Conrad turned the boat around and pushed us out into the bay. He gave me a quick smile that let me know he wasn’t really mad, and I had the sneaking suspicion he might even be enjoying himself a little. I decided that he deserved to forget about what had happened to Archie for a little while, and I surely was glad to see him.
Conrad opened up the throttle and Alcatraz retreated, becoming only points of light behind us, indistinguishable from the leviathans roaming the bay.
Cal was silent, and I was equally mum, wrapping my arms around myself to guard against the chill and spray.
Relieved as I was to escape, and happy as I was that we’d all made it back toward the city, I couldn’t shake the ghoul’s words from my mind, and the terror they instilled within me was positively unnatural.
That made two messages now about what awaited me in the Deadlands, should I manage the crossing. Nothing specific, but that just made it worse. The phrase played over and over, like a broken aethervox, as the boat bounced across the waves toward the light and steam and life of the city.
“He who lives beyond,” the ghoul had whispered in my ear. “Enemy of the one who walks.”
7
Chinatown
WE PULLED UP to a rotting pier surrounded by sea lions sleeping on the decrepit platforms and long, thin boats lashed together to make seagoing homes. In the distance, a junk drifted just offshore, and I could hear music floating across the water.
“Only unguarded pier in the city that I could find,” Conrad said. “Earthquake put a gap in the wall, and the local tongs control access.”
“How do you know that?” Cal said, hopping out and tying up the boat. He was destroyed, I could tell from his posture and his voice, but I knew Cal, and knew he wasn’t about to let Conrad see it. He’d always looked up to my brother, seen him as the stronger one, even though personally I’d always thought Cal was—he had a resilience at the core that no human I’d met had ever possessed. He could weather any storm and keep going. Most days, I wished I had his strength.
“I’ve had a day to poke around,” Conrad said. “It’s amazing what a little cash and a clean-cut face can get you in this town. Everyone says Chinatown is a place to lie low and not be seen, so that’s where I headed after I got Cal.” He helped me onto the dock. “We better ditch this blackbird gear,” he said, unbuttoning his Proctor jacket and shoving it into an oil drum at the end of the dock. “Proctors aren’t exactly welcome here.”
I looked at the wall ahead, shattered and cracked just as Conrad said. Beyond, I could see red light and smell thick smoke, sweet and savory at the same time. Steam drifted above the wall, the same crimson, as if we were walking into a giant cooking pot.
Dean had said Chinatown had been his favorite place in the city. I wasn’t as quick on my feet or as street-smart as he’d been, but I could manage. It made me feel a little better that we’d ended up in his old haunt, his favorite spot, as if I could pick up a glimpse or a whisper of him, even though he was gone. But not for long. He was coming back.
At the wall, two Chinese men wearing suits and silk ties and hefting machine guns stopped us. “What’s your business?” one said, glaring at us. He had a thin mustache that made him look even more suspicious. Aside from the gangster suit and antique weapon, he would have made a fantastic Proctor.
“We’re just passing through,” Conrad said.
“And bringing trouble with you.” One of the men spit. “Piss off, gwai lo. We don’t need your kind.”
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” I said, leaving off the part about how Cal and I had just escaped from the Proctor prison. “We’re in the city to get a friend of mine back.”
The second said something in Chinese, and the first snapped at him. Then they stepped aside.
“Fine, crazy girl,” said the first. “You want in so bad, go ahead.”
I started to walk forward, keeping my eyes down, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. I sucked in a breath, afraid I was going to have to fight him off. “Your friend,” he said. “If he’s inside the wall, in this part of town, he’s probably dead.”
I met his eyes. They were flat and black, eyes that had seen so much they were simply mirrors now, with nothing behind them. I knew my own held the same emptiness. “No probably about it,” I said. “Now, do you want to take your hand off me?”
He moved aside, one eyebrow skating up, and I stepped around him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “You go in there, you ain’t coming out again.”
“All right,” Conrad said when we’d passed through the broken wall, past a knot of vendors and carts hawking food and cheap jewelry and porters trying to get work guiding us to various hotels. “We need to stop and regroup. What’s this crazy idea you were telling Cal about that involves going to the Deadlands?”
I turned to shout at Cal, and he spread his hands to placate me. “I had to let Conrad know how urgent this was,” he said. “He didn’t want to leave your father.”
“We shouldn’t be arguing in the street,” Conrad said, and I saw the obvious interest on the faces of passersby. We stood out, three non-Chinese young people in a street full of Chinese residents just going about their business, and sooner or later the wrong person was going to notice us. That couldn’t happen, not until I’d had a chance to scour the city for Nerissa’s doctor and find out what he knew.
Cal pointed to a teahouse with signs in Chinese and English proclaiming it the Jade Monkey. “In there,” he said. “It’s quiet.”
I didn’t want to stop—I wanted to find this man my mother had told me about and get it over with. But I could tell from the set of Conrad’s shoulders that he wasn’t going anywhere, and I was going to have to convince him that this was what I needed to do.
I let him and Cal lead me across the street. The red light we’d seen came from hundreds of lanterns strung between the thin, encroaching buildings of Chinatown. Red silk glowed like living things floating in the steam that reached from the manhole covers and grates scattered haphazardly across the rutted street.
Shouts and cries and a dozen languages floated around my ears, but I felt safe in the throng. I was anonymous here. Nobody cared, and I relaxed for the first time since Cal and I had boarded the airship.
I could see why Dean had loved it here. This place was like him, alive and hotheaded and unpredictable.
The Jade Monkey had ornate wooden furniture, low cushions to sit on, and a censer belching sweet smoke toward the ceiling. Statues of dragons and foo dogs looked down at us from alcoves, their blank ceramic eyes catching the low light and seeming to spring to life.
A figure paused outside the glass but then moved on, and I finally allowed myself to relax. The Proctors wouldn’t come here. Nobody was going to recognize me, take up the cry of “destroyer” that I hated, whether it was pejorative or worshipful.
“Tea, please,” Conrad said to the woman who approached. She was wearing a smart dress and had her hair done up.
“Maybe some food, too?” she said. “You look hungry.”
I thought back to the girl at the jitney station in Bakersfield who had betrayed us. But I was hungry—starved, in fact—so I nodded.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, as if it had been completely obvious we’d say yes. “Be right back.”
“Now,” Conrad said, turning to me, “explain why you ran off to follow some idea that’s obviously suicide.”
“Explain why you followed me when you’re putting yourself in far more jeopardy,” I countered. Conrad always acted like he knew best simply by virtue of being older, and it always got my back up.