The Broken Lands (41 page)

Meanwhile: “Fireworks?” the workman repeated incredulously. “What's this about fireworks?”

“Well . . . sir.” Constantine shifted nervously. “Paul, listen, I told him—I told Mr. Schroeder we could keep this quiet. I didn't really think anybody'd even be here. Help me out.”

Paul was still looking closely at Ambrose. “Seems odd that he'd—you'd—turn up like this, no warning, no entourage—”

“Young man,” Ambrose interrupted, his voice dripping with condescension and impatience, “it couldn't possibly be any less your concern, but if it will make you feel better about lending your assistance, here are two of the reasons this matter is being handled so quietly. For one thing, your chief engineer and my office are not on the best of terms at the moment.”

“Oh, nicely played,” Mapp mumbled. “That was all over the papers. Maybe there's a method to his madness after all.”

“For another,” the impostor mayor continued, “the city of Brooklyn wishes to celebrate the progress of the cable work and demonstrate its faith in the steel being used, and it wishes to do so without the city of New York becoming involved.” He looked to Constantine. “I suppose your friend here is from New York,” he said sourly.

The workman straightened up with a disdainful look on his face. “No, sir. Born and raised in Brooklyn.”

“Well, then, for God's sake, man, why on earth are we still talking? Assist us and we'll put New York to shame! What do you say?” Ambrose held out his hand. “Care to be deputized into the East River Pyrotechnic Scheme?”

Mapp nodded. “
Very
nicely played,” he whispered to Jin.

Paul gave Ambrose one more close look. Then he grinned and shook his hand. “Yes, sir. It's an honor, sir.”

“Excellent.” He nodded at Jin and her crates of gear. “You may begin by helping this young artist with her paints.”

“Right-o. You just tell us where you want them, miss.”

Gratefully, Jin handed Paul the first of the boxes. “The top of the tower, please.”

Constantine let out a breath he must've been holding for a good long time. “Thanks, Paul.” He clapped the workman on the shoulder. “I'm going to ferry the mayor across to the other side now. Can you show Jin and Mr. Mapp here how to use the buggy? They're going to run the fireworks across the middle from either end.”

Paul gave Jin an incredulous look. Then he shrugged. “Nothing to it, Con. Good to see you up and around, friend.”

“Constantine.” Jin grabbed his sleeve as he climbed back aboard the boat and steadied it so that she and Mapp could get out. “Are you clear on how to finish the letters you're taking to the other side?” She glanced up at the looming rock of the tower. “And are you okay to climb all the way up there?”

“You mean my leg?” He shrugged. “If it gives me any trouble, I'll go up the same way your boxes will.” He pointed to where Paul and Mapp were busy loading the crates onto a wooden platform attached to a cable that disappeared overhead. “I'll look a bit like a sissy, but I figure this isn't the time to worry about that.” He grinned. “After all, I'm the smith now. I've got a city to look out for.”

When everything that needed to go to the top of the Brooklyn tower had been unloaded, Constantine held the boat steady for Ambrose to board again. Then, with one last wave, they cast off and were headed for the New York tower.

“Just this way, folks,” Paul called from the stair, which on closer inspection Jin realized wasn't a stair at all but a series of ladders. “The crates'll come up by lift, but it's a long hike for us. Rest when you need to, yell if you need help.”

“No offense intended, Jin,” Mapp grumbled from her side as he stared up at the ladders, “but I keep on waiting to like this plan, and it keeps on throwing things like
this
at me.”

Sam had told Jin the towers were nearly three hundred feet tall, but until now, standing below one of them, she'd really had no idea what that actually meant. Now it looked as if she were about to ascend straight up a mountain.

The lift with the crates lurched and started upward. Jin and Mapp looked at it longingly as it rose out of reach. “Why didn't I just take that way up?” she mumbled. Oh, well. Too late now. She started climbing. Mapp followed a few rungs behind her.

