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I bristled, my face heating. “Maybe you’re just a lousy conversationalist,” I said. “Or an arrogant prick. Either one.”

He broke out in laughter then. True laughter. “Oh, it’s definitely both, but I was just pulling your leg. I don’t mind your prattlin’. I just wanted to see that scowl again.”

So, we both liked to get beneath each other’s skin.

“Why am I here, Patrick?” I asked stiffly.

I didn’t like the way he made me feel off-kilter.

Like he might pull a mask from his face at any moment.

“You offered false promises of freedom, and then locked me in a room. We knew each other once. Why not just ask me for whatever you needed? I might’ve said yes. ”

He breathed deeply out of his nose and took his time to respond.

He had a coin between his fingers, though I didn’t see where he’d drawn it from; he simply flipped it from knuckle to knuckle.

“You know how long it took me to find you, Nina?” he asked, voice quiet. “Six months. Six whole bloody months.”

The answer surprised me and didn’t. It surprised me that he’d been so intent on finding me. It didn’t because I’d been a ghost. “I move often.”

“You do,” he agreed. “And you’re smart about it.

Careful. Don’t use the same name twice. Don’t use the same clothes, neither.

Find new work wherever you go. Never leave your apartment unless you need to.

Never talk to anyone.” He looked up at me through his eyelashes.

“You were a difficult find, Nina.” That same weariness seemed to shroud him again.

“For better or worse, you’re the only one with your particular skillset.

I wasn’t banking on a few hours of childhood kinship to see the deal through. I need you, Nina.”

“To help you win the war?” I asked, my eyes rolling.

His jaw flexed. “You don’t think we can do it,” he guessed.

“I don’t think anyone wins.”

“I disagree,” Patrick said. “The winner in the end is the one with the most idium.”

“Then what do you need me for?” I implored, my heart thudding viciously in my chest. “I’m no Alchemist. Tell me why you brought me here, what you’ll have me do. And don’t just say ‘tunnels and secrets.’?”

He caught my stare. “Here it is, then. I need a route into the capital where they won’t see us coming. I need your help to free my father, and I need to know where Lord Tanner sleeps at night, so that I can sink a bullet between his eyes before anyone knows I’m there.”

If only it were so easy.

I shook my head and looked away. I wasn’t a fool. There was more, and he didn’t intend to disclose it. “You want my help digging a tunnel into the city,” I repeated.

“For now,” he said. “You have a good understanding of the National House and its layout. I’ll need your help with that, too.”

“And how do I know you aren’t planning on gunning down every Artisan man, woman, and child on the other side? I won’t help you if it’s just blood you’re after.”

“So you do have sympathies, then. I suspected you might.”

I frowned. “Artisans and Craftsmen die just the same,” I said. “Their blood doesn’t spray any different. I can hardly tell it apart anymore.” And I had seen far too much of it already. I ripped a knot of grass from the earth, then closed the crater it left behind with nothing but a thought.

Patrick watched. He swallowed before he spoke. “No one will die that needn’t. I’m not mad with revenge.”

“Aren’t you?” I asked, incredulous. “Sinking a bullet into Lord Tanner sounds an awful lot like revenge.”

“My plans for revenge are scratched into the walls of my throat, Nina. I’ve never spoken them aloud, but I assure you, they are there. And they don’t involve the innocent residents of Belavere City.”

“Your union had no such reservations when you blew up the school,” I reminded him and swallowed thickly.

“It’s different now.”

“How?”

“Because I’m in charge.” He said it with such finality, as though the topic brooked no further argument.

“And what of Domelius Becker?” I asked next. “What will you do with the Alchemist?”

His posture changed. Up until that moment, it seemed he had been leaning in closer and closer. Now, he blinked, turned back to Kenton. “That ain’t your concern.”

“It is currently everyone’s concern,” I countered.

Patrick smiled carefully, in a way that was meant to cover the anger in his throat, and I was immediately reminded of him as a boy spitting in the dirt.

“If it’s idium you’re worried about, I’ll ensure you have what you need, when you need it.

Past that, I won’t be discussing alchemy.

” He turned to stake me again with his stare. “And you won’t be askin’.”

I looked away instinctively, but I wasn’t done. “What I want to know is, if you have the Alchemist, then why haven’t you made yourself an entire army of Artisans?”

He stroked Isaiah’s head as he answered. “Do you know how much terranium is needed to make one dose of idium?” he asked.

