“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“Why would I bother?”
Above them something heavy fell, and the pipes that ran along the walls shuddered in their posts.
“What was that?” Briar demanded. She skidded closer to Swakhammer and resisted the urge to ready her rifle.
“Rotters? Our boys? Minnericht testing some new toy? There’s no telling. ”
“Minnericht,” Briar repeated. It was the third time she’d heard the name. “The same man who made your… your Daisy?”
“That’s him. ”
“So he’s a scientist? An inventor?”
“Something like that. ”
Briar frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s a man with many toys, and he’s always unveiling new ones. Most of his toys are dangerous as hell, though a few of them are kind of fun. He does little mechanical things sometimes, too. He’s an odd bird, and not always a friendly one. You can say it out loud, if you want. ”
“Say what out loud?” She stared straight ahead, into the damp, faintly noxious distance.
“What you’re thinking. You’re not the first person to notice it—how much Minnericht sounds like your husband. ”
“My former husband. And I wasn’t thinking that,” she lied.
“Then you’re a damn fool. There’s not a man down here who hasn’t wondered about it. ”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” she protested, though she was deathly afraid that she did. “Seattle wasn’t a huge city, but it was big enough to have more than one scientist living here, I bet. Or this Minnericht might’ve come from someplace else. ”
“Or he might be old Levi, dressed up different and wearing a new name. ”
“He isn’t,” she said so quickly that she knew it must sound suspicious. “My husband is dead. I don’t know who this Minnericht may be, but he’s not Levi, I can promise you that. ”
“Down this way. ” Swakhammer urged her toward a darker path that ended in a ladder. The ladder disappeared into another brick-lined tunnel. “You want to go first, or do you want me to?”
“You can go first. ”
“All right. ” He put the lantern’s wire handle in his teeth, leaned his head forward, and descended with the light almost singeing his shirt. “How? ” he asked from down below.
“How what?”
“How do you know Minnericht isn’t Leviticus? You sound pretty certain, Widow Blue. ”
“If you call me that again, I’ll shoot you,” she promised. She set her feet on the rungs and climbed down after him.
“I’ll keep that in mind. But answer my question: How do you know it ain’t him? Far as I know, no one ever found Blue’s body. Or if anyone did, no one announced it. ”
She hopped down
off the last rung and stood up straight. At her full height, she barely came up to his shoulder. “Nobody found him because he died here in the city at the same time so many other people did, and no one was willing to come back to look. Rotters probably got his body, or maybe it’s just decayed away to nothing. But I’m telling you, he’s as dead as a stone, not down here living inside these walls that are all his fault. I can’t imagine why you’d even wonder such a thing. ”
“Really? You can’t imagine?” He gave her a smirk and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s real hard to imagine… one crazy scientist makes crazy machines and destroys a whole city, and then as soon as the dust settles, there’s a crazy scientist making crazy machines. ”
“But surely someone has actually seen Minnericht? Everyone knew what Levi looked like. ”
“Everyone knew what Blue looked like, sure. But no one knows about Minnericht. He keeps his lace covered and his head down low. There’s a girl who used to lurk down here, Evelyn somebody, he used to have a good time with her, every now and again, before she got herself too junked up on the Blight and started to turn. ”