The blocks were darker than dark, blacker than night’s usual fall, because it fell on Seattle, where the air was thickly curdled and surrounded by the wall and its omnipresent shadow, resisting any interference from the moon and candles alike.
Upon reaching an unmarked corner, Rector asked, “Are we going the right way?”
Zeke checked the compass Houjin had given him. “Yep.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of wish Huey was here.”
“We’d be better off with Angeline. Not saying he’s useless or anything, ’cause he sure as hell ain’t. But this has never been his part of town. She knows her way around better.”
“I wonder where she went.”
“So do I,” Zeke admitted. “Heck, she might be waiting for us. Or listening. You never know, with her. That woman’s got ears all over the place, and it’s a good thing, too.”
“Sure is.”
“We should probably be quiet.”
“Probably,” Rector agreed.
And they were quiet, for about thirty seconds. Then Rector said, “But it’s god-awful dark. And so quiet that I can’t hear a damn thing. Does that make sense?”
“No, but I know what you mean. Hey—what’s…?”
Zeke stopped abruptly, and Rector stopped in time to keep from running into him. “What is it?”
“It’s the wall.”
“It’s the wall, or it’s a wall?”
“Can’t tell.” Zeke patted at the stones, running his candlelight up and down it. “I think it’s the wall.”
“Did we really come that far? I thought we were supposed to turn up toward the park before we hit it.”
“We were. But we didn’t.”
“You’re shit for a navigator, Zeke.”
“That’s what the captain says. And Kirby Troost. And Fang.”
“I thought Fang don’t talk.”
“He writes things down just fine, and he signs with his hands. I don’t read it too good yet, but I’m learning. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the wall. We overshot our turnoff.”
“I think maybe you could be forgiven. It’s goddamn dark out here.”
“We should really be quiet.”
“I know, I know.” Rector swallowed hard, and dragged his hand along the wall. “I just wish we were using lanterns. Or we could break out these stupid spotlights. They’re heavy, I swear to God.”
“If we had lanterns, we’d be real easy targets.”
“I know,” he said again. “But how far off course do you think we went?”
“Can’t be that far.” Zeke stepped around him and put his free hand on the wall. “The wall runs in one big circle, so it’s not like we’ll get lost now. If we follow it north and east, we’ll run right into the park.”
“That’s not the world’s most comforting thought in the world.”
“At least we’ll know where we are.”
What Zeke didn’t say, and Rector didn’t bring up, was that they had no idea where along the wall they were—and they had only a few hours worth of filters in their bags. If they didn’t find the breach, or the tower, or some other landmark soon, they’d be in trouble.
Both boys knew it, and they thought about it.
It was the only thing that kept them quiet for the next fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes was long enough. It gave them time to determine that yes, this was the wall, and not a wall belonging to some oversized building; and it gave them time to get within earshot of the great breach, the broken place where poisonous air oozed out into the Washington Territory. Out near the breach the Blight thinned, becoming less dense from the leak that spooled out into the woods like sludge running down a drain. Their candlelight went farther. The boys took pains to cover the glass with their gloved hands, and then Zeke blew out his own light entirely.
At the breach, there were people talking, but it was too quiet, too distant yet, to recognize any of the voices. “Take the tail of my jacket,” Rector whispered. “Crouch down low behind me. We don’t want to get separated.”
“Are they from the tower?”
“Don’t know.”
They drew up closer, knowing that their allies ought to be approaching the big, ugly break in the wall as well—but not knowing if they’d arrived ahead of them, or if these were other men coming inside from the Outskirts to reinforce the impending fray.
But then Rector saw lanterns, and heard a loud clang that shook the whole block. He and Zeke stopped moving, stuck right where they were with one foot up and half a breath drawn in. Then they heard, “Be careful with that!” They knew the voice.
“It’s Huey!” Zeke said with relief.
Huey went on to inform some unseen person, “And keep it away from the gas lamps. Keep it away from all the lamps, until I say so. We’ll need to pour it in a few minutes. Mr. Harper, do you have those pipes set up? Those hydraulics?”
“Almost,” Mr. Harper grumbled back.
