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She deflated. Her stomach grumbled and Patrick’s responded in kind. Neither of them had eaten since their respective train rides, and the food carts on board had only offered bread with vinegar or biscuits that turned to dust in your hand.

Patrick chewed his lip and glanced around the courtyard. At the side of the National Artisan House, servants used a side door to enter and exit with crate upon crate of goods. A man with a bald head bellowed at the wagons that trundled to a stop before him. Capped drivers with sweaty faces alighted from their seats and unloaded their wares.

Normally, Patrick wasn’t one for stealing. His older brother Gunner had almost had his hand cut off over a ten-ounce bag of sugared orange—one of their more foolish conquests. But when Patrick looked at Nina, saw the loosened bow in her hair, the scratches on her throat, the eyes that saw everything, he felt the feverish urge to do something foolish.

So he snatched up her hand. “Come on, Scurry girl.”

CHAPTER 5NINA

Patrick pulled me through the courtyard, around the groups of children resorting to schoolyard games in their boredom. I went without protest.

It was hot. I was tired and hungry and sick of waiting. I was fizzling with an anticipation I couldn’t bury. It was a relief to move.

I realized too late where he was leading me. His fingers curled tightly into the back of my hand and pulled me down the side of the building where several children sought shade and the servants of the National House smoked. There was nothing here but more sandstone perimeter, more ivy climbing the limescale walls, more dust and dirt underfoot. The lane was filled with horses and carts and wagons of all sizes. Drivers bellowed at one another to make way as they came and went, trying to barrel through and around to make their next delivery. Craftsmen, every one of them.

“We’re not s’posed to be down here,” I hissed, pulling back at Patrick’s hand.

He turned, winked one of those startling eyes and smirked. “You’re not scared, are you?”

I gave him the most derisive look I could muster. “What are we doin’?”

“Gettin’ somethin’ to eat. I’m starvin’.”

I was, too. “If we’re caught, they’ll throw us out!”

Patrick stopped as a door to our left opened, and we dropped to theground, protected from view by the crates stacked precariously along the exterior wall. The servant who exited did not look our way. They whistled to the driver. “You next!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Lord, that was close.”

But Patrick’s eyes were plastered to that open door, the servant with his back turned, the space between. His face took on a frenzied gleam.

My eyes widened. “Patrick. Don’t even think it.”

“Chicken,” he whispered on a grin.

“I’m not achicken.”

“Then get your wits about you, Scurry girl. On the count of three. One—”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Two.”

“You honestly think I’ll follow you, don’t you? Do I look stupid?”

“Three.” Patrick dropped my hand, saluted me, then hurdled the crates and sprinted through the open door, disappearing within.

“Shit,” I breathed. There was absolutely no sense in following. So many people came and went, Patrick was bound to be caught. Boys were truly idiots. He’d likely smacked straight into the chest of a copper when he stepped inside. His wrists were probably in irons. He’d be taken back to the train any moment.

It was very well forhim. Patrickwantedto be sent back out into the brink. What did he care if the House rejected his right to a siphoning? Perhaps it was what he sought—a way to avoid the gamble altogether.

It occurred to me then that perhaps Patrick was afraid. What if he took to the idium and it revealed him as an Artisan? He did not speak of home with a stiff jaw the way I did. No, he spoke of home as a place he belonged. What if the idium revealed he didn’t?

Perhaps I’d leave him to this poorly hatched plan, to his train and bad fortune. What did I care, after all?

The moments passed, and he did not reemerge. The door hung open, and the servant who’d exited it seemed engaged in a heated argument with a driver. No police officer hauled Patrick back out into the dust.

Go back to the courtyard, I told myself.Before someone sees.But I stayed and I waited. My heart galloped.