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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.

   Three
     
    Night at the Café du Monde was illuminated with strings of hanging lanterns anchored to gas lamps on pillars; candles in jars made the small tables bright enough for beignets and coffee blended with chicory root. These small bubbles of light pocked the darkness and gave the impression of privacy in public, a place where people might be seen, but they might not be observed. It was never quiet, always bustling with the kitchen fryers and workers calling back and forth, taking and filling orders. The café always hummed with the noise from the river off to one side, and the street on