In blunt-faced women nursing the injured.
In Polly, her tongue so bitten down she hardly spoke.
And it was in me.
The wind picked up. The last hem of light seemed to surrender to the blanket of cloud. A howling ensued, first through the spines of black-trunked trees, then through my lungs. I let it carry me back the way I’d come, like a hand between my shoulder blades. I felt the whip of snow catch at the backs of my ears and hurried faster.
A feeling of urgency rose, from the ground, the air, and I felt like an animal scenting the first hint of danger.
I hastened, boots sliding, sinking.
Then, from Trent’s belly came the first labors of a dying siren, whirring out once more into a parish devoid of almost everything but its ghosts.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREENINA
The wails grew louder near the river and the graves of Trent’s dead. It swallowed the sound of the door crashing against the factory wall as Patrick ran out of it, his face drawn, eyes wild. They grew relieved when they saw me climbing the bank, using my hands for leverage in the slip of snow.
The factory was a chaos of movement. The orderlies loading shotguns with shaking, unpracticed fingers, moving heavy machines together to barricade the doors and windows. John was boarding them with planks of wood that moved at the will of his mind, pounding nails into them with loud grunts at shocking speed.
“The army?” I asked, Patrick shunting me into Polly’s office. Theo was already inside, his hands tearing at his own hair. Polly had the Stewards’ book clutched tightly to her chest.
“Can’t be anyone else,” Patrick said, and without warning, he stalked toward Polly until she backed herself into a wooden cabinet, the doors clattering. He took the gun from his pocket.
“I didn’t send for them!” Polly exasperated, her lips trembling. “I swear it, Pat!”
“Three to one says you did,” he told her, the barrel poised beneath her chin.
Theo started forward. “Let her go, Pat.”
“Patrick, please. It wasn’t me—”
Patrick gritted his jaw and shook his head. “Odds ain’t in your favor, Pol.” He cocked the hammer. “Not another Scribbler in sight.”
“Perhaps there is,” came the voice of Edith. She stood in the doorway, her hand clutched around the knob. “Did you clear that fuckin’ tradin’ post before you burned it down?”
Patrick’s face paled. He didn’t take his eyes off Polly.
“They leave a Scribbler in every town, Colson. Surely you thought o’ that?”
“You said there were only coppers left,” Patrick reiterated. “I asked, and you said three.”
“Three coppers,” Edith nodded, “and a Scribbler. My bet is the swank was in his bed on the second story, with enough time to send a call for help to the House before he ran off or died in the smoke.”
“Fuck,” Patrick growled, his gun lowering. He paced madly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He spoke to himself with the air of someone completing immense equations.
“We need to leave,” Theodore said. “Now!”
“No,” Patrick said, his eyes closed. “They’ll burn this place down lookin’ for us.”
John came up behind Edith, sweat glistening down his neck and sinking into his collar, beyond him, the last survivors of Trent in flux. “They’re comin’ in from the west,” he said. “The hearths’ve been smothered. But it ain’t gonna take ’em long to sniff us out.”
As though on cue, the lanterns in the factory were snuffed, the candles extinguished. Darkness descended.
The only remaining light came from a match suddenly lighting in Patrick’s fingers.
“I’m sorry” came Edith’s voice, her face only just visible. A collection of disconnected features.
There was the glint of a knife in her hand, and she snatched my arm.
