The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) Read Free Page B

a creek, though it unnerved him. It unnerved everyone, ever since it was opened by the last earthquake of the previous year—the same quake that had collapsed the brick water-runoff tunnels that led into the city. It was too much a memento, this scar in the earth. It whispered warnings from the Boneshaker, and reminded the Outskirts how the world’s foundation could be rattled apart.
    Rector glared at the crevice. He sniffed, but it was not a gesture of disdain, just curiosity. No, nothing suspicious. The odor of Blight was no stronger here at this unsettling cranny than anywhere else on the mudflats outside the wall.
    “They still ought to fill you in,” he told the crack. “Shouldn’t leave it to chance.”
    Because what would happen then, if the Blight escaped? Everyone quietly knew that it was bound to overflow the wall someday, but it would be far worse if it didn’t need to—if the fumes found their way up other passages, like this one. It’d poison the whole earth, given time enough to leak.
    He shuddered and clutched his shoulders, then looked around to make sure no one had seen him act like a chicken. No, he was alone as far as he could tell. No lights, no commotion. No footsteps. Not even the quivering scuttles of wharf rats rustling through the grass.
    Beyond the crack and past the clot of dead trees—which Rector always thought looked like monsters, though he wouldn’t have told anyone—he started following a narrow path. He knew it by heart and needed no light. Before long he reached a small ring of five shacks. They were run-down and rotting, propped up by half-hearted measures and patched together with afterthoughts that kept them upright, but did nothing to improve their appearance.
    This was a logging camp, abandoned in 1879 like so many other things near the ruined city. Once there’d been eight buildings, then none, but a combination of dangerous, illegal work and the need for privacy had revived three of the uninspiring structures. In time, convenience had restored two more to something like their former glory.
    Dim, half-shuttered lights burned in four of the occupied shacks, but a vivid light shot out from the cracks of the largest. This near-blinding whiteness streaked past broken slats in the old shutters, speared through the weatherworn splits in the walls, and shot out from around the door.
    Rector winced. His eyes weren’t ready for the light, not quite yet, but here he was at Harry’s place, and he was almost out of sap. He felt woefully ill-prepared to begin this whole adulthood thing without it, and that meant it was time to beg, borrow, or steal.
    Christ knew he didn’t have a dime to call his own.
    Steeling himself against the inevitable wash of light, he put one hand on the door and gave it a gentle push. Its hinges let out a small squeak, and the damp-swollen wood scraped against the doorjamb, then scooted inward, revealing a jumble of tall stills, jars, boxes, tubes, and funnels. And light, always the light … so much light that Rector wondered how anyone could see anything at all.
    He shielded his eyes and stepped inside, calling out, “Harry? It’s just me.”
    Harry Sharpe, chemist or alchemist or something between the two, was hunched over a table of delicate equipment, measuring spoons, and beakers. He did not immediately look up from his work, but he stopped what he was doing. “Stay where you are, Rector. I won’t have you jostling me now, boy—you hear?”
    “Sure, Harry. Whatever you say.”
    He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it, fully prepared to do as he’d been told. Harry was cooking, and cooking was dangerous. One ill-timed interruption or misplaced hand, one extra drop of the wrong ingredient in the wrong decanter, and the resulting explosion could level the old lumber camp like a meteor. Even Rector knew better than to interfere, so he stayed where he was. He watched Harry’s wide back, and the resumed motion of his shoulders, and