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He grinned knowingly. “You look like the type. Bow in your hair. Pin up your arse. No interest in an honest day’s work.” They sounded like someone else’s words. Words he’d learned by heart.

It was common vitriol in towns like ours. My father thought Artisanslazy, indulgent. He commented on their houses and decor and running water and woodless stoves and lamented them, that they would let their bodies waste away while their minds did all the labor. Weak men. Brittle women. An entire class afraid of dirty hands and exertion. All this he said as he dabbed bluff into the abrasions on his skin, then plundered his gut with liquor.

I thought of all those working facets of the body that Tanner had mentioned, specifically the ones the Artisans were responsible for: architecture, engineering, innovation, design, beauty. How could such things exist if there was not a mind to think them up? There was more to this world than what could be achieved through blunt manual labor. I had heard about the plight of the “honest man’s work” enough times to recognize the same pinched expression, the same hateful tone, even if it was borrowed. Which meant I had already heard every version of what Patrick Colson might say next: that the Artisan government was a corrupt one that undervalued the Crafters, that the pay was blatant robbery, the conditions downright deadly, the sway of wealth completely one-sided.

It wasn’t that I disagreed. I was just tired of hearing it said and seeing nothing done. I found it difficult to sympathize with those who seemed to take twisted pleasure in their own misery. Ma used to say it was one thing to be down, and quite another to dig yourself a grave.

“I sewed this skirt myself,” I told Patrick Colson. “Made it too big. Do you know why?”

Patrick stared at me dumbly. Waited.

I lifted my hand to my tailbone and pulled the pin out. I let the skirt fall over my hips, revealing trousers beneath. Hardier fabric, cuffed up to my knees. Then I gathered the skirt and unfastened the back, sweeping it over my shoulders and putting my arms through the pocket holes until the inbuilt sleeves turned inside out. Finally, I stuck the pin in my hair. So there.

Patrick gulped, his cheeks pinkening slightly. I would have bet my last penny that he didn’t have any sisters, and he’d never seen a girl drop her skirt before.

“I’m not goin’ back on that train, whether I’m Artisan or not,” I told him outright. “I’ve got plenty of my own complaints about what it’s like out in the brink. I just don’t see the use in whinin’. I’d rather think up grand ideas and create things. And if I can’t be an Artisan, then I’ll use the mind I’ve got.” I raised my eyebrows at him pointedly. “I won’t be goin’ home.”

Patrick stared at me without blinking. He watched as I slowly dragged the makeshift coat from my arms and constructed it back into a skirt around my waist. Lord, but it was heavy. Heavy enough for cold nights out in the open. Heavy with everything I was able to stitch into the hem.

He shook himself from his reverie. “Well,” he said. “That fuckin’ showed me, didn’t it?”

Patrick Colson liked to sayfucka lot.

CHAPTER 4PATRICK

A Smith.”

“Why would you want to be a Smith and not a Mason? Or a Charmer?”

“One fuckin’ word, Nina Harrow,” Patrick said, arms stretched wide.“Gold.”

Nina flattened her lips in that way girls did when they thought you stupid. “I think you’ll find that diamond is more valuable than gold.”

“Is not.”

“Sure it is.”

“Oh yeah?” he remarked, flicking a pebble at her. She barely flinched. “How would you know, Scurry girl?”

“Because Iread,” she said simply, and she had him there. Patrick could barely read more than the newspaper headlines. The schoolroom bored him.

She was smart, that much was clear. Not smarter than Patrick, he was sure. But a different kind. A blistering kind. “What do you want to be, then, since you have all the answers?”

“Somethin’ that matters,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest.

He raised one eyebrow. “You mean terranium?”

Her flat expression told him he was right. She surprised him once more. It was true that many of their peers probably hoped to be a famedterranium Alchemist. After all, what could be more vital to the continent then the careful extraction of idium—a job only a medium of terranium could do. And rumor had it the number of terranium Alchemists was dwindling quickly—few knew how many were left. But still, Nina didn’t seem to Patrick like a person vying for fame or glory.

She seemed like a person who was running away.

“Hmm,” Patrick murmured. “I thought you might say a Scribbler.”

She gave him a look of disbelief. “The lowliest of Artisans?”

He shrugged. “Seems more excitin’ than drawin’ blood from a stone. Scribblers travel all over.” It was true. There was a Scribbler in every town and parish of the Trench, sending and receiving missives from the capital and collecting payment from anyone who could afford to send notes to a distant loved one.

Nina shook her head. “If I’m gonna be an Artisan, I don’t want to sit around all day sendin’ notes with my mind. I want to do something more important.”