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Farther north, a different train with an asthmatic whistle pulled to a stop at Kenton Hill.

A boy named Patrick Colson boarded with his breath held, wiping sweat from his hands onto the seats. He waved once to his brothers, to his mother, and silently vowed he’d return tomorrow.

The train pulled away with a jolt, and the boy sighed and pressed his back into the wooden bench, swore quietly, curled his nails into his thighs until they bit.

He watched home slip sideways through the window and felt the distance like a slow amputation. A simmer of dread that emerged at breakfast now boiled over.

Beyond the clatter of the tracks, he heard the train’s farewell whistle, and it sounded like the signal of shifts changing in the mines. His dad and older brother always worked the second shift, never the first. When Patrick returned to Kenton Hill tomorrow, he would join them.

Miner’s blood, through and through—black with soot, like his father, and all the fathers that came before.

And therein, this journey was redundant for Patrick.

He didn’t need the Artisans in their capital city to tell his fortune.

What he needed, very badly, was to return to his mother, who waited at the bay windows of a black brick building.

He needed to be among those close walls and low ceilings.

Back to the yellow grass hills. To the mills and canals and the great gaping holes in the earth that swallowed men and spat them back out.

He needed to be waiting by the whistle in the morning when the night shift ended and ensure his father and brother were spat out with the rest. He needed to be there if (God have mercy) none came back up at all.

At that moment, the worker’s whistle was sounding all over the continent, in dozens of different towns, while dozens of different trains battered across tracks toward the nation’s center.

Much like Nina of Scurry, Patrick ignored the frenzy of children.

But the Kenton boy did not sleep. He rubbed his nose subtly to catch tears before they fell over his lip.

He stifled the sick in his belly with anger, jutted his chin, stared straight ahead.

He dared the bloody Artisans to try and take him away to their fucking school.

They had everything in the world already.

They couldn’t have him.