Page 77

It took an entire day for Patrick to resolve that which had been left to wait.

Repairs to the eastern mine had begun, though he would need to consult Theo regarding the integrity of the soil and the water table beneath.

It was the water Charmer he sought now as night lengthened over Kenton. The first flurries of snow fell and evaporated before they touched the ground. Smoke curled from the coal bins and rooftops. The lanes were vacant at this hour, everyone retiring earlier to evade the cold.

Patrick whistled while he walked. He found he didn’t so much mind the bite in the air. Kenton, at that moment, seemed a slow humming beauty. As a child he’d thought the same, even when it had been more mud and shit than cobbles.

He imagined Theodore would be in his room, licking his wounds. He wondered if the boy had rid himself of all those angry bees in his head, or if he remained as pent up as he’d been the day before. Patrick hoped the knock to his ego had set him straight.

The pub would have quieted by now, only the loneliest of patrons still hovering by the bar. Nina, he hoped, would be in her bed already. He wondered if she was yet asleep.

Thoughts of her carried him the rest of his journey, around bends and onto Main Street, within view of the hotel. He felt his chest lighten considerably at the sight of its amber windows. The day was finally at its close.

“Patty!” came a voice, followed by rapid footfalls. Patrick turned around to find Sam hurrying over the trolley tracks. One of his arms was raised. In the clutch of his fingers was a sealed piece of parchment.

“Been waitin’ for you!” Sam greeted him, and he pressed the envelope into Patrick’s hand. “The water Charmer asked me to give you this.”

“Theodore?”

“Said it was important you get it tonight,” Sam nodded. “Gave it to me outside the scrapyard.”

Suspicion surged. “The scrapyard, you say?”

“Aye. Scottie says he weren’t in the tunnels today, like he was s’posed to be. No one’s seen him. Gunner and Donny are out lookin’ for him now.”

Patrick’s stomach hollowed.

“Do you think he’s taken off?” Sam asked, rocking lightly from heel to toe.

Patrick looked down at the envelope in his hand. It was sealed unevenly. “Thank you, Sam,” he said. “Get out of the cold.”

Sam nodded. “?’Night, Pat.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and strode away.

Patrick frowned at the letter for several moments before opening it. The lamps above offered an aura with which to see.

He recognized the bulletin immediately. He’d seen it a hundred times in towns all over Belavere Trench. A likeness of Nina, her aliases written above, the reward for her capture below.

It was old and faded. Its crease lines were deeply entrenched, as though the paper had been opened and refolded many times over. Perhaps carried in the pocket of someone who badly sought the person portrayed on it.

Along the borders was a frenzied ink scrawl.

Patrick read the message once, twice, a third time, his heart seizing in his chest with every pass.

Colson,

It isn’t you she wants.

It’s the Alchemist.

Long live Belavere.

His knuckles turned white.

But by the fourth pass, he was sure that the words were desperate, hysterical. The grand finale of a man turned inside-out by jealousy. Of course he would throw in one last wrench before departing.

The water Charmer was running. Sore hearts could fracture loyalties, and Patrick should have seen it coming. He cursed.

By now, Theodore could have taken a tunnel headed in three different directions.

He would send Scottie, or Otto. They were the quickest underground.

They’d bring him back one way or another.

And if Theo had made it onto some distant train or narrow boat?

Well, Patrick had enough contacts throughout the brink. Enough people who owed him a favor.

The boy knew of their plans. And they needed Theodore if they were to break through the Gyser. Even if Patrick had to drag him, Theodore Shop was coming back.

Patrick took his lighter from his pocket and considered burning Theodore’s last words. The man was riddled through with jealousy. He’d say anything to come between them.

He let the flame hover just beneath a corner for a moment. Two moments.

But he didn’t burn it.

He closed his eyes and saw Nina’s likeness, watching him curiously.

He thought of her mother, locked away in Belavere City.

He thought of the strangled quality in Nina’s voice when she’d begged him to just give up Domelius Becker, concede the Alchemist in exchange for their loved ones.

Had she thought him callous, to dismiss the idea so thoroughly?

Nina trusted him. She had chosen him.

