’re… that’s… it’s tools, that’s all. This is a workshop,” she finished, as if that explained everything.
Briar picked at the edges of the heaps, running her fingers through tubes, pipes, and wrenches in sizes so odd she couldn’t imagine what nuts they might twist. Stacked along the outer edges of the room more equipment had been abandoned or stored, and none of it looked like it could’ve possibly done anything more useful than beep or chime. But there were no clocks, only clock parts and hands; and she saw no weapons, only sharp instruments and bulbs with tiny wires running through them like veins.
The unmistakable slapping rhythm of incoming feet filtered inside, past the slim barrier of the old train’s dented door.
“He’s coming,” Lucy breathed. A look of panic crossed her face, and her malfunctioning arm jerked in her lap. She said quickly, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know if this was the right thing to do, but in case it wasn’t, then I’m so sorry.”
And then the door opened.
Twenty-two
Briar held her breath while she stared.
Dr. Minnericht’s mask was as elaborate as Jeremiah Swakhammer’s; but it made him look less like a mechanical animal than a clockwork corpse, with a steel skull knitted together from tiny pipes and valves. The mask covered everything from the crown of his head to his collarbones. Its faceplate featured a flat pair of goggles that were tinted a deep shade of blue, but illuminated from within so it appeared that his pupils were alight.
No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see his face. He was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin. The whole of his frame was covered by a coat shaped like a duster, but made from dark maroon velour.
Whoever he was, he was staring right back at her. The sound of his breathing exhaled through the filtering tubes was a small musical of whistles and gasps.
“Dr. Minnericht?” Lucy said. “I thank you for making the time to see me. And this is a new friend. She came down off the Naamah Darling, and she helped me find my way to you, since my arm’s giving me hassle again.”
He said, “I’m sorry to hear about your arm,” but he didn’t take his eyes off Briar. His voice was altered like Swakhammer’s when he spoke. But the noise was less the sound of speaking through a tin can, and more the tune of a grandfather clock chiming underwater.
He came inside the warmly lit workshop, and Lucy chattered nervously as he shut the door behind himself. She said, “Her name’s Briar, and she’s looking for her boy. She was hoping maybe you’d seen him or heard about him, since you’ve got so many men out on the street.”
“Does she speak for herself?” he asked almost innocently.
“When she feels like it,” Briar answered, but offered nothing more.
The doctor did not quite relax, but he settled into a deliberately nonchalant posture within his oversized coat. He gestured at the table, inviting Lucy to come and sit on the bench beside it and set her arm down on the surface so he could see. He said, “Won’t you have a seat, Mrs. O’Gunning?”
Behind the door was a box that Briar had not yet seen. The doctor retrieved it and approached the place where Lucy had come to sit. Briar backed away from the pair of them, feeling her way along the cluttered walls until she came to a clear spot beside a window.
It was a horrible game—wondering if he knew, and wondering if he’d say anything. She was still very certain, wasn’t she? He wasn’t Leviticus Blue—she could swear as much, and she had sworn as much before, and she would swear as much again; but she could not deny that he moved with a certain controlled swagger that seemed almost familiar. And when he spoke, there might be a cadence that she’d heard someplace before.
Minnericht unfastened the box a buckle at a time, then opened it and added a set of articulated lenses to the faceplate on his mask. “Let me take a look at that,” he said, as if he intended to wholly ignore Briar. “What have you done to it this time?”
“Rotters,” Lucy said, and her voice was shaky.
“Rotters? That’s no surprise.”
Briar bit her tongue so she would not say, “Not for you, I don’t imagine—since you’re the man who sent them.”
Lucy mumbled, “We were leaving Maynard’s and Hank got sick. His mask wasn’t on him good, and he turned, and we ran into trouble. I had to bust my way to the Vaults with Miss Briar here.”
Within his mask he made a clucking noise that sounded like a parent’s gentle admonishment. “Lucy, Lucy. What about your crossbow? How many times do I have to remind you: This is a delicate piece of machinery, not a truncheon.”
“The crossbow… I didn’t have… there wasn’t really time. In the chaos of it all, you know. Things get lost.”
“You lost it?”
“Well, I’m sure it’s still down there somewhere. But when I got up topside, it wasn’t there anymore. I’ll find it later. I’m sure it’s still in one piece.” She cringed when he opened the top panel of her arm and began to poke through its interior with a long, thin screwdriver.
“You’ve let someone else work on this joint,” he said, and Briar could hear the frown she couldn’t see.
Lucy looked as if she’d like to go crawling away from him, but she held still and almost simpered, “It was an emergency. It wasn’t working at all, except to spasm and kick, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone so I let Huey take a crack at it.”
“Huey,” he repeated the name. “You mean Huojin. I’ve heard about him. He’s developing quite the reputation in your quarters, or so I hear.”
“He’s… talented.”
Without looking up from his work, he said, “I’m always interested in talent. You should bring him here. I think I’d like to meet him. But, oh dear—just look what he’s done. What is this tube made from, Lucy?”