Page 47

The sun was still high when we breached topside again and spilled out of Margarite’s Modern Ladies.

The air was cool and clean, and I filled my lungs with it.

After six hours, Patrick had called a halt to the work. By then, I’d carved five miles out of the earth, bending slowly around to the south.

My hands no longer itched. My mind was pleasantly languid, the tangles of thought now elongated and buoyant, without much resistance to them. I was afloat.

The other men, Donny gripping Gunner’s shirtsleeve, began their weary stagger over the square and through the brick arch, no words exchanged other than the mention of a pint.

It was a repeat of a memory—men mired in filth from the mines, lighting cigarettes and spilling into the nearest drinking hole.

In my levity, it did not rankle. It felt different, an alternate world.

“Come on,” Theodore bid me, holding his hand out. There was a silent expectation that I would take it. “I’ll take you to your room. Get you something to eat.”

Eat? I wasn’t hungry. I was filled to the brim.

Still his hand hung between us. It seemed second nature to just reach for it, let it cover mine, allow him to decide where I would go.

But the sky. The air. Miles of cobbles and all my rushing blood. The last thing I wanted was to return to my room.

“I think I’ll walk for a while,” I told him.

The hand fell. “Then I’ll join you.”

“No,” I answered, perhaps too quickly. “It’s all right. I won’t stray far.”

His brow furrowed in concern. “I thought you might want to redress. You’re covered in mud.” His eyes flickered down to my blouse.

I quickly crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly worried that if I looked down, I might find it had turned translucent.

“The Colsons won’t like you walking about alone,” he persisted.

“Like I said, I won’t stray far.”

He seemed confused. Off-balance. “There’s a rally this evening,” he said, brow still creased. “They have them every month in the marketplace. I can collect you from your room and take you there.” He didn’t await an answer. “In fact, if there’s ever anywhere you wish to go, I should come with you.”

I wanted to remind him that I’d spent the last seven years alone and survived well enough, but I knew he was trying to be kind. I nodded in acceptance. It seemed he would not take his leave without it.

A twinge of guilt bled its way into my heart that I should want him to leave at all.

“It begins around dusk,” he said, glancing to the horizon. “I’ll be at your door just before.” He placed a hand in his pocket, nodded reluctantly, and meandered away, looking over his shoulder once, then a second time.

“Ah, you broke the poor bastard’s heart,” came a deeper voice. Isaiah was suddenly sniffing my ankles, panting excitedly, and I turned to find Patrick standing on the stoop to Margarite’s. He bent to ruffle Isaiah’s ears. “Good dog,” he told him.

I grimaced. “I suppose you won’t let me walk awhile?”

“We’ve been workin’ underground all day, and you want to walk?”

“Yes,” I said unequivocally. I was pulsing with energy.

“Good god, woman,” he said. “Fine, let’s take a walk.”

“You could always leave me to it.”

“Not a fuckin’ chance.”

Patrick turned to bolt the door before we left, hiding the locks from view for a moment.

I tilted my head, a thought occurring to me. “How many tunnel entrances are there?”

Patrick wiped his hands on a kerchief he pulled from his trouser pocket. “A few.”

I frowned. As many tunnels as secrets, then. “Will I get to see the others?”

“And why would you need to see them?”

Together, we stepped out into the square.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a paranoid man, Patrick. I don’t intend to run away.”

He nodded his head. “Good,” he said. “Might hurt young Teddy’s feelings if you took off.”

“Hardly. And he’s not a boy.”

“Ah, Nina,” he drawled. “We all turn back into boys when it comes to girls.” He patted his pockets with fumbling hands. “Will you be offended if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Goddamn,” he muttered. “You might be the death of me.”

Isaiah bounded ahead of us, apparently keen to be home.

I noticed how quickly we fell in step beside each other. He offered his arm, and I took it, trying not to fixate on the flex of the muscle beneath his sleeve, the warmth emanating all the way through. The sunlight painted him gold.

“Four weeks, Isaiah,” he said quietly. “Four fuckin’ weeks.”

Isaiah, too taken with the smells of the town, didn’t answer.

I didn’t need to ask what was in four weeks. I swept away a clod of dirt from my blouse.

“It was… remarkable, what you did.” He squinted down at me against the cascading light. “I’ve never seen anythin’ quite like it. How do you feel?”

It was hard to answer his question. I inhaled a certain amount of pride. “Like a thousand wires inside me have all been snipped free.”

I smiled. For the first time, the thought of using my medium wasn’t tainted by quiet shame, not with him. Patrick knew it all. He knew exactly where I’d come from.

“It’s been a long time since I leveraged so much magic at once. I’m out of practice.”

Patrick whistled low, then shook his head. “God help us all, then,” he said, averting his eyes.

I was a lit match.

“What of the rally?” he asked now. “Will you give me another chance to persuade you to the right side?”

I rose my eyebrows at him. “I assumed I’d be made to stay behind.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t pick the locks the second my back were turned.”

I only grinned.

He grinned in return, clicked his tongue. “S’pose it wouldn’t be wise, leaving you alone at Colson’s while every man, woman, and horse looked the other way. You’d be a sitting target.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is there truly anyone in this town who would go against you?”

“Can’t be too careful,” he muttered. “But you should come to the rally. Let Teddy take you.”

“Theo.”

“Whatever.”

Suspicion crept in. “Why are you being so gracious?”

He shrugged.

“And why are you letting me come to the rally? Do you think it might turn me?”

“I get the feeling it’d take a lot more than one party to convince you.”

“Party?” I repeated, confused. The only rallies I’d witnessed included a lot of slogan-shouting from an increasingly bloodthirsty crowd. “No politician’s speech?”

He sighed. “It’ll be quick,” he allowed. “After that, it’s just drinking and dancing. If there’s one thing this town can agree on, it’s how to do both at the same time.”

I tilted my head. “Do you dance?” I thought of all those stuffy Artisan School dance lessons to a string quartet in a marble-hewn ballroom. Men with ramrod spines and upturned noses.

“No,” he said flatly. “I only drink.”

We reached Colson’s much quicker than seemed possible, given our slow amble. At the door he disentangled my arm from his, but he did not immediately drop my fingers. His were hot. Burning. For a moment, the pad of his thumb skated across my knuckles.

Once more, I counted the stolen seconds before he let me go. Three, four, five, six.

He blinked rapidly, relinquished my hand.

“Are you not heading inside?” I asked.

He shook his head and put his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you at the rally.”

“I have nothing appropriate to wear,” I told him, my fingers itching once again, though not for their medium this time.

“I’ll have somethin’ sent up,” he said. “Mrs. Colson will bring you supper.”

“Please thank her for me.”

“Nah,” he said, smirking at some joke I’d missed. “Better if I don’t.” Then he nodded once, eyes flickering to mine in a way that made my heart stutter, then stepped back into the lane, dusty coat billowing out behind him.

I stood there a whole minute, waiting for my blood to cool before turning to go inside.