He tipped his head back to the wall again. Crossed his arms over his chest as though the matter were closed. “And you’ll mind your mouth when you speak to me of your mother, son. You hear me? ’Fore I knock your teeth out.”
The same hollow threats from Patrick’s childhood. He’d never followed through on a single one of them. “You haven’t asked about them,” Patrick continued. “Gunner or Don. Two years, and you ain’t got the wherewithal to ask.” He looked over at Nina. Not his family, nothisat all. Still, he heard her slow breaths draw into her chest and said, “If I had a wife waitin’ somewhere, there ain’t a thing I’d think about more.”
To that, John said nothing.
“I took the liberty of havin’ Polly write to Ma and the boys,” Patrick said now. “I told ’em you were alive and well. It’s a mite of what they deserve.” Then he turned away, unable to think of his father, of his mother and brothers and Kenton Hill a moment longer.
The tunnel came up into a stinking culvert, as far from Hoaklin and Kenton Hill as one could get without crossing the Gyser River.
Lavnonshire had somehow evaded the grasp of winter. It remained humid, the air thick as soup, gulls still swooping lazy circles over the sea. It was a lean-to town, structures half-rotted unfolding to the cliffs, the streets narrow and uneven. When the wind rolled in off the ocean, it would pick up stray cats, discarded rubbish and blow them down the lanes, but as much as it battered the walls of Lavnonshire, they never folded. The mortar between bricks was mostly eroded. Everything smelled of salt and fish innards. An interminable roar harried the ramparts and the cliffs, drowning out the drawls of fish mongers. Lavnonshire hardly changed. It seemed condemned to churn with the ocean it bordered. Not even a war could halt it.
Theo came out of the tunnel looking ashen. He held his side as though he were holding in his organs, the bandage bled through. Patrick and Nina held most of the man’s weight, but with every step, Theo grew more tight-lipped, more drawn.
“Where are we?” Nina asked, blinking into the assault of light.
But it wasn’t Patrick or John who answered her. It was Polly.
“Lavnonshire,” she said breathlessly.
Patrick recalled, from some cavity of his memory, that she’d professed to have been raised here. It made sense, he supposed. Lavnonshire was a strange collection of Crafters and lower-ranked Artisans. He frowned. “In case you’ve got ideas of visitin’ old friends, I’d remind you there ain’t any ships left in Lavnonshire that still leave the dock.”
Polly raised an eyebrow. “There are no old friends,” she assured him. “Just a mother and father who’d be embarrassed to see me darken their doorstep.”
Patrick heaved Theo onward. “Why? Did you send an army after them, too?”
Polly looked off to the distant rooftops. “I’m not exactly a prized Artisan daughter,” she said. “I was supposed to return home with accolades, not a dismissal.”
Accolades, status, social repute—the things of value to an Artisan. Perhaps the mines weren’t the worst fate one could face in the Trench.
“Where to now?” Nina asked, taking up Theo’s other side. He groaned as she lifted his arm over her shoulder. The culvert emptied out into a dust yard, weary-eyed Crafters picking out metals and bones left to burn in hearths. It was astonishing what some tried to burn. The poorest Crafters sold the bones to glue factories. The fabric could be washed and reused. The metals melted down and traded in. Dust yards were only good for scraps, for meetings of a dark nature. For hiding.
There were several gaunt Crafters here. They barely paid the group any mind as they passed. One kept their business to themselves in a dust yard.
Ahead of them, though, was the thrum of Lavnonshire, and it would be full of infantry and police watching the docks, ensuring the fishermen strayed no farther than the immediate coastline.
“There’s no Union-owned establishments here,” Patrick grunted, heaving Theo along.
“What about Leethrow’s?” John asked, turning abruptly. Leethrow was a butcher and a neutral. He’d given over the deed without much persuasion back when Patrick was still green. He still remembered his father striding in and holding a meat hook to the man’s eye.
“He’s in the wind,” Patrick responded. “Scarpered two years ago.” Right around the time John had been captured.
John cursed. “Slippery little weasel, ain’t he?”
Patrick didn’t argue. The man had been paid handsomely every month for his indenture, but had also brought two daughters into the shop each day. It was likely he’d valued their safety over money.
“I have an idea,” Nina said now. The sun had turned her hair golden, her cheeks distractingly pink. “Though there’s no telling if it will be safe.” She grimaced and looked directly at Theo, and he at her. A silent message seemed to pass between them.
Patrick felt something primal rise up and bare its teeth.
“Mrs. Trunk?” Theo asked.
It was a name that meant nothing to Patrick, but Nina nodded.
“Who is Mrs. Trunk?” Polly asked.
“When we were apprentices, Professor Dumley used to bring us both here. ‘Field work,’ he’d call it. Sometimes, we’d stay with… an acquaintance of his. An antiques shop proprietor.”
Patrick gritted his teeth. “Is she a swank?”
