“Deep enough,” he said, seething. His breath seemed hot as blood, flooding out his nose an inch from his father’s. He squeezed his hand tighter around the scruff of his shirt. He was stronger than his father now, he realized. When had the scales tipped? “Mention her mouth again,” he said. “And consider yourself short a son.”
John’s grin melted into something much more sinister. Something he generally reserved for dark business. “So that’s the order of it, then?” he asked. “Your Charmer girl first, then the rest of us.”
Patrick realized too late that he’d been baited. He’d seen his father do it before, and he should have seen it now. His hand loosened. “She’s on our side,” he repeated. “My loyalty is to the fuckin’ Union. As its always been, and so ishers.”
“But is she willin’ to do what we are, son?” he asked. “Is she willin’ to shed herself of the softer parts to get the job done?”
He thought of the way Nina clenched her teeth together now. How she lost herself, at times, to the churning of her thoughts. How anger bloomed across her expression even in the quietest moments. “She’s been stomped on enough times,” Patrick said. “She’ll do what needs to be done.”
Patrick let his father go then, noticed the way he sagged on the wall for a moment before straightening, as though he, too, was surprised to learn just how much stronger his son was.
Across the way, two Artisan women had stopped to gape at their confrontation but hurried off when Patrick scowled at them. The jeweler’s watches showed a quarter past the hour. On the limescale steps, Polly appeared.
Patrick glanced once more at his father. “If there comes a time when Nina wants no more to do with the Seam, then I’ll cut her loose,” he said plainly. “And we’ll mine it ourselves. And if you try to move against me on it, Dad, I will beat the breath from you.”
John shook his head as though there wasn’t a river of boiling anger funneling beneath the surface. “I stayed away too long, I know,” he said to Patrick. “I left you with a lot of… burdens, and it pained me to think of you shoulderin’ it all without me. But perhaps you’ve grown fond of ’em. Perhaps it’s a threat to have me back. Is that it, Patty? Is it thechairyou want?”
Patrick looked at him with as much venom as he was capable. “You know it ain’t,” he said. “Of all people, you know it ain’t.”
John made a noise of disbelief. “When did you start turnin’ away from me, son?” he asked. “When did you start seein’ me as your adversary, eh?”
“The moment you gave my name to Lord fuckin’ Tanner.” He looked his father straight on and saw him flinch. “Yeah,” Patrick muttered darkly. “Tell me, Dad, what father sells out his own son?”
Silence, just whorls of smoke, ash dropping to the toes of John’s boot. Polly retreating down the lane.
“It weren’t me,” he denied, and yet it was quiet, uncomfortable. “Lord, Pat…” But he found nothing more to say. His mouth hardened into a grim line.
And Patrick nodded, feeling as though he’d only ever seen his father from afar, that a veil had been lifted. He turned his back on John Colson and walked down the street in the direction Polly had gone, feeling a weight settle itself inside him.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONEPOLLY
A Crafter she didn’t recognize answered the door of her family home.
She was dressed in typical maid attire, her bun ribboned, blouse broached at the throat, apron around her skirt, and her eyes averted.
“I’d hoped to call on Mr. and Mrs. Prescott,” she said to the woman.
“And who should I say is calling?”
A moment of hesitation, and then, since there was no avoiding it, “Their daughter.”
She was let in to the sitting room immediately thereafter, and Polly assumed that the Crafter maid must indeed be newly employed. Their previous maid would have known not to let her over the stoop.
It wasn’t the grandest home, and certainly not the most affluent parish for an Artisan family to live in, but her mother’s jewelry shop was across the street, and their father would never be accepted in a more prestigious part of the Trench, so Polly’s parents remained in this same lane, where Polly had grown up before she’d been made a Scribbler.
The same hearth, the same mantel with its same candelabra. The same portraits and paintings on the walls. The same books and piano and tea cart. She sighed wistfully.
Her father, Reginald Prescott, entered and closed the doors behind him, lips tight. “Polly,” he said by way of greeting.
He was a proud man, or perhaps a defensive one. After all, he was a blackCraftsman from the brink. The Artisans whispered that he’d swindled a marriage from a perfectly respectful Cutter woman and sullied her good reputation. He lived each day clamoring to maintain propriety, the appearance of perfection, to bridge this unbridgeable gap.
Having a daughter denounced by the House? No, that would not do.
“Your mother will remain upstairs. She does not wish to see you,” he said. He did not take the seat beside her or gesture for Polly to resume hers, and so the two stood awkwardly across from each other, a tea cart between them.
Polly nodded, felt acid in her throat.
You’ll need to work harder than the rest of them, he used to tell her over and over.Twice as hard as any other apprentice, to be accepted.