Each ladder rose to the floor of a plank platform above, which allowed for a moment's rest as they crossed to where the next ladder waited to lead them up to the next level. Three flights up, Jin's legs and arms were already aching. Before she was halfway to the top she wanted to cry for the men who had to climb up and down several times a day, six days a week, and evidently, occasionally on Sundays, too.

Thinking of it that way made her not want to cry so much because of the agony in her feet.

“You all right back there?” Paul called down. Jin, taking what seemed like her hundredth break, waved from the platform where she sat. Brooklyn stretched out before her, gouged by the tower's massive shadow.

“Mr. Mapp? You still alive?” she shouted.

“Technically,” came his voice from somewhere below.

Jin pounded on her thighs with her fists, stood, and started climbing again.

When she reached the top of the tower at last, she had only a moment of relief before the first gust of wind hit her, shoving her a full three feet backwards before she managed to recover. Someone grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the edge as another gust surged across.

“The winds keep up just about like this all the time,” Paul warned. “Got to take care not to let them knock you about.”

Jin nodded, already working out how she was going to have to adjust the rockets she planned to set off to compensate for the wild airflow.

The space at the top of the tower was roughly the size of a small city block. Despite what Paul had said about there not being much work going on because it was Sunday, there had to be about ten people up there—a couple workers, a few well-dressed men, and even a pair of women who must've been sightseers—all of them watching curiously to see why on earth there was suddenly a Chinese girl in their midst.

Stretching away in either direction from the tower floor, a wooden plank path with rope handrails crossed the granite surface. There were also the two downstream cables that were being made, the first of many that would suspend a roadway below someday: two ropes of steel that ran parallel to the footpath. Beyond that, though, there was nothing. Just a sheer drop all the way down to the river.

Another blast of wind buffeted Jin. She clutched involuntarily at Paul's arm, and he patted her hand. “You'll get used to it. Wind's not as strong as it feels, once you know to expect it.” He nodded back in the direction of the lift. “And here's your boxes. Where would you like them?”

“Near the southern cable.” She peered across to the New York tower, but it was too far away to tell whether or not Constantine, whose task it was to fix the explosive lances to the letters for the message on the northern-facing cable, had made it to the top yet.

“Passing through, folks,” Paul bellowed, making his way to the spot Jin had indicated with the first of her crates in his arms.

Walter Mapp appeared at her side. He took off his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Next time I make a climb like that,” he wheezed, “there'd better be angels waiting with a rare steak and a bottle of Armagnac.” He took a few deep breaths, then began moving their supplies with Paul.

“The buggy,” Jin began as she followed along behind them. “How does it work?”

“Take a look.” Paul led her to where one of the cables trailed off the tower surface and into the central span across the river. From it hung a small wooden platform with a handrail around it. It was small, maybe ten feet by six feet.

“We use this to go across and clamp the strands together,” Paul said. “It should work nicely for you. Plenty of space for your tools. You let yourself out with a rope.”

Jin thought through the steps that needed to play out: she'd finish setting the explosive charges on the letters first; then hang them using the buggy, with Walter Mapp helping to pull her across to the New York tower, where hopefully Constantine would be ready with his letters. Then she would return the same way on the second cable, stringing the message as she went, and arrive back here to finish work on the
dan
and the other necessary components of the cinefaction.

Walter Mapp came to stand next to her as she looked at the buggy. “Well, that's not too bad,” he said. “Looks pretty sturdy.”

And it did. It looked big and very sturdy—until she looked past it at the cable spanning the incredibly vast distance between the towers. The New York side of the cable was all but invisible. And then there was the petrifying height of it; the river was hundreds of feet below.

Jin crouched for a moment, unable to stand as a sudden dizziness hit her.

“You all right?” Paul asked kindly.

She nodded, steeled herself, and stood back up. “I need some time to finish the fireworks. Do you think when I'm done you could help set us up in the buggy?”

“Just yell when you're ready.”

“You need anything from me?” Mapp asked.

Jin shook her head. “Just quiet. I need to clear my mind.”

