Page 29

The canals were soupy and pungent through the industrial buildings, but when they spilled out into the hills, they transformed.

The brick coping became rocks. The water cleared a little.

The farther I followed, the more color I could discern.

Moss, cobalt, rust. Eventually, when the town was behind me and the vein of water wove through shallow valleys between knolls, I caught the upsets of small fish disturbing the surface.

Away from the grime of humans, water was just water.

The land was beautifully devoid. There were barely any trees, just wave after wave of hills and their dancing grass, all shades of gold. No wildflowers. No blue sky. Just ghostly green mountains in the far distance, and the ribbons of water running through hand-hewn troughs.

These canals were Artisan-made, I knew. Trenched by an earth Charmer, no doubt, who knew the ways to curb the possibility of erosion. Miles upon miles of canal networks, all intersecting and diverting to every corner of the continent. They were the channels of most Belavere trade.

But this canal, the one whose edge I toed with bare feet, this was Idia’s Canal. The very first carved into the earth, by the daughter of God herself. I wondered why Idia had chosen Kenton Hill, of all places, to bestow this first gift.

I wondered if she peered down on this place now and regretted it.

Idia’s Canal, to my horror, had been intentionally dammed. Tons of rock and dirt blocked the water’s exit. No boats. No tracks or trains. No way into Kenton Hill except on foot. It was no wonder the House of Lords had never come looking here. It was an impossible trek.

Unless, I supposed, you knew where the tunnels were.

I walked a narrow path to the top of a hill, where it seemed many had come to contemplate. The grass made way for me, well acquainted with visitors.

The earth felt different in this place. I could feel a subtle shift beneath my feet. It was minute—a warning of something bigger. Greater. I wondered if there were tunnels beneath this exact place, if the disturbance I felt was not intuitive but mechanical, man-made.

In my schooling, I’d learned that earth differed wherever one walked.

Sometimes it slid underfoot where one couldn’t see it, the silt beneath the surface forever rearranging where the seawater and wind persuaded it.

In the city, the earth hummed, magnetic and pulsing.

Here, though, in the brink, the trench bowled out into widespread land, and the earth was ravenous.

Every now and then, it opened its jaw and swallowed men whole.

I sat on the hill’s peak, but I did not look out into the wide-open spaces and marvel at the trench. Instead, I turned my body toward the town of Kenton proper and shook my head in disbelief. I wondered what my professors would say to this.

The wind responded, colder than I’d expected, harsher, blowing through the stalks and sending ripples over the ground. The seasons were colliding. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back.

How I hated the quiet. The solitude. Seven years, and it clung to me still.

I wanted volume and laughter and the tinkling of many voices talking at once.

I wanted meals in the company of others whose elbows rested alongside mine.

I wanted to reclaim familiarity with someone who knew who I was.

I wanted and wanted and wanted but had learned to ignore it.

Hiding was safe.

I was made of both parts that were logical, careful, and parts that clamored to be something loud and brilliant, and even after all this time, I hadn’t learned to reconcile them. The two sides parried in my mind in an endless loop.

No one can be trusted. Don’t get close. Run.

Listen to the ground. Can you hear it? Why does it tremble?

Heavy panting mercifully broke the quiet. A great shaggy head appeared over the cusp of the hill.

And I smiled, despite myself. “Hello, Isaiah,” I said.

The great dog bounded to me, his tongue dripping into my hand as he sniffed. He galloped away again just as fast, returning to the man who appeared ten paces behind, his peaked cap hiding his face.

I didn’t bother to stand. I squinted at him instead. “Patrick,” I said evenly. It was difficult to restrain inflection. I wanted so badly to be indifferent to him, unintimidated. Unafraid. Once, he’d only been a brash boy with a double-looped belt.

The scowl failed to mar his features. Cold eyes and all, he’d grown to be as finely carved as a sculpture. Tall, imposing, and wholly masculine.

He came to a standstill, breathing heavily, then raised his eyebrows as though I should be the one to speak next. The sun broke through and kissed his tanned skin, the two of them old friends.

“A walk?” he asked. It was that same flat tenor he’d used in the tunnel, the one that resonated all the way to my bones. “You wanted to take a walk?”

“I did,” I smiled sweetly. If it irritated him more, then good. He’d tried to lock me up by myself inside a dark room, after all.

“Your lodgings not to your likin’?” he asked. Isaiah begged at his feet.

“They’re lovely,” I said. “But I do like to walk.”