“She trusts me,” he repeated, trying to let go of the rotten tendency in his gut that made him only ever see the world coldly, that made him believe the worst in people.

He crumpled the bulletin and shoved it into the breast pocket of his waistcoat, against his pounding heart.

It isn’t you she wants.

It’s the Alchemist.

It wasn’t true. He refused to believe the worst in Nina Harrow.

He knew her.

He shook the idea from his mind and stalked into Colson’s. He did not regard a single person as he rounded the bar, went through the kitchen and out the back door, his eyes on the little brown house in the courtyard.

Patrick entered his mother’s kitchen, shucked off his coat, and let it drop to the floor. Tentatively, he pulled the blackened coin from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. The head of Lord Tanner on one side, a canary on the other.

For a long time, he simply stared at it, then he tossed it and let it fall into his palm. The canary glinted back at him.

He sighed deeply, shaking his head again. “I trust her,” he mumbled to himself, then replaced the coin in his breast pocket.

He reached the Scribbler’s cranny just as a piece of parchment from the top of the stack crinkled, ink appearing where there had been none.

Other scribbles from the day were waiting, but his eyes glued to the cursive now winding slowly across this latest one in a hand he did not recognize.

The lettering was slow. Deliberate. The words took an eternity to form.

But form they did, right before him, in punishing bold ink.

And every letter made him cold.

To the attention of Patrick Colson, with urgency.

Trouble with the Alchemist.

Please attend at earliest.

Patrick dropped into a chair. No name attached to the scribble.

It isn’t you she wants. It’s the Alchemist. He felt the words burn in his pocket.

And in his mind, walloping from some corner he’d bidden it into, came Nina’s voice. You wouldn’t make the sacrifice? Not even to save your own men? Your own father ?

Slowly, as though it had lain dormant and waiting, a voice of reason rose its head. It berated him for being a fool.

He took the scribble and tucked it alongside Theodore’s message, then left his mother’s kitchen and carried his unwilling body back to the hotel, his eyes on the windows high above.

At the bar, Otto and Scottie sat talking softly. Both looked up at the sight of Patrick coming toward them.

“You all right, Pat?” Otto said, the man’s warm features etching slowly in worry.

Patrick spoke in a voice not his own. “I need you tonight, boys. Urgent business.”

Minutes later, Patrick arrived in front of room fifteen without remembering how he’d gotten there. But for the shake of muscle in his legs, he might have sprouted wings and flown.

He didn’t go in immediately. Instead, he bottled the rage slowly brewing, creeping up his throat and filling his mouth. His vision blurred. The door distended. Beyond it, there would be Nina.

She loves me , Patrick told himself, over and over. He knew that, didn’t he? Didn’t it burn in her eyes when she looked at him?

He opened the door to a dark, tepid room. From the bed came deep, rhythmic breaths, hair strewn across a pillow, fathoms of perfect bare skin.

Nina rolled over as he descended beside her.

Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled.

She curled into his side. All the lines of her pressed to all the lines of him.

He let his fingers wonder down the curve of her waist. He felt her breaths lengthen, her languid heart beating reassuringly against him.

And already he felt the call of sleep. His body slackened immediately, expectantly. How easily she could spell him into stupor.

In an alternate world, far removed from this one, he could imagine how she might use that. How she might sneak out into the night like a wraith, knowing he’d been lured to sleep.

But now, in this room, it was unthinkable.

“Long day?” Nina murmured, and the sound of her voice was a vise.

He sighed. Closed his eyes. “There’s been some trouble,” he said. “I had to make some last-minute arrangements.”

She tensed slightly in his arms. “Arrangements?”

“Mm hmm,” he assented. And then he waited.

And for a moment it seemed as though she would say nothing more, and the knots in his chest began to unwind.

“What arrangements?” she asked. “What trouble?”

“Just some things the boys can take care of. I’ve asked Otto and Scottie to see to it.” He opened his eyes to find her expression blank, her eyes unreadable in the dark. “Nothing to worry about.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then she kissed him, warmth spreading from her lips into his, and he was instantly filled with the desire to press her back into that mattress, to taste the entire length of her.

Instead, he let her pull away. He listened as her breaths grew longer, slower.

He dreamed of walls closing in.