As she began fixing the explosive lances on the letter frames, her thoughts turned to the cinefaction, the unfinished
dan
in her rucksack, and Uncle Liao.

Where are you, Uncle? I wish I could ask you so many things.

Lance after lance, letter after letter. Her breath fell into an easy rhythm with her hands and she let her mind wander, recalling snippets of pages she had read in the
Port-fire Book.

Let the bellows be smooth and deep over the plane of the mysterious and the golden. Let the nine repetitions refine the work through nine revolutions and nine signs of fire.

She imagined writing about what she was doing right now in the unique code of the book.
Make one of five and one of three and one of eight and one from all. Line them with the slow fire and the fire that bursts.
She thought of the particular shade of green she had crafted for the illuminated words and smiled to herself.

Make the second fire so that it burns like a friend's eyes.

 

Back in Coney Island, the game went on. Sam was almost beginning to enjoy himself. Once he'd won the hand by having his saints throw their heads, he started to get ideas.

“Oh, come on, now,” Walker protested when Sam played four saints that had bees in their portraits. There were a surprising number of those.

“Unless you've got five ministering saints to counter those, I just stung your Marshal to death,” Sam said mildly. In a sense, Santine was turning out to be a bit like the rock, paper, scissors game.

“He's already dead,” Walker grumbled. “He's a martyr. That's the point.” But he flicked the Marshal off the table to join the Advocate he'd lost earlier. Sam breathed a sigh of relief. With one of the Marshals out of play, another of the avenues for Walker to win the game was now closed.

He glanced at the shadows stretching across the ground. The sun was going down. Surely Jin had reached the bridge tower by now.

Time to finish Walker off.

Bones, apparently, had had the same thought. He'd been prowling around the edge of the game for the past hour like a caged animal. Now he came to scowl down at them. “Walker,” he growled, “time is getting short.”

“Damn right,” the gambler agreed. “I didn't want to have to do this to you, kid, but this game has lost its charm for me. When you start winning hands with bee stings, you have to be stopped.” And he threw down five cards, one by one.

The second Sam saw the first of them, he dropped his hands to his sides, utterly dismayed. The play was called thirty pieces—it was something like a royal flush in poker, made up of saints from the suit of silver coins.

Walker slapped down the final card and looked at Sam with a barely concealed smirk on his face. “Only one counter for that, and I happen to know you don't have the Devil's Advocate, 'cause you excommunicated him.” And, as if Sam had forgotten that, Walker pointed to the two cards lying face-down on the ground.

Sam raised his hands and looked at the cards he held. “Yeah. All I have are these.” And he laid down
his
cards one by one: a motley assortment of fairly useless holies. “And, of course, I have these two.” He was just about to play his last legitimate card and the Liar, which he'd shaken loose from his sleeve when he'd dropped his arms, when he saw it. Gregory, Nicholas, Anthony, Seraphim, Menas. All five of the cards he'd just played were what were called Thaumaturges. Wonder workers: saints who performed miracles.

I could even tell you stories of players discovering new ways to win in the middle of a game,
Tesserian had said.
They say you just see a solution where there wasn't one before, and it works. It happens, but it's rare.

Sam's heart pounded fast. The absurd idea that had just occurred to him, impossible though it seemed, lay perfectly within the logic of this game. If he was right, he could possibly—just possibly—beat Walker without cheating. It meant a huge leap of faith, though.

Sam put his two remaining cards face-down on the table. The top one was the Liar. He slid that one aside. Then he took the other card and turned it face-up onto the pile of Thaumaturges.

Walker's jaw dropped. Sam took a deep breath and looked down. Then his jaw dropped, too. He knew perfectly well what he'd held, and the last card should have been a minor saint painted with a unicorn. What lay on top of the Thaumaturges was the Devil's Advocate.

Sam let out the breath he'd been holding. Relief surged through him so hard he felt dizzy.

“No,” Walker gasped. He reached down and flipped over the two cards he'd flicked off the table: a Marshal and a Nothelfer. No Devil's Advocate.