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Neither Theo nor I particularly enjoyed them.

“The first woman in history,” he uttered reverently. “It’s remarkable.”

“It’s all I ever hear,” I grumble. “I’m remarkable, outstanding, perfection incarnate.”

He grinned. “Most people would be happy for the praise.”

“Except that I’m not any of those things,” I said hurriedly. “I’m a fair painter, a good dancer. I can draw a decent likeness, make an excellent sandcastle—”

He snorted.

“It wouldn’t matter how good I was, even at charming earth—they’d praise me the same.”

Theo was quiet for a moment, then sighed. “Will you accept the position?” he asked. He seemed desperate for my answer, like it might inform his own.

I only scowled. “It wasn’t presented to me as a choice.”

He seemed surprised by my reaction, and there, again, lay the difference between Theodore Shop and me.

He shifted, nervous. “You know, being a lord wouldn’t be so bad ifyouwere a lady.” He looked down at my lips. “We could help. We couldchange things. What Belavere needs is progressive thinking,” he said, touching mycheek gently, hesitantly, with the very tips of his fingers. A current traveled from his skin to mine. “Ministers who work with the Craftsmen. Ministers who aren’tone hundred years old.”

I laughed through my nose, allowed my face to surrender to his cradle.

“We could do it, Nina,” he said. “We could change things.”

I liked the way he packaged us together. But Theo was merely a sympathizer of the working class; he didn’t know what I knew.

“I don’t want to say yes unless you’re saying yes with me.”

My heart sprinted. I almost said yes right then and there. Instead, I stared into his beautiful eyes and stopped breathing, and he closed that final, infinitesimal gap. His lips were on mine, his fingers were in my hair, and I thought that he was right, and wonderful, and everything a person like me could hope for. And for a moment, I believed him. Together, we could tip the great scales of Belavere Trench.

Midnight struck.

I turned sixteen.

CHAPTER 13NINA

The same Scribble appeared simultaneously at all households in Belavere City:

Attacks on Belavere City imminent.

Depart to open country immediately.

By order of the Miners Union.

It had caused the exact stir the House of Lords had, up until that point, so successfully prevented.

But the House denied any need for action. It had been eight days since the warnings had appeared in every Scribbler’s cranny, and now the city thrummed on, seemingly unfazed. Just a scare tactic of the Miners Union, people believed. What lowlife thugs. An infection to be cut out.

I heldThe Trench Tribunein my hands, a skillfully sketched caricature glaring up at me amid the print.

It had the face of a man with a wide nose, mottled in sores and moles. His eyes were beady, belly protruding at the belt. His lips were parted and revealed missing teeth. The artist had even added droplets of spit spraying from the man’s lips. There was not a single hair added to his head, just a worker’s cap, patched and falling sideways. In his hand was the severed head of Lord Tanner, a lit stick of dynamite protruding from his mouth.

The modern-day Craftsman, said the caption.

A cruel depiction, but perhaps not so far from the truth. The sketch could have been my father, Scurry’s mill foreman, the mine’s timekeeper, the pub’s landlord. That is to say, if the gut were not overflowing and the cheeks weren’t so plump. The implication that a Craftsman be so grossly overfed made me scoff.

But my father’s forehead had strained just like that when he was loaded. He’d threatened things worse than decapitation of the nation’s leader. In Scurry, they all had.