The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) by Cherie Priest Read Free Book Online Page B

and everything, and more useful, to waltz into the Station and announce that he’d like a job, and they could pay him in sap and that’d be all right. Someone was bound to take him on. Harry’s man, if nobody else. He could learn how to distill and produce the stuff, rather than just smoke it and distribute it. That’d be practically like learning a trade, wouldn’t it?
    It wasn’t the dumbest thing he could do. Go looking for his own kind: the outcasts, the chemists, the thugs and bullies, and makers of brain-killing venom for sale by the ounce. Even if they didn’t embrace him warmly, he’d know how to work with them. Bartering bits of his soul was a skill Rector had learned years ago—so many years ago, it was a wonder he had any soul left.
    No. Come for me, or I will come for you.
    But no. Zeke’s insistent shade would not be banished long, by the sap or anything else. Rector had lost too much sleep, been too frightened and too guilty for too long to let go of the One Sure Thing he had to do now. So he turned away from the Station path in one jerky motion that made the whole platform vibrate, and he held out his foot to feel for the top step.
    Immediately, his boot slipped on a slick piece of jutting stone. He didn’t slip far, and not too badly … at least, not so wildly that he went careening down forty-odd feet to the street level below, to whatever terrible things prowled down there. He couldn’t see the street itself. Forty feet of Blight and early morning shadow obscured the bottom, which made looking down easier. He saw nothing he could crash-land on, nothing but wispy, filmy clouds that would surely be softer than pillows.
    Rector felt for the wall and fought across the mildew and slime until he found a big enough crack to anchor himself. Carefully, using every remaining bit of his brainpower to balance himself and his bag, he inched forward from the first step to the next, and then to the step beyond it.
    Some of them shook. Some of them wobbled and splintered, sending tiny shards of wood or rock down to the streets below.
    When he stood as still as a statue, catching his breath and feeling the dampness of the stones bleed through his clothing, he heard soft moans and groans coming from somewhere not half so far away as he would’ve liked. He’d never seen a rotter, not up close and personal, and he’d like to keep it that way. But it was hard not to be curious when he was well out of their reach. Maybe the gassy fog would part and he’d catch a glimpse of the shambling dead.
    They wouldn’t see him—not all the way up there. Would they?
    Rector kept moving, swinging one foot in front of the other, using the wall itself as a brace for his shoulder, his bag, and his hips.
    While he climbed, he struggled to recall where he was headed. What was it called again? The place where the tunnel that Zeke took would’ve emerged? Surely he wouldn’t have survived an hour beyond that.
    If Rector had ever even known the name, he couldn’t remember it now.
    But north felt like a good enough direction, so he’d stick to that. There was always a chance, he mused, that the Doornails weren’t as bad as all that. He might be able to ask around, find out if anyone had spotted the body of a boy about his own age, some newcomer who hadn’t made it far. Somebody might know. For all he knew, they might have a place where they put bodies. The dead have to go somewhere, don’t they?
    Yes. They come here.
    He steadied himself and kept moving until the path dropped away in front of him.
    With a gasp, he jerked himself back against the wall, pushing like he could shove himself right through it and back to the Outskirts. Maybe this was all an awful idea. His breath froze in his throat and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe at all—or didn’t dare to try.
    Then he noticed a ladder continuing his path downward.
    It wasn’t the usual kind of ladder—rungs and sides and whatnot—and it wasn’t a rope ladder