Page 183

“PATRICK! Wait! I only came back for Nina, I swear. I was worried you might have… that you might have hurt her. Sending you that note was stupid. I was angry—”

Patrick barely saw him through the film of red hazing his vision.

“Think about it, Patrick! Please! Why else would I return? Why would I risk it?”

Somewhere in the red mist, Patrick heard the sense.

“It wasn’t me who let them in, Patrick! It couldn’t have been. Not unless I had a Scribbler.”

Or unless hewasa Scribbler.

Which Theodore wasn’t.

But Polly was.

“They’re dying, Pat!”

He knew. He knew.

“The fire Charmers… if they get to the Coal Works, the entire place will blow. Do you hear me? All of Kenton will be gone.”

Patrick’s stomach bottomed. His arm against Theodore’s throat loosened.

“I can help,” Theodore said. “I can help you put them down.”

Patrick’s eyes flickered to Theodore’s hands, then to the fire in his periphery.

“They’ll have the Charmers surrounded by soldiers, Patrick. You can’t take them on without me.”

There was little time for deliberation, and Patrick well knew it. With an agonized growl, he released Theodore, only to take the scruff of the man’s collar in his grasp. “Put them out,” he bid Theodore, would have got down on his knees and begged him. “Put out the Charmers, and I won’t shoot you right here.”

Theodore nodded vigorously. “You can use the canals,” Patrick told him. “Draw from whatever you can.”

“Just point your gun at something navy,” Theodore told him. “I know what to do.”

Another figure moved into the alley. Patrick lifted his gun.

“Patty?” came Donny’s voice. “I can help.”

Patrick cursed. “No, Don. Not this time.”

“I’m a much better shot,” Donny said. “Hurry up. We ain’t got time for chitchat.”

Patrick looked out onto the square, at all his men, and with a deep ache, he turned his back on them. “We’ll cut off the fire Charmers at the pass,” he told Theodore. “Stay close. Some of the infantry found their way out of the square.”

Patrick led them away, back into the maze of town houses. He cut over a canal, then another. Under a bridge and through the dusty courtyard of his old schoolteacher. This is how he’d once passed through Kenton Hill—on tumbling legs with a chest filled with fire, cutting corners and jumping pickets quicker than his feet could muster. Donny hardly slowed them. Patrick called warnings to him, but Donny had better ears than a hunting dog, and he’d run through these streets just as often as Patrick.

They only encountered two soldiers. They were sacking the narrow boats docked in the canals.

“Wait!” Theodore whispered, fear on his breath. But there was no time to wait. No time to mute their approach. Patrick kept on running. The first one to turn in Patrick’s direction found a bullet between his eyes. “Dead ahead,” Patrick called, and the next got two of Donny’s in the chest. They toppled into the water.

Patrick ignored the fear that he’d be shot at any moment, that he’d topple just the same. “Hurry up!” he shouted to Theodore, whose breathing had grown ragged. Patrick thought he heard the man praying between inhales.

The Coal Works was ahead. In the distance, fire danced across tiles anddisappeared down chimney flumes, trickling ever closer. Patrick broke into a sprint. Past the brewery, the metal scrap. Over the last canal crossing.

And there, at the end of the lane, came a flurry of movement, fire dancing in their midst. It leapt from roof to roof. The outlines of cloaked figures and armed soldiers became visible.

But the fire jumped ahead of them, bid by something faster than its own nature.