“Warm Springs Pass? Isn’t that near the fever lands southwest of Grand Caverns?”
“Yes.”
“And nothing else about the sanctuary?”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“I know, I know, need-to-know and all that. She’s worse than you with her letters.”
“She learned from the best,” he replied, smiling.
Madison often wondered if there was more to Duncan’s relationship with Cecile than they outwardly showed. It was hard to say, but she doubted he would consort with a student.
“Do you need anything else from town?” Beatrice interrupted. She’d been hovering at the entrance to the den.
“No, not right now. You can go Beatrice, thank you.”
Beatrice lingered for a moment longer, then made her way out the front door.
At times Beatrice seemed lost, a foreigner on the estate she’d managed for many years. It was understandable. It was no longer an estate but rather a command center, and she had little say in the management of it. Still, they needed her for forays into town. She had to preserve the image that Euclid was still alive. No one would bat an eyelash at Euclid’s concubine stocking up for the winter, or even buying eccentric goods.
“We should go downstairs,” Duncan said.
“You’re right,” Madison replied.
They crossed through the first floor and entered the small addition bolted onto the side of Monticello. As they entered the room a dozen of her Yorktown men were preparing food in the galley area.
The addition reminded her of the renovations they’d made to Yorktown Hall, but worse. The new structure was a makeshift, gaudy thing—an obscene, boxy growth jutting out of the euro-classical historical structure. It was necessary, though. The house was overcrowded, and not everyone could live underground. Here there was enough space for real work to be done.
It was in the addition that they’d built a broad staircase heading into the lower levels below Monticello. Two levels under the main building was where Owen had set up his original work bunker, not much larger than an oversized closet. Now there was a much larger bunker housing most of their electrical components dug out beside the original. Other rooms had been dug out—and were being dug out—by dozens of men. They would shuttle the dirt and detritus out a tunnel on the east side of the estate.
Even deeper still was the more cavernous room they’d just completed. Owen had suggested they might need it for new electrical equipment, or anything else for that matter, coming from the sanctuary. For now it was used as a sleeping area, save some desks and the rough model of Seeville they had made with old toys, Legos, and building blocks. It was here where Madison stopped, rubbed her leg, and sat down.
“Everyone out,” Duncan yelled into the back of the room. “We need the space.” Then he turned up one of the lamps on the table.
Several men were scattered throughout the room, lying on beds. They rose sleepily, grabbed their belongings and hustled out in short order.
“How soon until the Essentialist forces attack?” Madison asked.
“My scout says they are amassing at the border, just beyond the Skyline lookout towers. They’re not even trying to conceal themselves. I’ve heard numbers from thirty to forty thousand. On the Spoke side, there are still hundreds arriving in Seeville every day from as far north as Kingston and as far south as Jacksonville.”
“So any day.”
“Not just any day. I suspect as early as tomorrow, at least as far as we’re concerned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bartz and Meeker finally found a real job for all the idle roughnecks hanging around Seeville. They are passing a new registration requirement. No more random searches. They are going door-to-door, starting tomorrow, to verify Spoke citizenship, under the guise of finding Essentialist spies.”
“Let me guess. You and I will be first on the list.”
He nodded. “And you know they’ll find any excuse to search our houses, and most certainly Monticello. Even if we manage to hide all the Yorktown folks, they’ll find an excuse to escalate the search, to get violent…”
“To take us out altogether. I get it.”
Duncan eyed her, gauging her reaction. It was indeed heavy news. She knew time was running out, but now she had a precise number. Unless they went into hiding, they had less than twenty-four hours until the conflict would begin.
She sighed and turned her attention to the model in front of them. “So this has to be what Cecile meant by the artillery guns, right?” Madison asked, pointing to the toy canons in the Barnyard section of the model. It was the only other salient information from the letter. Cecile had written our number one objective has to be to take out the artillery guns.
“I know of no other artillery guns,” Duncan replied. “Unless there’s something we don’t know about the other lookout towers.”
Madison scanned the model closely. In lieu of building walls around the city, Meeker had erected twelve defense towers around the periphery of the Seeville area. Otherwise they had concentrated on building fortifications around the expanded Barnyard area, which was now about a square mile. There was a two-story wall and guard towers spaced at regular intervals. Access was limited to one major entrance and a train track offshoot that was rarely opened.
In the center of the Barnyard complex, two massive towers had been erected, one on top of the main Barnyard building, and another separate, free-standing tower just to the south of it. These towers housed turrets with huge, twin-barreled sixteen-inch guns. They rivaled some of the biggest Old World guns, and might have even used salvaged parts from some abandoned battleship.
One of her Yorktown men had gone to see the test run of these guns. They had obliterated a run-down house far away on the outskirts of town, to the awe of those who had witnessed it.
“So how are we supposed to get to those?” Madison said with some exasperation. “Between Monticello and the rest of the city, we have maybe two hundred men.”
“I can try to activate more Adherents, but I don’t know how many we can inspire into action. Most of them aren’t fighters.”
“Against how many? There have to be thousands of enforcers based in the Barnyard area alone.”
Duncan nodded.
Madison stared at the fortifications, trying in vain to find a potential weakness.
“Your source—can he get us inside?”
Duncan squinted. “I don’t know. I’m going to be meeting with him tonight at the Broken Spoke.”
“Isn’t that where we were supposed to meet Owen and Cecile?” Madison opened up the letter again. “Yes, Cecile confirmed the date and time in the letter. It’s probably not a good idea to meet at the same place.”
“What choice do we have?” Duncan asked.
He was right. The Broken Spoke was the only place that would work. It was out of town, sufficiently far away from any possible bugs Gail might have placed. Duncan wouldn’t have time to travel anywhere else. And it’s not like they could reschedule for tomorrow.
“What happens if your source says no?”
“I guess we’ll have to figure something else out. We’ll have to be even more aggressive. Try not to worry about it.”
“I do worry,” she said, looking into his eyes.
As she stared at him, she could hear the sound of her watch ticking. She could feel time slipping away from her. For so long she had been adrift on this river of minutes and seconds, and she could finally hear the waterfall approaching.
Whenever Madison was with Duncan, it seemed like Beatrice, Benjamin, or one of her other men were lurking with some pending question or important report. Some nights, she would try to summon the courage to confront him, but she would always rationalize it away for some other time.