“Why should I?” she asked, entering the room and lowering herself into a crouch that made her knees pop loudly. “You weren’t going to get all surprised and shoot me, and he’s too far gone to even know I’m here.”
Zeke joined her, copying her position—hanging onto the table’s edge and ducking his head to see underneath it. “We should do something,” he said weakly.
“Like what? Like help him? Boy, he’s so far beyond help that even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to be done for him. Hell. The kindest thing we could do is shoot him in the head.”
“Angeline!”
“Don’t look at me like that. If he were a dog, you wouldn’t let him suffer. Thing is, he ain’t a dog, and I don’t mind him suffering. You know what’s in that bottle? The one he’s holding there, like it’s his own baby?”
“What is it?” He reached for it and dislodged it from Rudy’s slipping grasp.
The liquid inside the scratched glass bottle was runny and not quite clear. It had a yellowish-green tint to it, and it smelled a little bit like the sour odor of Blight, and a little bit like salt, and maybe kerosene.
“Jesus only knows. This is a chemist’s lab, where they tinker with the nasty stuff and try to make it drinkable, or smokable, or sniffa-ble. The Blight’s a bad, bad thing, and it’s hard to turn it into something people can stand. Rudy here, this old deserter, he’s been stuck on it for years. I tried to tell you, back at the underground tunnel. I tried to get it through your head that he was only taking you back here because he thought Minnericht might reward him for it. This miserable poison was bound to kill him one day, and I think today will be that day.” She frowned at the bottle, and frowned at the man on the floor.
“We should help him,” Zeke said, protesting the man’s death as a matter of formality.
“You want to shoot him after all?”
“No!”
“Me either. I don’t think he deserves it. He deserves to feel the pain, and die from it. He’s done some mighty nasty things in his time to get that stinking drink, or paste, or powder. Leave him alone. Cover him up if you think that’s polite. He’s not coming back from this one.”
She stood up, tapped the top of the table, and said, “I bet he didn’t even know what that stuff was. He probably just wandered in here, looking to get all sloppy from his drug of choice, and started sucking down the first thing he found.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think. Alistair never had a drop of brains to spare, and what little he started out with got burned away by the sap.”
Zeke stood up too, and he pulled the burlap cloth over the spot where the vibrations from Rudy’s head were tapping a gruesome hum against the floorboards. He couldn’t stand looking. He asked Angeline, “What are you doing here?” partly because he wanted to know, and partly because he felt the need to talk about something else.
“I told you I was going to kill him, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t think you were serious!”
She asked, with what appeared to be honest confusion, “Why not? He’s not the first man I’d like to kill down here, but I was willing to work him onto the list.”
Before Angeline could speak again, Zeke noticed that the crashing upstairs was gradually fading to a sporadic, angry rumble. He no longer heard the thrashing against the door back down the hall, not even faintly. He said in a gasp, “The stairs. There was a man on the stairs.”
“Jeremiah, yes. That’s right. Big fellow, wide as a brick wall. Wearing a bunch of gear.”
“That’s him. Is he… all right?” Zeke asked.
The princess understood what he meant. “He’s got his faults, like all men, but he’s here to help.”
“Help who? Help me? Help you?” Zeke recoiled and jerked his head out the doorway, looking left and right. “Where’d he go?”
Angeline joined him at the doorway, then stepped past him into the hall. “I think he’s here to help your mother,” she said. “She’s down here in the station someplace. Jeremiah!” she called out.
“Don’t yell!” Zeke tried to hush her. “And he’s here for my mom? I thought nobody knew where she was!”
“Why’d you think that? Is that what Minnericht told you? Don’t you remember what I told you, you dumb boy? I told you he’s a lying snake. Your mother’s been down here a day or two, and Jeremiah’s here now because he’s afraid the doctor’s done her some kind of mischief. Jeremiah!” she hollered again.
Zeke took Angeline’s arm and shook her. “She’s here? All this time she’s been down here?”
“She’s here somewhere. She was supposed to be back at the Vaults by morning, but she didn’t come back, so now the Doornails have all come spilling into the station, looking for her. I don’t think they mean to leave without her, either.” And once more she shouted, “Jeremiah!”
Zeke told her, “Don’t! Stop shouting like that! You’ve got to quit shouting!”
