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I kept very still. Very quiet. When drunk men looked at you, they saw not one but three. A one in three chance they’d miss.

“And my prize is watching you dance with someone else?” His eyes narrowed. “Ha! It’s almost funny. Is it a fair punishment, do you think? For breaking up with you?” His fingers loosened, rather than tightened. The whiskey, thankfully, choosing the course of melancholia. Theo backed away, hands dangling limply at his sides.

“I’m not punishing you, Theo,” I said gently. “I’m doing what I must.”

He wiped his nose. “They’re bad men, Nina. Patrick Colson will kill you if he finds out.”

“I’ll need your help,” I said, a net constricting around me. “Please, Theo. I’m begging you to say nothing. Don’t interfere.”

“You think so little of me, that I’d give you away?” He seemed more hurt than offended. “No. You go ahead and play your game with Patrick Colson.” He stalked in the direction of the door.

“Theo?” I beckoned, suddenly panicked. “Theo, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll watch, Nina,” he grunted. “I’ll just stand back and watch.”

“I’m only doing what I must,” I repeated. I hated how desperate I sounded.

“As will I,” he muttered. “I’ll have a scribble sent to Tanner.”

“A scribble? But… how?”

“Polly.”

I faltered, confused. “Tanner sent her as well?”

“Of course,” he said. “We’re Artisans, Nina. She’s on the right side of this.” With one last hollow look, he left, the door bouncing off the jamb, and I rushed to lock it. I smothered my mouth with my hands and swallowed a sob.

Fuck. Fuck.

Somehow, I made it back to the bed. I crawled under the sheets and curled onto my side without bothering to undress, to take my shoes off or pull the pins out of my hair. I shook violently.

There had been other nights like this, praying the mattress would swallow me, chest so tight it felt like it was constricted in rope. Too many nights to count, though never quite as piteous.

In a continuous matinee, I thought of Tanner and Theo and my father. Of my mother and how delicate she had become. I thought of miles and miles of tunnel. And I thought of Patrick.

I sank my face into the faded quilt and screamed myself hoarse, begging God to explain to me, just this once, why it had to behim, and why it had to be me.

And the price of it all seemed insurmountable. All those men and women and children.

All of it, for idium.

I lay there and wrestled with it until the shaking subsided, and then, exhausted, I told myself that I would do what I must.

CHAPTER 38PATRICK

Thirty feet below Margarite’s, the tunneling party stood in water that reached their shins.

“What fuckin’ use are you, Teddy?” Gunner spat. He seemed tortured by the aftereffects of the bluff. “It’s turned into a lake overnight.”

“Aye,” added Briggs. “The struts are already shiftin’, Pat. The dirt beneath is erodin’.”

Theodore looked down the belly of the tunnel. Not at Patrick, not at Nina, not at the other men. “I need a day to get rid of it,” he said in an empty voice. “Maybe two.”

Gunner scrubbed viciously at his face. Donny sighed.

Briggs clapped his hands together. “I’ll stay down here with Teddy. See if I can’t start fixin’ the timber along the way.”

Patrick handed Briggs the canary cage without looking at him. His stare was saved for the back of Theodore’s head. “Is it one day that you need, or is it two?”