Page 17

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 held The Trench Tribune in 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.

The symptoms of craftsmanship were accurate enough, but what most Artisans ignored was the cause.

Crafters were born to parents without means.

Often, those parents died young. The children worked at an early age for little pay, subject to occupational hazards an Artisan would never face.

They medicated themselves against the trauma, the injuries, the knowledge that the next day would bring them nothing better, and if they survived to the right age, they eventually raised their own hungry children.

It was a cascading line of falling bricks that built the brink.

I scrunched the newspaper into a ball and threw it aside, though it did little to quell my trembling. The headlines still appeared before me when I blinked.

MINERS UNION TAKES STRIKE INTO SIXTH WEEK

TERRANIUM FAMINE FEARED

CLAIMS OF IDIUM CORRUPTION NOW RAMPANT

FAMED ALCHEMIST MIRANDA MILANY TAKEN BY INFLUENZA

THE LAST ALCHEMIST, DOMELIUS BECKER, MOVES INTO HIDING, SAYS SOURCES

But no mentions of any specific names or places. Just vague references to the Northeast or the brink towns, or miners in general.

I swallowed thickly. Clenched my hands.

In a few hours, I would graduate from the National Artisan School, and just as I had on the fated day of my siphoning ceremony, I felt a shiver of catastrophe travel up my spine. I was suddenly twelve years old again, awash in terror as Aunt Francis gripped my arm.

She would be in the audience today as I read my fellowship oath and received a scroll from a tower of identical scrolls that prescribed my status as a Charmer, my medium of earth, and my academic ranking of high order.

And then I would officially be an Artisan. Someone who existed outside these walls. Perhaps this was the source of all my terror.

I wondered, and not for the first time, whether I still would have slipped that vial from my pocket six years ago had I known then what I did now.

Had I known that the stories of corruption would leak down the rivers and canals into towns spilling over with Crafters; had I known the country was on the knife-edge of revolution.

If I’d known then that my reserved part in a likely civil war was to be its artillery, perhaps I would have unstoppered my given Crafter’s vial after all, for that little din that Lord Tanner once spoke of was now a roar, even if he pretended to be obtuse about it.

I tied the ceremony cape at my throat—it perfectly matched the blue of my skirt, my stockings, the fake idium in the bottom of my trunk. It billowed out just past my elbows and no lower, leaving the Artisan brand uncovered on my forearm—a stark, blister-red Idia with her fanning hair.

The accumulation of my life was packed inside the bulging case next to me. A meager sum of clothing, shoes, journals, sketches. It would be packed into a coach and taken to an undisclosed location. A location I would soon be transported to, just as soon as I’d received my fellowship assignment.

The safe house will only be for a short while , Lord Tanner had told me in Dumley’s drawing room.

An earth Charmer is quite a valuable thing, Miss Clarke.

One that many would covet. We wouldn’t want these rebels getting their hands on you, now, would we?

Best to err on the side of caution and wait for all the dust to settle.

I wondered if Domelius Becker, the last surviving Alchemist in the trench, would be waiting in this “safe house” with me, both of us now the only one of our medium. How long would it take for the “dust to settle”? It seemed to me that dust was a growing storm.

The city was riddled with the effects of the strikes. The refectory meals had grown sparser as farmers left fields untended and didn’t return. Deliveries weren’t made. The coal supply was being rationed carefully. Even bluff was hard to come by, with only a single Alchemist left to siphon it.

It was rumored that the next siphoning ceremony would be postponed—that there wasn’t enough idium left in reserve.

To me, it seemed even the exterior of the city was showing its first cracks before its inevitable fall, and yet the Lords went about their business as though its foundation weren’t quaking.

Just a precaution. These dark times will come to an end soon enough , Professor Dumley had assured me just yesterday. And with you assisting in the House of Lords—an earth Charmer!—why, the Miners Union might as well lay down their banners now.

I thought of those Lords with their polished tabletops and fine china cups, and wondered if they truly needed my assistance.

I thought of those miners, so desperate to escape the life I had narrowly escaped.

I thought of this school, which I’d come to love, each corner of it intricately beautiful.

I thought of collapsing mines and children left to scour the streets for food.

I thought of a boy from Kenton Hill with blue eyes, and I wondered if he’d survived these past years or suffered the same fate as most men born in the brink.

I thought of disappearing. I dreamed of it almost every night, in fact.

I deliberated until the voices and faces and headlines pendulumed, and cracks spread on either side of my skull, and then I pushed a pin through my hat and left my room behind, biting the inside of my cheek until it bled.

The theater was full to bursting, and I was saddened by the idea of leaving it for good.

The stucco-plastered ceiling was carefully embellished in cherubs, rose gardens, the gates of paradise.

I’d heard the finest opera singers cast their voices into the ether here, seen ballerinas thrown through space and land on the tips of their toes.

I’d heard compositions and poetry and the cries of a boy in a costume simulating grief.

In the velvet-walled staging hall, I listened to the rising voices of the audience beyond the curtain. The noise climbed over the rigs and lights and found us waiting apprentices, soon-to-be fellows. It raised gooseflesh on my skin.

Young men and women were separated for their graduation. It was tradition, they said, for the gentlemen to go first. I suspected the separation was more an afterthought. Women hadn’t always been welcomed here.

“Nina?”

I jumped, heart clanging against my ribs.

Theo appeared at my side, his fingers already wrapping around mine. “Shh,” he warned, eyes darting to a custodian checking names off a list. “Come with me.”

Theo pulled me out of the line into the corridor, and like a fool, I followed him, swelling with hope.

We only went as far as the corner, where the L-bend of the hall became a series of doors for backstage preparations. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and kept his grip on my hand. My fingers tingled in his.

“I wanted the chance to… to wish you luck,” he said, hurriedly. “And to say goodbye, I suppose.”

Hope fled. Theo could see it leak out of me, I was sure. His eyes tracked the way my shoulders fell. I didn’t have the fortitude to hide my disappointment.

I ached all over.

It had been weeks since he’d cornered me in a garden and told me that circumstances had changed. That he’d changed his mind. That he was so very sorry.

I didn’t understand how he wasn’t aching. It had been weeks, and I ached still.

“Well,” I uttered. I did not recognize my voice. “Goodbye, then.”

He sighed and looked away, and finally, finally, he showed some of the torment I felt. He squeezed my hand, his eyes pinched. “It’s for the best, Clarke.”

“Is it?”

He grinned sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

“Is that what your father told you? Your mother?” I dared to ask. The words had crouched and readied themselves each time I’d passed Theo in the halls.

He frowned. “We’re only eighteen,” he said. “If… in two years’ time we still feel the same way for each other—”

“What do you want, Theo?” I cut him short, for surely he wanted something other than to say good luck and goodbye.

His stare softened. “Clarke, I—I only wanted to check that you were well.”

“I am.”

“And that there were no hard feelings.”

A cheerless laugh bubbled up from me. “There are no feelings at all. You made that clear.”