I realized I didn’t. I hated that I didn’t.

“Three pounds,” he said in the wake of my silence. “The Lords’ Army is currently fifty-thousand strong, and a fifth of them are swanks.” He looked over at me. “We’d need—”

“Fifteen tons of terranium,” I said quietly.

Patrick’s eyebrows rose, impressed. “And that’d only match them in magic. Not in number.”

I sighed. “The mines wouldn’t yield even half that.”

“And what could be mined is already heavily guarded by the House.”

The thought brought me comfort, though I’d never tell him that outright. I quailed to think of what so much unregulated idium could do in the midst of a war. I let out a breath. “So, you have the Alchemist, and the House has the terranium. A stalemate.”

“For now,” Patrick said rigidly, as though a bolt were tightening his jaw.

And therein lay those future plans, after he’d delivered Tanner a bullet.

“If you have no stores of terranium,” I said carefully, sensing a looming end to the conversation, “then where did the idium come from? The dose you gave me when you thought me too dumbstruck to refuse?”

Patrick’s eyebrows rose. “Would you have refused?”

I pressed my lips together. Shook my head reluctantly.

He grinned wryly. “I didn’t mean any coercion by it. I only meant it to quell the aches and pains. I hear idium has wonderful healing properties—”

“How did you get that terranium, Patrick?” I asked once more, and for a moment, it seemed as though he wouldn’t answer.

But he clicked his tongue. “By doing terrible things,” he said. “But you already knew that, I’m sure.”

I rolled my eyes and turned away from him, imagining him stealing into mines and smuggling lumps of ore out in his pockets. It was better than the truth he alluded to, which probably involved blades and guns.

For a moment, we sat in tense silence, a bevy of questions still sloshing around my mouth.

When I next looked over, Isaiah had settled his great head on Patrick’s knee.

Patrick looked near asleep, head tipped back once more, the sun turning his skin golden.

He was ruinously handsome. I’d be a fool to deny it.

I said what had perched on the tip of my tongue since the conversation began. “We’d all be better off without it.”

Patrick’s eyes opened slowly, though he did not look at me.

I continued. “If it were up to me, I’d take all the terranium on the continent and I’d blow it to pieces.”

A short laugh escaped him, then another. In the intervals between, he seemed to expect me to take it back. When I didn’t, he said, “You can’t possibly think so.”

I shrugged. “Terranium—idium—it divides us. It’s a guillotine. Those in power will always use it to exploit the rest.”

“And what of those sick or injured?” he asked. “You’d deny them bluff as well?”

“It’s a plight on thousands of households across the Trench,” I countered. “There are other, less toxic medicines. Besides”—here, I gave him a pointed look—“are Craftsmen not the strongest among us? The hardiest?”

He smiled ruefully. “That’s what they taught us, didn’t they? When we were kids. Artisans were the thinkers, but the Craftsmen?” He gave a low whistle. “They were the people of action. No one more capable of toilin’ than a Crafter: the only one with the bones and muscle to withstand the hardship.”

It was the creed of the House of Lords. The mantra of my Scurry schoolroom teachers.

The Artisans honor Idia’s mind, but us? We honor the rest of her.

Who will shift the Earth on its axis, once the idea has been conceived?

I’d rather be weak-minded than weak-boned , my father had sniffed. Ain’t gonna think me way out of the grave, am I?

“You surprise me,” he said eventually. “I thought you of all people would see the good in idium. You likely saw the very best of it in that school, in that city. I remember how big your eyes were when we were kids in that courtyard.” He was careful not to look my way. “You drank it all in.”

“There was much to be amazed by,” I said. “Before it all blew up in smoke.”

He appeared remorseful for a moment, and I sensed he had more to say on the subject, about the good of idium and how he’d change the world one vial at a time, but instead he said, “You must have been lonely, travelin’ around all those years by yourself. I imagine it’s why you hate the silence.”

I felt suddenly exposed and crossed my arms tightly. “I kept myself occupied.”

“Not so easy for a lady like you to stay hidden. To avoid pickin’ a side. It’s a wonder you kept it up for so long.”

“A wonder, indeed.” I couldn’t stop that needling, burrowing into my flesh.

“Makes me wonder why you bothered at all.” His eyes tracked a convoy of sluggish clouds. “Why would you turn your back on the House of Lords, on Tanner, on all Artisans, to go on the run? I can only imagine what they must have asked of you, for you to take off like that.”

You would do what is necessary to protect this city, would you not?