The boy was shivering, but he nodded and didn’t object when Birch inspected him.
“No injuries I can see. He’s not feverish. If anything, I’d say he’s a little clammy.” Birch scratched his thatch of wheat-colored hair.
A tiny head capped by large round ears peeked around one side of Birch’s neck. Its wide black eyes stared at the strange boy. The boy stared back as the bat climbed from Birch’s neck onto his shoulder. Its minuscule claws fastened to one of the straps of the tinker’s leather apron, never losing its grip as Birch moved.
“There’s, there’s something on you,” the boy said, his tone wary but also curious.
“What?” Birch glanced at the shoulder the boy pointed to. “Oh. That’s just Moses. He’s usually crawling somewhere on my apron. Doesn’t like to roost anymore, understandably. Fell when he was just a baby and broke both wings. I found him floating in the river one day when I was collecting guano to make gunpowder. Had to rebuild his wings myself.”
Birch coaxed Moses onto his hand and then gently stretched out one of the bat’s wings, which produced a soft clicking sound as the appendage unfurled. The underside of Moses’s wing glinted with silver.
“The key was creating a new bone structure using hollow tubes,” Birch explained. “Light enough so he could fly.”
“What proof do you have that he was trying to escape?” Ash was still watching Charlotte instead of looking at the boy.
Charlotte’s charge seemed content conversing with Birch, so she gave Ash her full attention.
“Only that he was alone in the forest and running from Rotpots.” Charlotte thrust her chin out. “That was good enough for me.”
“How reassuring,” Ash said. “And you failed to notice that he’s dressed in clothes from the Hive?”
Charlotte’s eyes went wide. She turned to look at her companion, feeling blood leach from her face. Her brother was right. While the trio waiting to meet them wore a mishmash of clothes cobbled together into outfits favored by each, the boy wore gray tweed pants and a matching fitted jacket with button and chain closures. His wardrobe marked him as belonging to the Hive: the artisan caste of the New York metropolis.
Ash released her from his glare, but before he said anything more, the strange boy jerked hard to the right. The sudden movement pulled his hand free of Charlotte’s grasp.
Until that moment, the boy had been leaning close to Birch’s shoulder, examining Moses’s mechanical wing. Now he stood straight as an iron rod, gazing at Birch.
“Maker. Maker. Maker,” the boy said. His limbs began to shake violently.
“What the—” Jack leapt forward, drawing a knife from his boot and holding it low, putting himself between Charlotte and the now flailing boy.
“Maker! Maker! Maker!” the boy cried. His shouts bounced off the cavern ceiling and walls, filling the air with a haunting chorus of echoes: Maker! Maker! Maker!
“Rustbuckets. He’s having a fit.” Ash raised his cane. “Easy, Jack.”
“Grab him, or he’ll go right over the edge,” Birch warned, but Ash was already moving. While the boy’s arms lashed, Ash slipped his cane through the stranger’s belt and hauled him away from the precipice. With another deft movement, Ash freed his cane just before the boy flopped to the ground, lolling about with no control of his body’s violent movements.
With a horrible shudder, he gave a slow, whining cry and went still.
“Oh, Athene, he’s not dead, is he?” Charlotte’s hands went to her mouth.
Birch knelt beside the boy and laid his head on the prostrate figure’s chest. With a sigh, he said, “I don’t hear a heartbeat, but . . .”
The boy moaned. Birch frowned and sat up quickly.
Charlotte gulped air in relief. “What happened? Did Moses do something to scare him?”
“Why would anyone be frightened by Moses?” Birch asked. Hearing his name, the bat peered toward Charlotte, as if daring her to answer.
Charlotte ignored the question, knowing that pointing out to Birch that most people considered bats frightening little creatures would only provoke an endless debate with the tinker about fear and rationality.
Jack returned the knife to his boot.
“You’ve brought home a strange pet. I definitely prefer the bat,” he said to Charlotte, earning an elbow in the ribs. “Ouch!” Jack rubbed at his side. “Now you have to kiss me so my feelings aren’t hurt.”
“I meant to hurt your feelings,” Charlotte said.
“I guess that means I’ll have to kiss you myself so I feel better.”
Charlotte jumped out of his reach. “Don’t you dare.”
“Jack, get over here,” Ash said. He was leaning over the boy, who, despite making a sound, still appeared to be unconscious. “Help Birch take him inside. Then get Meg. Between the two of them, maybe we can sort this one out.”
Birch grabbed the boy around his shoulders, while Jack grabbed his legs. His body swung limply between them as they carried him off the platform. Charlotte began to inch away from the basket.
“And you’re going where?” Ash blocked her path with his cane.
“With them,” she declared, hoping her confident tone would get her out of any punishment Ash had in mind.
“Not until we’ve had a chance to discuss your heroic exploits of the afternoon,” Ash said. “Come with me.”
Charlotte stood up tall until her brother turned away. Then her shoulders slumped and she reluctantly followed him into the Catacombs.
3.
WHOEVER HAD DISCOVERED the system of caves known as the Catacombs and why they were named thus had been lost or forgotten. The current inhabitants’ best guess was that the twisting labyrinth of stone chambers and passages had reminded those first people of the sacred resting places of the dead hidden beneath churches in the Old World. Or perhaps the intrepid explorers had enjoyed an overdeveloped sense of irony, forecasting that anyone forced to seek out refuge beneath the falls might be better off dead than alive.
Charlotte trailed after her brother as he led her past smaller chambers and through tunnels until they reached the refectory. An oblong room not far below the earth’s surface, this cavern served as a gathering place and dining room. The first group of refugees who’d inhabited the Catacombs had drilled narrow fissures through the rock, allowing steam and smoke to escape in small amounts. Birch’s workshop was riddled with such fissures, which provided a bountiful source of energy for his experiments. The Catacombs might have resembled a place belonging to the dead, but within these tunnels, Nature had offered a perfect place in which they could live safely out of reach of the Empire.