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“No, baby, it’s fine. And thank you. ” She put on a brave smile, straightened her back, and said, “Now it’s time to head up, and out. I might need you to open a door or two, and the path is wide enough that we can walk side by side most of the way, so it would be best if you could stay close to me. ”
“How far are we walking here?”
“Not more than a mile, I shouldn’t think—but it’s hard to say when we’ll be climbing stairs and hunkering down hallways. It feels twice as long, I swear. ”
And Lucy wasn’t joking. She couldn’t hold a lantern with any steadiness, either, so Briar kept one lit and held up close for the both of them to see. Down a warren of tunnels, seals, and flaps, they came to a place with a crooked stairway and a sealed door. Briar unlatched the thing and climbed up with the light, and she kept an eye on Lucy behind her. The arm’s integrity was failing, and it was becoming more useless by the moment.
Finally, at Lucy’s request, Briar secured the arm as firmly as it could be caught. From that point on she walked in front when the going was tight. In this way, th
ey hopscotched farther and farther south, until they’d come so close to the wall that its shape covered the sky when they emerged onto a new building’s rooftop.
“What was this place?” Briar asked. It didn’t look like the other rooftop vistas she’d seen so far; the floor was covered with plywood patches and the deeply rooted bases of metal poles. Overhead, a system of trapezes suspended walkways that moved at the pull of a handle.
“This place? Oh, I don’t know. I think it was a hotel, once upon a time. Now it’s… well, it’s almost like a train station. I don’t mean that there are any trains, because obviously there aren’t, but—”
“But it’s a junction,” Briar surmised.
She stood back from a nailed-down piece of wood sheeting as big as a wagon and held her lantern aloft so she could better read the message written across it in red paint. It was a list of instructions and pointing arrows, almost like a stationary compass.
“See?” Lucy said, pointing down at it. “We want to go to King Street. That arrow there next to it, that tells you which walkway you need to pull. ”
“There, to the right?”
“Uh-huh. Beside it, see? There’s a lever. Give it a good hard tug. ”
Briar pulled down hard on a lever that once was a broom handle; it had a green-painted end that matched the arrow pointing to it, which she thought was a nice touch. Somewhere up above, the clanging slide of a slipping chain was accompanied by the brittle protests of rusted metal. A sharp-edged shadow darted overhead and swayed, then settled, and lowered, and behind the shadow came a wood platform coated in pitch.
“It’s not too sticky,” Lucy said before Briar had a chance to ask.
“The tar keeps the wood from falling apart out here in the wet and the Blight; but it gets dusted with sawdust pretty often. Come on up. It’s sturdier than it looks. ”
The platform was ringed on all four sides with a gated rail that opened front and back, and it now rested on a track that looked burly enough to support a herd of cattle.
“Go ahead,” Lucy told her. “Get on the lift. It’ll hold us both, and then some. ”
Briar took the suggestion and Lucy climbed up behind her, wavering with a lack of balance until Briar steadied her. “We follow along this?”
“That’s right,” she said.
The walkway disappeared into another tangle of platforms, lifts, and other contraptions meant to move people. Eventually it terminated at an interchange, and Lucy pointed out the green arrow aiming at a path that began with four green boards. Her eyes shifted back and forth in her mask and she said, much more quietly, “Don’t look now, but we aren’t alone. Up on the roof, to the right; and down in the window on the left. ”
Briar held her head still but followed the verbal directions. Lucy was right. Above them on the next roof over, a masked fellow with a long gun leaned into a corner and watched the women approach. Below them, one seamless glass window was blotched dark with the silhouette of a man with a covered face and a hat, also armed, and also hiding out in the open—not much caring if anyone saw him.
“Guards?” Briar asked.
“Don’t get too nervous about them. We’re coming up the right way, out in the open and plenty loud. They won’t bother us. ”
“But they’re watching for newcomers, aren’t they?”
“Newcomers and rotters, and disgruntled clients,” Lucy said.
Briar pointed out, “I’m a newcomer. ”
“Sure. But they know me. ”
“Maybe I should ask them—,” she started to say.
Lucy interrupted. “Ask them what?”
