Page 52

It took them seven years to catch me.

In the watery lanes of Delfield, an entire contingent of infantrymen in their navy blue uniforms chased me all the way to the ramparts. At the spearhead was a man who struck me so hard with his baton, I did not wake for an entire day.

When next I opened my eyes, I was in the National Artisan House, albeit not a part I recognized.

A nurse hovered near the door, and the second I roused, she disappeared through it like a startled cat.

There was an open cupboard of medical supplies, a spongy cot mattress beneath me, a tall, stained window, a persistent pounding against my skull.

My head felt two sizes too big, a burden on my neck.

When I rolled it to the side, I caught my reflection in a tin cup waiting on a side table.

It showed a girl with a pair of blackened eyes, her head swathed in white bandage.

Get up , I thought. Go. Get out of here.

I only managed the titanic effort of swinging my legs over the side of the cot, of sitting upright, before the door was thrashed open.

Tanner walked in, and only then did nausea find me, cresting and breaking in great rolling waves. I leaned over the side of the bed and vomited.

“I’ll have the nurse return shortly to clean that up,” the lord said, pins gleaming on his lapels, buttons polished. I thought he looked thinner, older. “Hello, Nina Clarke.”

I said nothing. It had always been best to say nothing.

He tilted his head, perused me from head to toe. “Good God. You are revolting, aren’t you? Those who lie with dogs come away with fleas, I suppose. You’ve been sorely missed, my dear.”

I spat the remnants of bile before him onto the checkered floor.

“Come now. Surely your foray into our world left you with better manners than that. I remember you to be quite the young lady. I must admit, the first time I laid eyes on you, I was surprised.”

“Surprised I didn’t walk in on four legs?” I rasped.

“Ha! Quite,” he laughed. “I had no idea they still taught children in Scurry to speak in more than monosyllables. But you defied my expectations, Nina. And again in your schooling, when you continued to impress your professors! It bothered me quite a bit at first. I’d expected you would fail, and I don’t usually like to be wrong.

” He paused, and in the silence I closed my eyes, shuddering inwardly.

“But in your case, I was pleasantly dumbfounded. A girl from the brink, excelling as a Charmer? And the very first earth medium we’ve been blessed with in more than a hundred years!

” He sat on the nurse’s chair by the cot, brushing loose hair away from my eyes.

I wanted to bite his fingers clean off, spit the bones out.

“We had a nice time together, didn’t we?

We shared tea and biscuits, and you were such an enthusiastic little thing. ”

“I was a child ,” I croaked. Small orbs of light were forming in my periphery, closing in.

“You were. And what followed was an extended period of adolescent rebellion.” His hand closed around my jaw, angling it up toward him. “And now you are home, and ready to live up to all that idium you stole.”

My eyes were shut again, weren’t they? Better this way, to speak to the dark. “I won’t—I won’t bury people.”

He sighed. “I know you sympathize with them, Nina. It is difficult to ignore your roots. But you, of all people, should find some opportunity in all this. A chance to put right what was wrong. A chance to take revenge, for all the wrongs done unto you .”

I shivered. “Shut up.”

“Your father, may his soul rot—he does not deserve your sympathy.”

“Shut up.”

“He was too far gone to notice you. Wasn’t he? Always too dosed or drunk to protect you the way a father should.”

That swelling tide rose within me again. A river of vomit, though not a speck of it seemed to find the lord’s shoes.

“And your mother, she was already in the wind,” Tanner shook his head sadly. “God says vengeance is righteously sought by the aggrieved, Nina. And I believe vengeance is yours.”

I shook my head, brain matter sloshing to either side.

If I’d been capable, I would have carved a hole in the earth right then and pitched us both into the crumbling black.

I slumped toward the window. “I’m not fighting your damned war,” I mumbled.

“Best put me in an iron cell and hope I don’t find a way out. ”

He chuckled. “And what good would you be to me there? No. I won’t be your jailer, Miss Clarke. But I might be your executioner.”

Pain lanced in every direction. I realized his thumb was digging into my temple, where the flesh seemed most tender. He worked a groove into the skin, and I cried out.

“I will drop a ten-ton stone on your head, and the world will have lost a very accomplished Charmer. Let me make this perfectly clear. If you are of no use to me , then I will make you useless to them .”

Fear closed in. It eclipsed my mother and father and Scurry and cells made of iron.

Tanner’s mouth was at my ear. “So, you will join our side. The side you so brazenly stole onto, and you will be of use. Yes?”

I swallowed. Nodded.

And what did it say of me, that I gave in so quickly?

“Good.” He released me again. “That’s good.”

