“Everybody knows it?” Yaozu asked, his understated smile fixed in place. “I wonder what else everybody knows.” He gazed down the pathway and once more struck out for it. “But to answer your question, I stay here because I want to. I like this settlement where a man like me, or like you”—he gestured one long hand toward Cly’s chest—“can live undisturbed by others.”

“But I don’t live here.”

“You could if you wished; you’d fit right in. Perhaps,” he said, watching Cly duck to dodge a low-hanging support beam, “less so in the literal sense. I’ve often thought it must be strange to be a man of your size. Like Gulliver in Lilliput, at times.”

Cly was familiar with the tale, and Yaozu wasn’t the first to make that comparison. The captain shrugged as he ducked another beam. “I’ve been big my whole life. You get used to it. I’ve known a few dwarfs — a couple of them pirates, and damn fine ones — and I’ve wondered the same thing about them. I expect it’s not so different, living in a world where nothing is the right size.”

Yaozu murmured, “I know what you mean.”

“There’s nothing strange about your size,” Cly observed.

“Not my size, no. But outside these walls, I could be treated as a monster, evicted from my home, my property seized and my family sent away. It happens all the time in Portland, you know. Strange persons such as ourselves, Captain Cly … we may be very different from one another, but we recognize a kinship all the same.”

In silence they traversed another few blocks, and all the while, Cly considered this. Finally he said, “I suppose that answers my question well enough.”

“Speaking of fitting in … you’ve spent a good deal more time in the underground than before these last few months.”

Cly flushed, and even the rattling lantern couldn’t hide the creeping color. “I’m not … Well. Maybe a little more.”

“You protest too much, Captain. And look, here we are at the cross-paths before the vaults.”

It was true. Their conversation had brought them all the way to the edge of a set of living quarters, the entrance to which had once been a great bank vault with a reinforced door in a reinforced room.

Here, where people came and went more frequently, the labyrinth opened and the streets were packed cleaner, lined with planks or stepping stones held aloft from the perpetually moist floor. More lanterns hung, dimmed, from the end of every wall, and containers of fuel were stationed beneath them, left ready for any passers-through who might require them. Painted signs were affixed to walls or mounted to posts between the corners where mine-cart tracks split the right-of-way. These weathered rectangles held messages in handwritten black lettering and clearly marked arrows.

UNION STREET, THIS WAY; SENECA STREET, OVER HERE; COMMERCIAL AVENUE, TO YOUR RIGHT.

“So,” Yaozu said, clapping his hands together. “My appeal for your services.”

“Yeah, that,” Cly said. “Sure, I’ll make your supply run. I’ll need some details, and a list, and a budget—”

“Absolutely. I’ll draw up all of these things, and we’ll discuss your rate.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I ask—”

“Whatever it is, I’ll double it. I’ll need you back by the end of next month, and I’ll need my instructions followed to the letter. I’m fully prepared to pay for speed and quality service.”

“That’s good, that you’re giving me a few weeks. Because I’ve been thinking…”

“Yes?”

“About making a trip to New Orleans.”

“When?”

“Soon. Real soon.”

“That’s … quite a ways off, for a jaunt. May I ask why you’ve chosen such a destination?”

“An old friend wants me to run an easy job, down there on the Gulf. It wouldn’t interfere with anything you’re asking — not at all — and New Orleans has everything you’re looking for.”

“And then some, I’d bet.”

“You’d bet right,” Cly said. He was surprised to hear himself selling the idea, but he sold it anyway. “It’s huge, and with all those Texians on the premises, you can bet I’ll find plenty of good industrial-quality wares. They’ve got the best machine shops on the continent.”

“I’ve heard as much,” Yaozu said, considering the possibilities. “I wouldn’t have thought it’d be worth the trouble, to send you so far away. But if you’re already going … it might work out well for us both. Two of my engineers are Texians, or they were. They’ve been known to complain about things I can’t provide them — instruments and tools they wish they had, or equipment they can’t necessarily find on the West Coast.”

Cly said, “Ask them what they want. I’ll get it for them. I’ll kill two birds with one stone, Yaozu — yours and mine.”

“And you’ll collect two flight fees for a single trip.”

“There’s that, yes,” the captain admitted, counting up the coins in his head. Between what Josephine was offering and Yaozu’s bold statement that he’d double the usual asking price … there was enough money in the trip to make major plans.

Life-changing plans. Settling-down plans.

The Chinaman contemplated the pros and cons, staring alternately into space and into the captain’s eyes. After a few moments of deliberation, he declared, “I like the sound of it! I’ll speak with my engineers, and you and I shall confer again shortly.”

With that, he made a short, dipping bow and excused himself down the far passage to the right. He disappeared on the other side of a sign that said KING STREET. Before long, even his shadow and footsteps were lost to the buried city.

Captain Cly stood in the moldering chamber, chewing over the conversation, replaying it in his head — trying to figure out how much to believe, and how much to accept regardless of whether it was true or not.

Yaozu had been an unknown quantity back in the bad old days, suspicious for the obvious fact that he kept so close to a capricious madman. Even his fellow Chinamen didn’t trust him, for they had suffered too much at Minnericht’s hands. And Angeline, last surviving royalty of Chief Seattle’s reign, had made concerted efforts to kill him. Under the best of circumstances, it would have been difficult for the primarily white, working-class doornails to warm up to the oriental man with the educated voice and a millionaire’s manners. And now that he was running the empire that remained — whether it was by default, ambition, or some other power mechanism yet undetermined — the enigma of his presence was both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, he managed an operation that peddled poison to willing takers. On the other, he’d done an admirable job of holding the underground together while leaving the doornails in peace. Therefore, complaining was kept to a superstitious minimum, as if Yaozu might change his mind or vanish, only to be replaced with someone worse if too much ill were spoken of him.

“Strange persons such as ourselves,” Cly recalled out loud.

He resolved to await the list with an open mind and an open pocket, and he approached the great vault door.

From the outside, it looked like the portal of an enormous bank — which it had been, once upon a time. The spinning lock jutted like the spokes of a wheel, and though the combination to this lock had been long-since lost or forgotten, it had been rigged to open to a different key. Now, when a visitor wished to come inside, all he had to do was pull a lever hidden beneath the panel. Unless the door had been barricaded from within, it would open with a tug.

Cly lifted the panel and pulled the lever with its rubber grip and rusting hinge. With a creak and a low moan, the heavy door swung out, and Cly descended the uneven steps down into Briar’s living quarters in a basement beneath a basement, two cool, secure stories deep underground.