The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

“Why would they? The Duwamish all left, except for Angeline. But here we are. These days, Captain Cly is using the fort to start off a proper set of docks. ”

“As opposed to an improper set?”

“You know what I mean: someplace regular ships can come and go, not just sap-runners or pirates that can hover around or drop down air vents. The captain says that when he’s done, we’ll get mail and everything. ”

“You can’t get mail right now?”

Houjin flashed him a look which, even through his visor, evidenced concern that Rector might’ve bruised his brain worse than previously feared. “Do you see a post office?”

“I do not,” Rector admitted, resenting the look and its implications.

“Anyway, come on outside. I’ll introduce you around. ”

“Outside” was achieved by stepping through a doorframe that had no more door than the windows had glass. Beyond this exit the air was brighter and the milky gray sun was more pronounced. For the first time since falling down the chuckhole, Rector didn’t feel like he needed a lantern.

He blinked against this new light, weak though it was, and surveyed the scene with his usual measured uncertainty.

He saw no way out of the fort except the hole from whence he’d emerged. This was worth remarking on because the fort was—as far as he could see through the chalky gloom—ringed entirely with enormous tree trunks braced side by side and sealed with chinking.

The fort was not precisely rectangular. One wall was curved, and a second one had an indentation like it’d been built around something, but he couldn’t see what that might’ve been. And in the center of this ungeometric, courtyard-style space, two dirigibles were docked. Neither one looked like it belonged to any official nation, army, or custom, which told Rector that they were pirate ships. Both were fixed to a totem pole that must’ve been carved from a tree bigger than any he’d ever laid eyes on. Pieces of the pole were rotting off, dissolving to squishy mulch around the edges, but enough of the impressive log remained intact to keep the two airships bobbing gently a few feet off the earth.

Houjin saw him observing the operation, and said, “That pole won’t last, but it doesn’t have to. See?” He pointed at the nearest corner, where a great knot of right angles took shape through the fog. “Pipework docks, almost finished. ”

“Almost,” said someone behind them.

Rector swiveled with surprise, but Houjin just bobbed his head to acknowledge the newcomer. Without looking, he said, “That’s Kirby Troost. He’s the Naamah Darling’s engineer. ” Then he turned to Troost and asked, “Is Zeke up here?”

“Yeah, he’s over by the Chinatown entrance. ”

Rector and Kirby Troost sized up one another from a cautious distance. Troost was a smallish man, shorter than Rector by several inches, and he was wearing a mask, so there wasn’t much else to be said about him. But there was a posture to him, a forced casualness that Rector recognized and immediately mistrusted. He knew that posture, and often wore it himself. It was the posture of someone who’s up to something.

Troost said, “You must be the kid who went down the chuckhole. ”

“That’s me. ”

Neither one of them moved, or even blinked.

Houjin looked back and forth between them, sensing that something was afoot and he wasn’t a part of it. Rector could’ve told him, if he’d had the vocabulary to do so, that this is what happens when two shysters recognize each other.

But he didn’t have the words, and couldn’t have explained it even though he knew it somewhere deep in his core. So rather than bring it up, he said to Houjin, “Let’s go find Zeke, huh?”

“See you later, Troost!” Houjin declared over his shoulder, for he’d already taken off toward the corner the engineer had indicated.

Troost and Rector exchanged a wary nod, then Rector stepped back into Houjin’s familiar wake.

As he tagged along through the greasy-feeling fog, more details of the fort became clear. Along one wall was an overhang with boxes beneath it, sheltered from the damp overhead, if not the damp that pervaded the air. Beside the small room above the ladder, Rector spied a stack of cleanly split lumber coated with lacquer to keep it from disintegrating in the toxic air. Here and there, machines and machine parts were stored or stopped mid-process, though what they were for, Rector didn’t know.

He used these things, these little distractions, to keep himself from hyperventilating inside his mask. He focused on the improvements large and small; and the canvas, and pitch, and lined-up hammers and boxes of nails; and the mention of the Chinatown entrance, because that meant there was another way out of this fort—a place which suddenly felt very small and very close, even though it was so large that he couldn’t see the farthest walls and edges.

And then, a few yards ahead, Houjin drew up short in front of an elongated lean-to. “Hey Zeke, guess who’s up?” he said. The rustling, clinking noise inside the lean-to came to a halt.

“Really?” The voice was amazingly familiar for having said so little.

“He’s beat-up and slow, but he’ll live. Rector, you coming?”

“Right behind you. ”

He took a deep breath. It stung, and it filled his throat with the taste of rubber and powdery black filters. He exhaled the breath and used it to whisper, “No ghosts. ” The words echoed around inside the mask, and his warm, dank breath made the visor briefly foggy.