Rector stood up straight and said, in an almost normal speaking voice, “Hey, Huey, and whoever else you got over there…”
The sounds of guns snapping to attention stopped him short.
He threw his hands into the air.
“I was just going to say,” he continued, “that it’s only me and Zeke. Don’t anybody shoot us!”
“Hey guys!” Houjin said cheerfully. Rector still couldn’t see him through the gathered murk, but when the boy’s shape emerged from the blackened fog, he recognized the gait and the general shape. “Everybody put down your guns.”
Someone—Mr. Harper, Rector assumed—groused something about being ordered around by a schoolyard full of boys, but none of the boys in question gave a damn.
“How much longer before it starts?” Zeke asked.
Houjin looked anxiously up at the wall, and out through the darkness toward the tower. “Not sure, but not long. You two had better get in position.”
Rector said, “We’re headed there now. Got sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked?”
“Lost,” Zeke clarified. “It’s dark.”
“Do you know where you’re supposed to go?”
Zeke nodded. “Roof of the old governor’s mansion. Climb up the back side, where the wall’s done fallen away, and up top we’ll find extra gas for the lights.”
“Yaozu made you memorize that, huh?”
“More or less.”
“All right, then go on,” he told them almost reluctantly. “I’ve got work to do here. Be careful.”
Rector slapped him on the shoulder. “You, too, Huey. Now, you want to point us toward this governor’s mansion?”
“Straight up the hill, count four blocks, and it’s the big white house on the right. Can’t miss it.”
“I could miss a city full of houses at this time of night,” Zeke said ruefully. “But I can count four blocks.”
Before they left, a Chinese messenger came running up to Houjin. He had a lantern in his hand, and sweat had dampened his shirt. His mask’s visor was filled with condensation, and his eyes were wide. He rattled off something fast that Rector didn’t understand, but Houjin made a snappy reply and then translated the highlights.
“The Station men are setting up the pump boxes now. Rector, Zeke—you’d better run!”
Faster than they should have, Rector and Zeke tripped and stumbled through the shadowed city, using only Rector’s candles and their wits to maneuver around dead and fallen trees, over uneven paving stones, up and down curbs, and past the first block …
Second block …
Third block.
By the third block they had to blow out Rector’s candles, too; they were too close to the tower, and they knew it. They could hear the men out there, and once they were closer to block four, they could see the glow of still fires and gas jets illuminating the top floor where the men had been working.
Rector smacked into a barrier, let out a surprised grunt, and flipped forward before Zeke could let go of his jacket. The smaller boy fell forward, too—over a low ironwork fence that snagged his pants. They tore with a ripping sound that seemed ungodly loud. But when they held their breaths and listened, no one asked where it’d come from, and the noise of workers in the tower did not change its timbre or tempo.
“A fence!” Zeke whispered.
“Yeah, I know! Get offa me!”
“Sorry.”
The fence was barely hip-height and made of cast iron; it had collapsed beneath them immediately following its assault on Zeke’s pants. It was hard and sharp and covered in rust, but it didn’t pose any real barrier to the yard, or the enormous house within it.
The boys collected themselves and stood on the lawn. A big lawn. Once, it was no doubt lush and green and landscaped. Now it was a flat expanse of nothing, leading up to a huge white blob that turned out to be not a house, but merely a porch. The porch had columns bigger than many of the houses Rector had ever seen.
“This has to be it,” he said.
Zeke nodded, which Rector only barely saw. “Come on. Around back, they said.”
But Rector heard something coming up fast, headed right at them. He grabbed for Zeke, missed him, and instead gave him a hard shove that sent him facedown into the brittle, gruesome grass. Zeke began to protest, but Rector threw a hand over his mouth—crushing the boy’s mask against his face.
“Shh!” he commanded.
Zeke came to the immediate and well-advised decision to not fight, but to lie there as still as possible. It worked out well. Not three seconds after he’d hit the dirt, a man came dashing up past them—right past the mangled fence. The man was carrying a lantern that swayed and jerked in his hands as he ran, casting dramatic spears of light up into the fog and through the skeletal tree limbs that overshadowed everything near the park.