Patrick heard his father’s voice echoing off the stained glass windows and barren walls of the swanks’ National House.
He’d been confined alone to a strange room. The floors here were checkered white and black, so starkly contrasting they seemed to morph, tricking him. He thought it was likely once a small laboratory. There was a large bench with a basin. Oak shelves and cupboards built into the walls, floor to ceiling. Every one of them was emptied of anything but dust. The hearth was cobwebbed. The window depicted a nude image of a man he assumed was God almighty, though he could not, for the life of him, understand why an all-powerful being would be in possession of such a small cock.
He felt much the way he had felt that dead winter when he was thirteen. He hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept. His head pulsed as though breaching his skull.
He sat on the floor, his back against the shelves, clothed in the same sorry attire he’d arrived in. Several feet away, a sack of terranium ore awaited him, just as it had in his mother’s kitchen.
He had yet to open it, to see its contents, and yet he knew what it was. Terranium had a certain beat, a vibration. He felt it from where he sat. They used to send Alchemists into the mines to feel out the deposits of ore, to tell the diggers what to aim for, back when Alchemists were a dime a dozen and it didn’t much matter if they were blown to pieces or buried under.
The door hadn’t opened in some time. In a moment of useless ire, he’d thrown his shoulder into it to no avail, forgetting the bullet buried in the tissue.
Tanner was due to visit any moment, Patrick thought. He’d returned regularly these past two days, flanked by guards. The most recent had been his longest stay yet.
“You worsen by the hour,” he’d said. Patrick hadn’t risen from his place on the tiles, and Tanner hadn’t ventured past the doorway. He’d nodded tothe sack that remained untouched. “I’m sure some of that ore holds the bluff you need.”
A bubble of laughter climbed up Patrick’s throat, more menacing than mirthful. “And what makes you believe I intend to recover?” he murmured. The tiles distended again. He pinched his eyes shut.
“I’m afraid death is not an option, Mr. Colson. In fact, I’ve brought a gift.”
And from behind him came a middle-aged woman in Artisan blue robes with wide, fearful eyes. She stepped around Tanner hesitantly, looking back at the lord for approval.
“Letty is a Smith of lead,” Tanner explained to Patrick. “She’s here to pull that bullet from your shoulder. It may be wise to bite down on something.”
But there was no time. The woman named Letty raised a shaky hand in the direction of Patrick’s shoulder, and he immediately felt the sensation of something twisting, pulling. He hissed, cursed, his hand flying to his arm.
Bit by bit the bullet wheedled free, finally flying into Letty’s hand. The woman’s pallor turned abruptly green, and she dropped the bullet onto the floor, her hand now covered in gore. She trembled delicately at the sight of it.
“Thank you, Letty. You may go.”
Letty’s shoes clacked off the tiles as she hurried out.
Patrick’s breaths had turned rapid. He closed his eyes and waited for the throb of his arm to slow.
“You might like to know that Nina Clarke is well. All that blood was… unseemly, I know.” His nose crinkled. “But if you and Miss Clarke do as is required, there won’t be a need for any more bad business.”
“Harrow,” Patrick grunted. “Not Clarke.”
Tanner regarded him curiously. “I’m surprised you should care for her at all.”
And to that, Patrick had no argument.
“She was a fair actress in her schooling years, according to her professors,” Tanner ruminated. “I suppose she must have been rather convincing. Sheisuniquely beautiful, I can admit. There is an… allure there.”
Patrick tasted something horribly metallic. His jaw rolled.
“Still,” Tanner continued. “I did not imagine the feats she’d be capable of. She found her way right under your skin, didn’t she?”
Patrick pictured himself on a meat hook, his torso flayed.
“Yes,” Tanner nodded, as though he could see right through to Patrick’s skeleton, every nick and fracture there. Every weakness.
“Women have long been man’s ruin.”
Patrick slid sideways, unable to hold his spine straight another moment. His temple sought the cold tile.
“I need an Alchemist, Mr. Colson. Quite badly.” He went to nudge the sack of terranium with his shoe. “You have the burden of being the only living man who might be able to siphon idium from whatever sad stores of rock remain.”
“And if I don’t?” Patrick murmured. He could not be sure the words did not blend.