“Alone, apparently.”

“Ah.” I nodded. “I did want to stay with the boy, but he’s awfully skittish. Kept insisting we return.”

Patrick hissed something through his teeth, then took a flask from his waistcoat and unscrewed the top. He seemed irritable. Heated. It amused me, though I couldn’t explain why. “Seems a little early for liquor.”

“No it fuckin’ ain’t,” he murmured, and brought the flask to his lips. Patrick had a long swig, then took his time stashing it away. All the while, he stared at me with a puzzling expression. It was not a friendly one.

He clicked his tongue, then said, “Well, shall I throw you over my shoulder and drag you back? I’ll confess, it’s what I fantasized doing on the way over here.”

Confidence fled. I swallowed.

“Your cheeks have gone red,” he said blandly, shaking his head. “God. That school turn you chaste?”

“It’s resentment.” I quickly turned my eyes away, tried to banish the heat in my face. “I don’t take well to kidnapping.” I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t, in fact, drag me back to that room with its damned cherry blossom walls. I curled my fingers into the grass.

He stalked toward me then, curved over me, eclipsing the sky, and a thrill fluttered through me. But instead of hauling me upward, he gave a resigned sigh and took the space next to me on the ground, resting an arm on one knee. Isaiah settled in front of him with his head on Patrick’s shoe.

He stared out over the town’s rooftops. “You can relax,” he said. “Wouldn’t be wise of me to put hands on a woman who could bury me alive, would it?”

“I suppose I should thank you for the idium,” I said slowly.

He gave no reply.

I wet my lips and spoke again. “It was quite a risk. Who knows what I might’ve done?”

He leaned back on one hand. “Call it a show of good faith. As I said, I need you ready.” He closed his eyes for a moment, lifted his face to the sun. The pinch in his expression seemed to melt away.

And I stared at the column of his throat, the stubble that darkened his jaw, the shadows beneath his eyes.

“Was it everythin’ you expected?” he asked.

There were lines that joined the corners of his mouth to his nose, more between his eyebrows. It was easy to be lost in the pathways of his face. “No. It’s nothing like I expected.”

He nodded, opened his eyes. “We filled it in when Tanner declared war.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Idia’s Canal.” Patrick nodded downhill, where the water met the dam. “It’s why you gave Sam the slip, ain’t it? Why I had to chase you all the way out here.”

I shifted uncomfortably, trying not to look at him. “You needn’t have chased me at all. I’m not running.”

“No,” he said, stroking Isaiah’s head but looking at me. “You’re not.” It seemed as though he wanted to say more but didn’t. The silence stretched.

I couldn’t help but let my eyes stray over him. “You look wretched,” I lied. “Tired.”

“Didn’t sleep. Had some things to tend to.”

Something about the way his tongue flicked made it sound ominous. “What kinds of things need tending in the middle of the night?”

He waited a beat before answering. “There’s always a problem to fix around here.”

“Like what?”

I knew immediately that I would not be privy to whatever “problems” he saw to in the late hours. Not yet. “Leaky pipes,” he said.

I wondered how much he controlled, how many people he was responsible for in this town he’d barricaded from the rest of the world.

The skin under Patrick’s eyes was purple and heavy. Perhaps it was exhaustion that stopped him from hauling me back to Colson & Sons. In any case, he seemed content for now to settle into the grass, leaning back on his elbows.

A wordless tension fell.

I twisted my fingers in my lap, fumbling for something to say. “How does the water reach the pipes?”

Patrick raised his eyebrows. “It collects in tanks on the roof. The pipes connect to the tank.”

“But how does it heat?”

“Roof tiles heat it in the summer. In the winter it passes through a boiler.” He went quiet again, in no hurry to say anything, to go anywhere. He only watched me, absentmindedly petting Isaiah.

“What of the light—”

“You don’t like the quiet, do you?” he interrupted, his voice swallowing mine whole. There was a grin to his tone, though it did not materialize on his face. “You prattle even more than I remember.”

My mouth snapped shut. I scowled.

That grin broke across his face, though he seemed reluctant to let it. “The glare is just the same, though. About as dangerous as a loaded fuckin’ pistol.”

That smile, the one he tried to hide, made him startlingly new, changed the hue of his eyes. I tried not to pay too much attention to his lips. “You don’t like women who speak?”

“Can’t fuckin’ stand them, truth be told,” he said. “They have a way of talking over the stuff they don’t want you to hear.”