If you’d asked Rector how deep the Vaults went, he would’ve shrugged and said, A couple of floors? However, the answer was Five. And this meant quite a lot of stairs. Before long, he was tired and his head hurt. And he still wanted sap. A lot. But no one would give him any, not even Yaozu, the man who ran the entire goddamn business. Rather than run back to the Station on a sap raid that would surely be more suicide mission than solace, Rector ran along behind Zeke, who acted like all these stairs were nothing at all. Then again, Zeke lived there, and he took the stairs all the time. Rector figured that anybody could get used to anything, given enough time to adjust. Maybe, in time, he’d adjust to life without the sap. Maybe he’d adjust to different people, and different air. Maybe not.

One floor held regular rooms, some of which were stuffed to overflowing with so much junk that you couldn’t climb inside them if your life depended on it. One of these rooms—which didn’t have a door to cover it—showed off a couple of old bed frames stacked on boxes, accompanied by what looked like a horse team’s tack set, a counter for an apothecary’s shop, and enough wagon wheels to outfit three or four carts.

But the next held three men, all wearing gloves up to their elbows and aprons to cover whatever clothes they didn’t want dirtied. The room smelled pungent to the point of making Rector sick. Inside there were slabs of sliced fish lying out to dry, being set out for salting in a row of barrels.

“Frank, Willard. And Ed?” Zeke said. He seemed unsure of the third man’s name. “You fellows think you can wrap it up down here and come up to Maynard’s? Miss Angeline’s calling a meeting, and it’s real important.”

Frank, if Rector had gauged the greetings correctly, jabbed the point of a long, thin knife into the wooden countertop. “Real important, you say?”

“No, that’s what the princess says,” Zeke grinned. “So it’s up to you whether you come or not. But if I was you, I’d be there.”

Zeke then passed the message to two fellows named Mackie and Tim. Rector let the younger boy do all the talking since he knew all these people—and anyway, it was like getting a guided tour of the Vaults. He’d rather pay attention to which way the corridors went, and where the exits were, and how to get to the indoor-outhouses, should he require one later.

These things were important.