He let me sit there and pant and shake, a scolded dog bent to subservience. He patted my leg. “Don’t worry. I won’t be sending you off to crumble mountains onto every poor mining town in the brink. We’ll still need them, after all, once this war is won.”

Was I crying, or was blood running down my face?

“This nation does not run without those mines, I’m afraid.

A fact the Craftsman haven’t been able to accept.

There is only one particular town I wish to bury, Nina.

And it won’t be easily squashed. The Miners Union wants you badly enough that I believe if I dangled you out in the open, they’d bring you right into the fold. ”

Which town? Surely any town was a price too high. “And once I’m there?” I asked. “What then?”

“Well, we’ll need to ensure you won’t scamper off, won’t we?” He turned his body to the door. “Nurse?” he called. “Would you bring in our guest?”

From the hall came a soft whimper, a shuffling of feet across tiles. The nurse appeared in the door again, and with her she dragged the arm of someone unwilling. Someone who, though frail, resisted.

She had the air of a person whose mind had departed their body.

She stared off vacantly, at the walls and ceiling but never at me.

Her light hair had been cropped short, and still the curls matted.

Sharp lines cut across her forehead and webbed the corners of her mouth.

Her feet were bare and her toes curled in nervously as though they wished to burrow beneath the floor.

It took a long moment for me to recognize her. After all, she’d been a younger woman at last glance, and me, a girl of just eight.

“Ma?” I whispered. And the pounding in my head doubled.

She seemed unable to unstick her eyes from the wall, but her bottom lip trembled.

“Ma,” I said again, as forcefully as I could. “Ma? It’s me . It’s Nina.”

There was an air of death about her, as though it might reach out and snatch her away at any moment. Tears shook on the pink rims of her eyes.

Still, she didn’t look at me.

I made to move toward her, and she flinched.

“Alive and well,” Tanner said. “I do enjoy a reunion.”

But she was far from well. Far from the woman meant for bigger places. Now it seemed those bigger places had devoured her whole and spat her back out.

She was both a stranger and my first love.

I turned to Tanner and spat in his face. The way a miner’s daughter should. “What have you done to her?”

He wiped a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, barely managing to hide his fury. “I’ve opened my doors to her. She’s been with us for some time now, haven’t you Ms. Harrow?”

And still, Rose Harrow said nothing, did nothing. Beneath her breath, it seemed she hummed something; a child singing to soothe herself, a song I vaguely recalled.

“Ma—”

“Quiet little thing. Sneaky, even. I looked long and hard for your parents when you were a child, Nina. The moment your name came across my desk, in fact, and I saw through that half-cocked plan Francis Leisel devised. Your father was simple enough. A Scurry terranium miner. But your mother? She was nearly impossible to locate. You’ll never believe where I found her. ”

Another shiver, a whimper. Rose Harrow hummed louder.

“She was working as a servant, right here in the National Artisan House!” Tanner clapped his hands as though it were all a gag.

“There was an understanding, you see, between the Crafters that served us and kept sensitive information from public knowledge. Hold your tongue, do your duty to the House, and we may reward your family members with opportunities Crafter-born children rarely receive.”

“Idium,” I whispered.

“Correct,” Tanner nodded. “It seemed your mother had been under our remit for some time, for your sake, obviously. A selfless mother, indeed.” He looked over Rose Harrow with none of the fondness his fair words suggested.

“Though her service to us did not necessarily mean we had plans for you, it appears you made those for yourself, Miss Clarke. When I found her, she was relieved of her position immediately, of course. With you in the Artisan school, I couldn’t help but think the proximity would prove too tempting for her.

She was much louder on that occasion, if I remember.

The histrionics of women have always confounded me.

You’d think she’d be pleased to hear what her daughter had become, but alas, she fought the policemen who escorted her to the train station and all the way out of the city.

“I found her right where I left her, in the squalor of Trent, but not quite as loud anymore, and only half a wit remaining. It seems the brink has not been kind to her.”

Nausea swelled once more. I saw my mother sewing buttons on a knitted sweater, kicking rocks into the riverbed. We’re made for bigger places, you hear me?

“We’ve become well acquainted, your mother and I,” Tanner continued. “And I plan to keep myself acquainted with her while you fulfill your duties to the House.”

Fresh tears slipped over my cheeks as I stared as this shadow of my mother. I felt the weight of every wall cave in on me. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, that’s where the complication lies, Nina. You see, we need you to find their headquarters, of course, in order for you to bury it. But you’re not to do so straightaway! You’ll need to bide your time. Earn their trust.”

“For what?” I asked. “Why earn it only to break it?”

Tanner curled his fingers into his trouser legs. “They have something that belongs to us.”