“Well, you must join us again, sir,” the man replied cordially. “I will save a place for you.”

“Thank you,” Caleum said, smiling and content with the hospitality that had been extended to him. “I might do just that.” He walked back into the cold air and made his way slowly up Pearl to his hotel.

He slept well that night for the first time since his surgery and was embarrassed to be found still asleep when one of the hotel staff knocked on his door the next morning.

“Mr. Merian, Mr. Miles is here to see you,” the man announced, when Caleum at last opened the door.

He struggled to recognize the name, but then remembered his conversation from the previous evening and informed the attendant that he would be downstairs presently. He dressed quickly and took up his crutches to go meet the carpenter.

When he went downstairs, the proprietor of the hotel directed him to a room he had provided for their meeting. By the time he entered the buoyancy of the previous evening had left him entirely, and he sat down very gloomily.

“How long have you been at your craft, sir?” he asked Mr. Miles first off, wanting to know to whom he was entrusting himself but also simply to master the man and let him know what type of service he intended to have.

“Twenty years, sir,” Mr. Miles answered, although he looked to be the same age as Caleum.

“And where did you learn your trade?”

“Here in New Amsterdam. I started first as apprentice to a ship’s joiner.”

“Have you ever crafted a human leg before?” Caleum asked him, getting to the point.

“I daresay I have,” the carpenter answered. “It’s not so uncommon as you would think. I’ll only need your measurements.”

“I didn’t ask how common it was but how often you had done it.”

“Please, sir, your measurement.”

Something in the man’s voice was reassuring to Caleum and he stood up, allowing Mr. Miles to take his measure with a length of cord he took from his pocket and marked expertly with a piece of charcoal.

“What sort of wood would you like it to be crafted of?” he asked when he finished.

“What is the best and strongest you have?’ Caleum demanded.

“For strength, it is probably lignum vitae. To my mind it is harder than iron. If you don’t mind me saying, though, it’s very dear, sir.”

“Are you paying from your purse?” Caleum asked, before giving the man a gold piece weightier than any Mr. Miles had held before. “Will that be enough?”

The carpenter nodded like a mandarin. “You’ll be very pleased, sir.”

“I’ll be all the more pleased the better it fits and the sooner I have it.”

“For fit I can promise you will be satisfied. For the time it takes, sir, I make no promise, it being a leg, after all, and more art than handiwork. I will let you know as soon as it is done.”

Upon hearing that the man could not give him an estimate of how long he would have to wait, Caleum grew more irate but tried his best not to be rough with him.

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure of it,” was all he said.

“Yes, sir,” Miles answered, feeling pity for his customer. “Nothing leaves my workshop, Mr. Merian, before it reaches the highest standards.”

“Which standards are those?”

“My own, sir.”

“Good day, Mr. Miles.”

“Good day, Mr. Merian.”

The carpenter left, and soon after a lad of twelve appeared. “My father wishes to know, would you care for something to eat?” the boy asked.

It was nearing noon, and Caleum had not eaten since the night before but had little appetite. “Just a bowl of porridge,” he answered.

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied crisply, running off to tell the kitchen. He returned a short time later in a great rush, and Caleum was amazed at the gracefulness with which he managed to lay the table before withdrawing.

When he was finally left alone, Caleum ate his meal faster than was his custom, wanting to get out into the fresh air before he lost too much more of the day. He finished, put his spoon down on the tray, took up his crutches, and set out on a path of no particular choosing into the city.

After maneuvering his way first through a group of businessmen, then a brace of soldiers, he found himself on a wide bustling street, which was crowded with gentlemen leaving their offices for the midday meal. He moved himself against the onslaught of people and continued on to the foot of the street, where he came to the market, which was on the waterfront and guarded by its own cannon. Along the pier he paused and looked out over the East River to Long Island, staring down to the farthest visible reaches of its shore.

The last time he was here he had seen only the opposite view, the island floating on the other side of Brooklyn, unattainable to them as they tried to defend their position on the heights. After they were routed, he watched the cannons and smoke rise over the river as they retreated through the forest, so that it appeared the whole city was on fire. If it were any other town, everyone knew, they would have burned it long ago themselves instead of leaving it to the British. Instead, they had strict orders to preserve it at all costs, and so relinquished the place to the enemy. It being more important than the outcome of the war, as it was so vital to the commerce of the entire world — just as the river mingled universally with all the waters of the ocean, carrying whatever flowed on it out into that same ocean as lapped the shores of Europe and Africa.

That night it had seemed the city would burn nonetheless, and when he woke the next day he was amazed to see it still standing. It was indestructible, he thought then. It was an opinion Stanton had later confirmed, during one of his last conversations with him.

“Wheresoever there are coffeehouses that serve the brew of Speculation, and men gather to buy at one price, hoping to sell at another or else turn Information into Profit, or Time into Assets, or are in any way otherwise engaged in the Free Trade of Goods and Ideas, they are doing the business of that town, and it is useless to try to stop them in that, because it is how Free Men everywhere have conducted their affairs since the rise of civilization. None but a Tyrant would seek to suppress it or think to slow its march. If anyone ever attempted to burn it, however — a thing that must be preserved from happening at all costs — what one would find very quickly is that there is another New York beneath the first, and another beneath that. And so on. Further, beneath the very last New York is a City that floats not on water but on the very air and it is indestructible, being the inheritor of all Free Cities before it and all their inspirited dreams. And so with great Boston. And so with Philadelphia.”

Now that he had the chance to see it up close, he could only look out the other way, though, as the ducks also swam against the current on the dark water, and the reflection of the clouds made it appear that ice had already formed here and there.

In his free-floating state he could think of no place else he should be at that moment other than the city that would not burn. He thought how, because of that, the Brits had been spared as well from swelling with so many more dead.

He could also think of no other place, with the exception of Philadelphia, where men from so many nations gathered for so many different purposes that one would not know they were at war with each other at all, except for the blockades locking the harbor waters shut to the vessels that normally plied them — and even many of these still managed to get past the inconvenience of war and on with their business.

Strange that he should share a sidewalk with those he had only recently engaged in combat. Yet even when he had passed British patrols walking through the city, he did not feel they were at war against one another but merely men on separate errands. That strangeness turned to bitterness, though, as he turned from the river and leaned on his crutches again.