It might have only been her imagination, but Briar thought that the bright blue flecks took on a crafty look. He said, “That’s not a terrible idea.”

“It’s a damn fine idea. I’d only ask for one provision.”

He didn’t put the gun down. He didn’t aim it at her face again, either. He said, “What’s that?”

She sat forward in the chair, and it released her back and her satchel with a squeak. “Zeke has to know. I won’t let him think you’re his dad, but I’ll sell him on the story, and he’ll run with it. He’s the only one who needs to know the truth.”

Again the blue lights flashed. Minnericht didn’t argue. He said, “Let me think about it.”

And faster than Briar would’ve believed the man could move, he struck her across the head with the butt of the gun.

A searing bolt of pain sounded like a gong against her temple.

And everything everywhere went dark.

Twenty-three

When Zeke awoke in the princely room beneath the train station, the lights had been somewhat dimmed and the cottony taste in his mouth suggested that he’d been asleep for longer than he’d meant to be. He smacked his lips together and tried to moisten his tongue.

“Ezekiel Wilkes,” said a voice, before Zeke even realized that he was not alone. He rolled over on the bed and blinked.

Sitting in a chair beside the fake window, a man with folded arms and a monstrous air mask was tapping one gloved hand against his knee. He was wearing a red coat that looked like it was meant for a foreign king, and boots that were shiny and black.

“Sir?” Zeke said. He could scarcely force the question out.

“Sir. You call me ‘sir.’ I suppose it belies your appearance, that simple indication of manners. I’ll take it as a good sign.”

He blinked again, but the strange vision didn’t change, and the man in the chair didn’t move. “Of what?”

“Of how breeding might overcome raising. No,” he said as Zeke began to sit up. “Stay down. Now that you’re awake, I’d like to see that gash on your head, and the one on your hand. I did not want to examine them while you slept, lest you awaken to this.” He motioned at his mask. “I’m aware of what it looks like.”

“Then why don’t you take it off? I can breathe in here.”

“So could I, if I chose.” He rose then, and came to sit on the edge of the bed. “Suffice it to say, I have my reasons.”

“Are you all scarred up or something?”

“I said, I have my reasons. Hold still.” He pressed one hand against Zeke’s forehead and used the other to push the matted hair away. His gloves were warm but so snug that they might as well have been his naked fingers. “How did this happen?”

“Are you Dr. Minnericht?” he asked instead of answering the question.

“I am Dr. Minnericht, yes,” he said without changing his tone in the slightest. He pressed a place here, and nudged a spot there. “At least that’s what they call me these days, in this place. You ought to have stitches, but I think you’ll survive without them. It’s been too long since you sustained the injury; your hair has gummed up the wound; and for the time being, at least, it isn’t bleeding and it doesn’t appear inflamed. We should keep an eye on it, all the same. Now, let me see your hand.”

If Zeke heard anything after the “yes,” he didn’t react to it. “Yaozu said you knew my father.”

The prying hands withdrew, and the doctor sat up straighten He said, “He told you that, did he? He phrased it exactly that way?”

Zeke scrunched his forehead, trying to remember more precisely. His furrowed eyebrows tugged at the torn skin farther back on his skull, and he winced. “I don’t remember. He said something like that. He said you could tell me about him, anyhow.”

“Oh, I certainly could,” he agreed. “I wonder, though. What has your mother told you? ”

“Not much.” Zeke scrunched his body up to a seated position, and he almost gasped to see the doctor from this other angle. He could have sworn that the man did not have any eyes, but behind the visor of the elaborate mask, two blue lights burned sharply where his pupils ought to be.

The lights flared brighter for a moment, then dimmed. Zeke had no idea what it might mean. The doctor retrieved the boy’s hand and began to wrap it in a thin, light cloth.

“Not much. I see. Should I guess instead that she’s told you nothing at all? Should I furthermore assume that everything you’ve heard, you’ve heard from history — and from your schoolmates, or from the gossip of men and women in the Outskirts?”

“That’s about right.”

“Then you don’t know the half of it. You don’t know a fraction of it.” The lights flickered as if he were blinking, and his words slowed down, and grew more calm. “They blamed him for the Boneshaker’s failure, because they are ignorant, do you understand? They blamed him for the Blight because they knew nothing of geology or science, or the workings of the earth beneath the crust. They did not understand that he’d only meant to begin an industry here, one apart from the filthy, violent, bloody sport of logging. He was looking to begin a new age for this city and its inhabitants. But those inhabitants…” Minnericht paused to gather his breath, and Zeke surreptitiously burrowed more deeply against the pillows at his back. “They knew nothing of a researcher’s process, and they did not understand that success is built on the bones of failures.”

Zeke wished he had more room to retreat, but he didn’t, so he made small talk instead. He said, “You knew him pretty good, then, did you? ”

Minnericht stood, and strode slowly away from the bed, folding his arms and pacing a short path from the basin to the bed’s foot. “Your mother,” he said, like he meant to begin a new train of conversation.

But he stopped there, leaving Zeke to feel sick about the venom he heard. “She’s probably pretty worried about me.”

He did not turn around. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t give a damn. Let her worry, after what she’s done — hiding you away and abandoning me to this place, these walls, as if I’d made for her a prison and not a palace.”

Zeke froze. He was already holding still, and he didn’t know what else to do except hold even stiller. His heart was banging a warning drum between his ribs, and his throat was closing up with every passing second.

The doctor, as he said they called him now, gave the boy time to absorb the implication before he turned around. Then he did, his red coat following with a flourish, and he said, “You must understand, I had to make choices. I had to make compromises. In the face of these people, and in the face of their catastrophe and loss — which was no fault of mine — I was forced to hide and recuperate in my own way.

“After what occurred,” he continued, playing his voice like a symphony of sorrow and story, “I could not simply emerge and make my case for innocence. I could not rise from the rubble and announce that I’d done no wrong, and created no harm. Who would have heard me? Who would believe such a protest? I am forced to confess, young man, that I would likely not believe it either.”

“Are you trying to tell me… you’re…”

The smooth timbre of Minnericht’s monologue cracked. He said flatly, “You’re a smart boy. Or if you’re not, you ought to be. Then again, I don’t know. Your mother” — and again he poisoned the word as he spoke it — “I suppose I can’t vouch for her contribution to your nature.”

“Hey,” Zeke objected, suddenly forgetting all of Angeline’s advice. “Don’t you talk about her, not like that. She works hard, and she’s got it hard, because of… because of you, I guess. She told me, just a couple days ago, how the city, the Outskirts, how people out there would never forgive her for you.”