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“What about you, Don,” Patrick said then. “You got eyes on a promotion?”

“Was that a dig?” Donny frowned. He turned to their mother. “That one was surely a dig—”

“Go,” Tess answered, her lips thinly pressed. “Now. Take your brother.”

“Am I s’posed to lead him, or he me?”

“Just keep to the left, and if you hear the trolley, jump out of the fuckin’ way.”

Donny muttered under his breath as he collected his coat and Gunner’s.

“I don’t need a bloody keeper. I’m fine,” Gunner said, but when he met Patrick’s expression, it brooked no further argument. The two of them disappeared through the door, and Patrick tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

Tess waited, her hip against the frame, arms crossed over her chest. “Well?” she said eventually, when it seemed her son would say nothing at all.

Patrick breathed once, twice, cooling his temper. “The foray into Dorser failed,” he said, sitting at the kitchen table with a metastatic groan. “The shipping containers were already empty. A decoy, probably. They knew we were comin’.”

Tess nodded. “Scottie told me. That’s three of the last four missions thwarted.” She peered at Patrick, gritted her teeth to keep back what she so wished to say. “You can’t tell ’em, Pat.” She said, and she meant anyone, everyone. “They can’t know.”

Patrick didn’t argue the point. Panic spread quickly in Kenton Hill. They were all tinder in a waiting box, at any moment set alight. There could be no friction. “The crew’ve been told to keep it quiet.”

“Otto has a big mouth when it comes to that Scribbler. I think he’s in love with her.”

“He’ll keep it quiet.”

“Ten to one, son. Ten to one says it’s one of the swanks gettin’ word out.”

Silence again. Above them, a boiler sourced the air temperature and clanged to life. Gas funneled through copper pipes. A fire would light beneath the cistern. Winter was approaching.

Patrick shook his head. “They’re watched, day and night,” he said. “They only know what we tell ’em. It ain’t the swanks.”

“Then find whoever it is,” Tess said simply. “And throw ’em down a shaft.”

Patrick nodded. He lit a cigarette, watched the first euphoric exhales spin eddies into the ceiling. “Out with it, Ma,” he said eventually, closing his eyes, bracing.

But a moment ticked by, then another. Enough moments to warrant the opening of his eyes. He found his mother looking away, oddly distant. “Been a long time since I saw you like that, Pat. A long, long time.”

His mother and he were well practiced in speaking this way, in half sentences. No mincing. She meant the dancing at the rally. The foolishness of it.

But he’d been a kid once, hadn’t he? A kid in the lane, playing coppers and thieves.

“You used to do that a lot.”

He frowned. “Dance?”

“Laugh,” she said. “Have fun. You were sunshine once.”

But no longer, because someone had to step up. Someone had to gather the storms.

Tess tsked. “She’ll leave this place, son. You know that she’ll leave.”

“Or she’ll stay,” he said, but it was feeble. “If she can be convinced to our side.”

Tess sighed, and it was world-weary. Formed by years of trial. “You should prepare for the eventuality that she won’t, son. Pick another. There’re plenty of other girls for you in Kenton Hill.”

Were there? To him, their faces were indistinguishable, their outlines hazy. He felt they might pass straight through him. He had begun to think that he’d been waiting all these years to seeheragain. Even more worrisome, that he’d brought her here because of it. “I just need some time,” he said. “She’s one ofus, Ma. I know she is.”

Patrick didn’t look to see the pity in his mother’s eyes, the sink of her shoulders. But he heard it when she said, carefully, quietly, “You shouldn’t waste time hopin’ people will change, son. They never do.”