“How else am I going to find him? It’s all right. There ain’t nobody else down here anyhow, at least not that I could find.”
“Yaozu was here, a few minutes ago,” Zeke argued. “I saw him.”
Angeline stared at him hard. “Don’t you lie to me now, boy. I saw that evil Chinaman upstairs. He ran down here, did he? If he ran down here, then I need to know which way he went.”
“That way.” Zeke indicated the bend in the corridor hall. “And off to the right.”
“How long ago?”
“A few minutes,” he repeated, and before she could dash away, he clutched her arm and asked, “Where would he have put my mother?”
“I don’t know, child, and I don’t have time to figure it out. I’ve got to follow that murdering old bastard.”
“Make the time!” Zeke did not quite shout, but the words carried some force to them, in a tone that he’d never heard himself use. Then, more quietly and with more control, he let go of her arm and said, “You told me everything Minnericht ever said was a lie. Well, he told me my mother came into the city, chasing after me. Is that true?”
She drew her arm back down to her side and gave him a look he couldn’t read. She said, “That’s true. She came here looking for you. Minnericht lured her here, with Lucy O’Gunning. Lucy got clear of the station yesterday and went back to the Vaults to round up help.”
“Help. Lucy. Vaults,” he repeated the words that sounded important, though they didn’t mean much to him. “Who’s—”
Angeline’s patience was running out. She said, “Lucy’s a one-armed woman. If you see her, tell her who you are and she’ll do her best to get you out of here.”
She took a step away from him and started to run, as if she was finished talking.
Zeke grabbed her arm again and pulled her back, hard.
Angeline didn’t like it. She let him yank her into his personal space, but she brought a blade with her and she held it up against his stomach. It wasn’t a threat, not yet. It was only an observation, and a warning. She said, “Get your hand off me.”
He let her go, just like she told him to, and then he asked, “Where would he have put my mother?”
She gave the bend in the corridor a nervous glance and Zeke an aggravated one. “I don’t know where your mother is. But I’m guessing he’s just stashed her someplace. Maybe one of these rooms, maybe downstairs. I’ve been sneaking around in here before, once or twice, but I don’t know this place like the back of my hand or nothing. If you find Jeremiah again, stay with him. He’s a monster of a man, but he’ll keep you in one piece if you let him.”
Zeke figured that was all he was going to get, so he started to run; behind him, he heard the swift patter of Angeline’s feet dashing away in the other direction.
He ran to the first door across the hall and whipped it open.
There was only a bed and a basin, and a chest of drawers—much like the quarters he’d been given, though not quite as clean or posh. Something about the smell of dust and linen made him think no one had used it in a very long time. He exited the room, calling for Angeline before he remembered that she had taken off without him. Even her footsteps had left him, and he was alone in the corridor with all the doors.
But now he knew what to do.
He reached for the next door and it was locked.
Back in the chemist’s room, Rudy wasn’t breathing anymore—or maybe he was, but it was so light and frail that Zeke couldn’t hear it when he tiptoed over to the table. Without looking under the burlap covering, the boy kicked his feet around and found the cracked cane.
It was heavy in his hands. Even with the long, gaping crack in the side it felt solid.
He ran back out to the locked door, and he beat the knob with the sharp, heavy cane until the hardware broke and the door smashed inward.
Zeke shoved his way past the broken door and charged wildly into a room that was packed with junk. None of it looked important; all of it looked old; some of it looked dangerous. One box was missing a lid. Inside were pieces of guns, cylinders, and spools of wire. The next-nearest open crate was crammed with sawdust and glass tubes.
He couldn’t see any farther back than that. There wasn’t enough light.
“Mother?” he tried, but he already knew she wasn’t there. No one was there, and no one had been there in a while. “Mother?” he asked once more just in case. No one answered.
The next door was open, and behind it Zeke found another laboratory, crammed with tables shoved closely together and lights on hinges that could be adjusted for better illumination. He called out,
“Mother?” as a matter of general principle, received no answer, and moved on.
He whipped himself around and stopped with his nose half an inch from the metal-covered chest of the man whom Angeline had called Jeremiah. How Jeremiah had been able to move so quietly in so much armor Zeke had no idea, but there he was, and there was Zeke, breathless and driven by his first real direction in days. He blurted, “Get out of my way—I have to find my mother!”