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Patrick paced around the shelves that lined the walls, illuminating small patches as he went with his lighter.

It appeared we were in a storage space of some kind.

It stunk of moisture and fouling vegetables.

There was movement in the corners: Patrick’s light sending rats back into the walls.

Stack after stack of crates were organized in aisles.

All were identical except for the brands burned into the wood, marking their contents: brUNDLE’S CANNERY ; TIMPTON AND SONS CO. ; LIPSHORE LINENS .

He almost didn’t see where the floor fell away. His lighter caught on the edges of the hole before his feet did.

“Stop!” I hissed, my hands outstretched, and I pointed down. His foot hovered over the abyss.

He held the lighter into its depths. Shallow steps led to a cellar’s hatch. An open cellar hatch.

“What do you s’pose they keep in here?” he asked, and I saw that manic stupidity in his eyes return.

“Don’t even think of it.”

But Patrick had already begun to descend the steps. He lowered himself carefully onto the ladder. “We’ve come this far,” he said. “Might as well look around.”

I dithered for a moment, then followed him in.

The cellar was cold, with a floor of compacted dirt. But as for what it contained, I couldn’t tell. Patrick stood with his lighter held high, blocking all else from view. I had to shunt him aside to see.

Shelves and shelves of shallow crates stacked against one wall. The very same crates I’d seen discarded by the siphoning officials’ feet.

“Fuck me,” Patrick intoned. He held his lighter to the brand singed into the wood grain of one of the crates. PROPERTY OF BELAVERE TRENCH , it said. “You don’t think—?”

“Of course I bloody think ,” I rasped, my throat suddenly closing. “Don’t touch it!”

Patrick lifted the lid of one of the crates immediately. He pulled a small vial from its insides, dark viscous liquid sloshing within. “Holy shit,” Patrick said. Then louder. “Holy shit !”

I’d clapped my hand firmly over his mouth in an instant. “Shut up, you idiot!”

Patrick slipped my grasp. “It’s ink .”

“We’re in a storage room next to a siphon’ ceremony , half-wit. What did you think you’d find?”

A clatter above announced the arrival of another, and my blood turned cold.

Yellow light descended into the cellar through the open hatch. “In here” ordered a bodiless voice.

In the space between breaths, Patrick extinguished his lighter.

His fingers made a fist in the front of my blouse and he pulled me sideways.

We tucked into a far, dark corner, where damp-smelling linens hung out of overflowing boxes and concealed the top halves of our bodies.

I prayed the shadows would obscure our legs.

Sounds of movement and harsh breathing came, though I saw nothing beyond the browning cloth. Deliverymen, I assumed, carrying supplies overhead and dumping it where directed. An assertive voice instructed them. “Not there! Over there .”

The interminable thumping of my heart. The shuffle of Patrick’s feet. The feel of his breaths on the crown of my head. My fingers shaking in his. Surely , I thought. If they come down here, we’ll be heard. We’ll be found.

Patrick squeezed my fingers. Hush.

“Idium, sir?” a gruff voice asked.

“In the cellar” came the answer.

My heart seized.

I heard the grunts of a man clambering down into the dark, the dull thud of his feet finding the ground. “Pass it down,” he called.

I didn’t dare look. I sealed my eyes shut and prayed. There was the sound of wood against wood and the music of shifting glass. “These ones got wax seals on ’em.” The man heaved on each word as though he’d run several miles. “Never seen ’em bother with wax. What do you—?”

“Be on your way” was the only response. Footsteps sounded on the ladder and then receded, but the yellow light remained. Was the room above empty? Was it safe to emerge?

Another voice suddenly joined the last, and I jumped. I stepped on Patrick’s foot and felt him wince.

This time, the voice was high-pitched and lilting.

It bounced off the walls. A woman’s heeled footsteps slapped the tiles above as she spoke.

“Thomas, have someone come and collect the clutter out in the hall, the crates are piling up again and we’re not yet halfway through the siphonings. Where on earth are your staff?”

“Bringing in the deliveries, ma’am.”

“Then do it yourself. And bring more vials, if you please.”

The male voice seemed to hesitate. I heard him shift his feet nervously. “Ma’am… the, er… the wax seals , or?”

“No,” said the woman. “We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year, the water Charmer was one of the last. Only brink towns are left.

” A pause, perhaps only half a second. Enough time, though, for my heart to collapse in its cage, for Patrick’s hand to turn limp, for both of our frames to shudder, rocked at the foundation.

“Bring the Crafter-marked vials. With any luck, we’ll be finished ahead of schedule,” said the woman.

The man seemed to start a sentence, then think better. “There’s a girl in the courtyard,” he said. “Small, ginger hair. Thin as a reed. It doesn’t seem like she’s eaten in a good while.”

The woman sighed deeply but not unkindly. “She was fed on the train,” she said. “And she’ll be fed again before she returns to her family.”

“Just seems like one or two of the poorer ones could be spared that life,” the man continued. “It’d be easy enough to swap the vial—”

“Speak wisely,” hissed the woman, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Such thoughts will have you swinging from the gallows, sir. Do you understand me?”

A shuffle. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Only a handful are trusted with this knowledge, and you are paid handsomely for your remit, are you not?”

“Yes, ma’am.” It sounded more defeated this time.

A gentle sigh came, and then, “There have always been those more fortunate than others, Thomas. It is the way of the world, however unkind. Not all can be trusted with power. It must be meted out carefully .”

“Of course, ma’am. I only thought…” His voice trailed off. And whatever Thomas thought was never voiced.

I wished I could see the woman’s face. I wanted to see if it was sympathetic or wretched or uncaring. I wanted to see what flashed in her eyes when she said, “The only thing we may do for those children is pray for them.”

There was the sound of crates shifting, the harsh heeled tap of the woman’s shoes receding. The man named Thomas sighed from somewhere near the hatch. And then his feet came down the ladder again.

I peeked out from behind the musty linens to see him stare forlornly at the crate in his hands, and I realized that he was much older than I’d imagined.

He gripped the sides of the box as though he might crush it, but instead he set it down with the others and turned away.

He climbed up the ladder and closed the hatch. The yellow light evaporated.

Patrick and I were alone again. Stiff-kneed and limp-tongued.

It took several moments for Patrick to lift the linens and step out. Longer before he remembered to come back for me. He untangled me from sheets in the dark, and I did not have the presence of mind to help him.

The lighter flickered, and a flare appeared in the space between his chin and mine, turning us both blood orange.

“What did she mean?” I asked him, much in the way a child asks an elder.

His lips looked white, even in the glow. “I don’t know.”

“Crafter-marked.” I looked to the crates branded PROPERTY OF BELAVERE TRENCH . “She said ‘Crafter-marked.’?”

Patrick held aloft the vial he’d plucked earlier. Atop its cork was a red wax seal that barely coated the vial’s neck.

I thought of those children I’d seen in the hall, uncorking their waxless vials of idium and being declared Crafters.

We’ve got just about all the Artisan children needed this year.

“What does it mean?” I asked again, desperation leaking through. My stomach bowled. The lighter sputtered out.

“Patrick… what does it mean?”

Somewhere inside me, a screw wound tighter and tighter.