During their walk to Chinatown they hadn’t seen or heard anyone coming or going; but now they detected the pump rooms roaring a few blocks away, drawing fresh air from over the wall down into the city and forcing it through the airways that laced through the entire underground. Chinatown had three of the biggest pumps, which between them provided the majority of the fresh air to the sealed spaces below. Three other rooms were scattered elsewhere, operating in shifts night and day to keep the bad air out, and the good air in.

Two men in work clothes, fresh from a shift at the pumps, came rushing down the walkway. They nodded at Andan and Briar, who nodded back — keeping the communication simple, for the language barrier was not insignificant. Many of the Chinatown residents and vault residents recognized one another on sight, but very few of them could share a conversation.

Ruby’s place was not so much a restaurant as a storefront stand with benches and tables, and no counter separated the eating area from the kitchen, where there were several fires heating strange round pans, filled with vegetables and fish, and chicken or pork when they could be found. It took ten minutes of careful enunciation and gesturing, plus a moment with a pencil on a piece of paper, but eventually the proprietor understood what they wanted.

Cly paid for both meals, then he and the sheriff sat on a bench outside to wait for their food. Together they watched the men come and go, some of them in coal-stained leather aprons from stoking the furnaces. Around their necks hung the goggles that protected their eyes from the white-hot fires that powered the air-bringing bellows.

“Hey, Wilkes,” he said, nudging her gently with his elbow. “I’ve been thinking.” He gazed down at her and felt very big and very silly. He knew the flush was back; he could feel it curling up his neck and around his ears. “It’s about these transports, and this … this next job, in particular.”

“For Yaozu.” She said the name quietly, lest it be heard over the sizzle of the cooking fires.

“I think he does want to improve the place. He’s a criminal and a mystery, and I don’t trust him. But at the end of the day, being crooked doesn’t make him any different from the rest of us down here. Not in any way that matters.”

Briar peered up at him. “Us down here?”

Cly cleared his throat again. “I was thinking maybe it’d be good to have a station out at Fort Decatur — an official station, not just a place where people drop by and park for an afternoon. With the kind of money he’s offering, I could do it,” he told her, leaving out the part about the extra money he’d pick up from the New Orleans summons. There was no reason for her to know about that. It’d only make her wonder about things that didn’t matter, and hadn’t mattered for years. “I could build a pipework dock without too much effort, and keep it as a home spot for the Naamah Darling, between supply runs and deliveries.

“Fang and Houjin spend plenty of time down here already, and my new engineer, Kirby Troost, probably won’t mind it. He’s a weird one — you haven’t met him yet, but I think he’ll work out fine, and maybe you’ll even come to like him. Anyway, it’s a lot of money, and all I have to do is head to New Orleans and pick up a few things.”

“New Orleans?” She sounded worried. “That’s where you’re off to tomorrow?”

“Yep. And in New Orleans, I can hit up one of the Texian machine shops and get the Naamah Darling refitted — or unfitted — so it’s better for moving real cargo instead of sap and gas.” He made that part especially clear, because he knew how well she’d like the sound of it. “While I’m there, I can pick up everything everybody needs, and a few other things besides. In particular, I was thinking…” He finished the rest in a rush: “Once it’s all sorted out, my ship and the Decatur dock, I could come back to Seattle and maybe I’d just … stay. And run the dock. Out at the fort. For good.”

At first she said nothing, her face unreadable. It always unnerved him when she made herself so blank like that. He prided himself on his ability to read people, and he wanted to read her — he needed to read her — but he had no idea if she was about to endorse the idea or call him an idiot.

“How would you, do you think … I’ve got to ask, Wilkes. How would you feel about that?”

She stood up, and she stepped in front of him — facing him almost eye-to-eye, since he remained seated. Her inscrutable expression cracked into confusion, surprise, and something sweeter. “Captain,” she said. “Would you be doing that for me?”

He swallowed hard, knowing that the uncontrollable blush was truly getting the best of him. “Yes, ma’am, I believe I would.”

“Are you sure it’s what you want? To make that kind of change? I didn’t even ask you to. Shit, Cly. I’m old, and I work too much, and I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress, and I run around in the dark with my daddy’s gun all day, and I … Are you sure?”

Without thinking, he slipped his hands around her waist, drawing her closer until her knees knocked against the bench. “I don’t care if you’ve never cooked a meal. I don’t care if you never wear a dress, and I’d be proud as hell to have a woman who can shoot as good as you. And as for old, well, I’m older than you. And I’m too big to walk down the street without people staring and pointing — and even if I wasn’t, I know I’m not much to look at. All I can tell you is, I’ve known ever since you stomped up to me on Bainbridge and demanded to hitch a ride.…” He did not know what to add. It was too hard, too dangerous to say out loud.

Gently, she took his face in her hands. She leaned forward until their foreheads touched, and he could feel the warmth of her breath against his cheek. She whispered, “You’ve known what, Captain Cly?”

“That I wanted a chance to prove I’m worth your trouble.”

* * *

Even when he was standing at street level on Seattle’s topside, Andan Cly still felt like he was underneath something. A long shadow covered much of the contained city, cast by the two-hundred-foot wall that surrounded it, and the sky above was gray like usual. Even at the very height of noon, any light that managed to make it past the shadow was filtered and dim. Direct sunlight, on those few days of the year when it appeared, was never quite brilliant within the wall, either. Every speck of illumination — from the sun, from the ever-present lanterns — was rendered thick and watery by years of accumulated blight gas, which filled the blocks with a thick, yellowish fog.

Watery, yes. That was it.

It felt like being underwater.

The gas mask he wore underscored this impression. The lenses rounded off the edges of his vision, creating a very slight fishbowl effect, and the charcoal filters through which he breathed made the air feel stuffy and taste strange. He didn’t like to hear the sound of his lungs working, and even the faintest whisper of a stuffy nose reached his ears as a hearty whistle. The straps were rubbing a groove into the back of his head, and the rubber seals made his face itch.

But all in all, it was better than breathing the blight. A few thousand of the walking dead would have attested to it, if they could.

Most of the ships that came or went from the city did so over at King Street Station, half a mile away. Decatur was more often considered a pit stop of last resort or desperate straits.

But Andan Cly saw potential.

He saw a sturdy protective barricade thirty feet high around the main compound, and a large shelter that could serve as a depot for goods and airmen and had an entrance to the underground through its basement. Conveniently located — almost triangulated — between Chinatown, the train station, and the vaults, it was within easy reach for the three main populations. All it needed was a framework of lead pipe sunk into the ground, so hydrogen ships would have something to dock against, rather than the present method of hitching down to an enormous fallen totem pole that grew softer and more rotten by the month.