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I looked about all I could. I breathed deeply, even if some of it was ash. We passed residences and entered a street of merchants, shopwindows of every shape jutting out onto the pathways with their bold lettering. A milliner displayed an aviary of hats. An apothecary and chemist competed side by side, their windows starkly contrasting. One held a cage of live mice, glass jars of minced plants, and a nude picture of Idia. The other held warning posters for symptoms of diphtheria, cures for dry mouth and lunacy, and a rather punishing breathing machine, if the metal braces were any indication.

I slowed our walk to a crawl to look closer at everything, to peer in and see the people lining the counters. The trolley rattled past. Passengers jumped from its carriage in hard-soled boots. A slack-eyed preacher leaned on a dustbin and hollered half-hearted predictions of doomsday.

War didn’t exist here. Of all Kenton’s oddities, this was the most notable. The patrons went about their business as though the nation’s conflict were just a column of newsprint.

“It seems unfair that you can live this way,” I said outside a cobbler’s shop, watching as women met in the street, kissing cheeks. “Your union started this war, and yet its hometown is the only place granted amnesty?”

I turned to find Patrick staring. I hadn’t realized he’d been looking at me so closely. It made my face heat, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of looking away.

“You still look at everythin’ the same,” he said offhandedly. “See through it all.”

I wondered if I was meant to respond. “Is that going to be a problem?”

To my surprise, he nodded, leading me across the street, where a warehouse waited with open doors. “To be sure.”

The warehouse was more a barn somehow dropped into the middle of a shopping district. Its doors were bolted back to allow crowds of people to funnel to its middle, where table upon table waited, laden with produce, meat, thread, steel tools, china, chickens. People queued in short lines before each, talking briefly with vendors before making their trade.There seemed to be no particular theme, no rhyme or reason to the order of items.

“What is this place?” I asked, barely aware of Patrick guiding me to the side near the paint-stripped walls.

“A market.”

I watched patrons accept their wares and leave without payment, stuffing goods into their baskets. They hopped from queue to queue, collecting corn, then sprouts, then leeks, and potatoes. “They don’t pay? Is it charity?”

He chuckled humorlessly, and it fell over my shoulder, curled into my ear. “Not charity. Just fair share. None of us here are wanting anymore.”

I watched as mothers came and left with full baskets, none taking more than the others. “You’re communists,” I accused.

Patrick tilted his head. “Yes and no. We don’t share everythin’.”

“But you share food,” I guessed. “And coal, water, gas. No one pays.”

“They pay for the whiskey,” he said, “and the hats.”

“And no one goes hungry,” I finished for him.

“No one goes hungry.” He nodded. “And no one goes cold.” I found myself watching him as he spoke, his tone fading into something more resonant. “Everyone does their share, takes their share. The businesses are still independent, and they trade how they want to. But everyone is fed and given a chance.” He looked out at the array of vendors. Or volunteers, I supposed. “What they do with it is up to them.”

I observed the tables, the emptying crates beneath. “It doesn’t seem like enough food for an entire town.”

“It ain’t,” he said, and I detected something heavier in his voice. “Scottie and Otto will be back this evenin’ with more from Dunnitch.”

“All of it needs to be brought in?”

“Yes. Though finding good harvest is half the trouble. The Lords’ Army has been aiming their Charmers at them—flooding the pastures and crops or setting fires if the towns announce a strike. We only get pieces left over after the Artisans have taken what they like.”

“But you said no one goes hungry.” And certainly, it did not seem like the people of Kenton Hill went hungry.

“We make a lot of deals, Nina, in a lot of different places.” He lit a cigarette then, unable to bear the temptation any longer. “We find it, however far we need to go.”

“And I imagine it’s rather difficult to say no to the leader of the Miners Union.”

“Son of the chairman,” he reminded me, exhaling a gust. “You hungry?”

I was rarely not.

“Come,” he said, taking my arm once more. “There’s a teahouse next door.”

CHAPTER 23PATRICK