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He indicated a stone-faced structure adorned with the mournful statues of owls. A legend across the front door declared that the place had once been a bank. The front door was nailed shut with the remains of shattered shipping crates, and the windows were covered with bars.
“How do we—?”
“Stay close. Up, then down. ”
Around the side there were no helpful fire escapes with dangling ladders, but when Briar looked up she could see the underside of a rickety balcony.
The man in the steel jacket pulled an ugly hooked hammer out from his belt and tossed it up. It trailed a long hemp rope behind it, and when it snagged somewhere above, the man yanked on the rope and a set of stairs unfolded. They clanked down with all the loud, rhythmic grace of a drawbridge descending too quickly.
He caught the bottom stair and strained to hold it low. It hung at Briar’s waist level.
“Up. ”
Briar nodded and slung her rifle over her back, freeing both hands for climbing.
It wasn’t fast enough to suit the man, who reached up with one broad palm and heaved it against her rear. The added jolt boosted her enough to fasten both hands and both feet securely onto the structure, so she wasn’t prepared to make any complaints about the ungentlemanly gesture.
Her body’s weight was pendulum enough to hold the stairs in a hovering position over the street. When the man’s weight joined hers, the whole structure creaked and jerked, but held steady. The folding stairs did not wish to hold them both, and they made their displeasure known with every ominously squeaking step.
Briar tuned it out and climbed, and the stairs rose up underneath her like a seesaw as the man behind her caught up to her heels.
He patted at the back of her boot to get her attention. “Here. Second floor. Don’t break the windoiv. It lifts out. ”
She nodded and hauled herself off the steps, onto the balcony. The window was barred but not blockaded. Down at the bottom, a wooden latch had been affixed. She pried it up and the window popped out of its frame.
The man joined her on the balcony, and the steps bounced up behind him. Having lost their counterweight, the springs that dropped and lifted it coiled back into place and remained firm, holding the stairs beyond the reach of even the tallest rotters with the longest arms.
Briar lowered her head, turned herself sideways, and wiggled inside.
The armored man squeezed himself in after her. Much of the urgency had drained away from him; once he was above the rotters and safely inside the old bank building, he relaxed and took a moment to adjust his accoutrements.
He unhooked his armor and stretched his arms, and cracked his neck from side to side. The clawed hammer with the rope required rewinding, so he twisted it between his palm and his elbow until it made a loop, and then he clipped it back onto his belt. He reached into a holster over his shoulder and set aside a tube-shaped device that was longer than his thigh. It was shaped like a huge gun, but the trigger was a brass paddle and there was a grate across the barrel that was not altogether different from the grate in his mask.
Briar asked, “Is that what made the noise? The one that stunned the rotters?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “This is Dr. Minnericht’s Doozy Dazer, or plain old ‘Daisy’ for short. It’s a mighty piece of equipment and I’m proud to call it mine, but it has its limitations. ”
“Three minutes?”
“Three minutes, give or take. That’s right. The power supply’s in the back end. ” He pointed to the handle, wrapped with tiny copper pipes and slender glass tubes. “It takes forever to charge the thing back up again. ”
“Forever?”
“Well, about a quarter of an hour. Depending. ”
“On what?”
He said, “Static electricity. Don’t ask me any more than that, because I don’t know the particulars. ”
She politely admired the blasting device. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Who’s this Dr. Minnericht?”
“He’s an ass, but sometimes he’s a useful ass. So now I have to ask, who are you and what are you doing here, in our fine and filthy city?”
“I’m looking for my son,” she dodged the first half of his question. “I think he came here yesterday; he came up through the old water runoff tunnels. ”
“Tunnels are closed” he said.
“Now they are, yes. Earthquake. ” She leaned against the windowsill and sat there, too exhausted to bother with too many words. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it for a variety of reasons. “I’m so… I knew about the city—I knew it was bad in here. I knew, but…”
