“Penance is a medicine of its own kind,” his father answered, adjusting his cane so that his hands rested atop it. His eyes pierced Theo’s. “As you’ll soon learn.”
Theo did not fear his words. In fact, he couldn’t even bring himself to disagree with them. “Is that your great plan?” he asked boldly. “To have me lashed on the citadel steps and claim I’ve been saved? Do you think the Trench will believe I’ve been cured of my beliefs?”
“And what beliefs are those, Theodore?” his father asked, his tone darkening. He tilted his head to the side. “Are you a bleeding heart for the Crafters? A Union sympathizer?”
Theo’s mouth popped open, then closed again. No, not only for the Union. There were those on both sides with whom he sympathized.
His father scoffed mirthlessly. “You have no idea of your own convictions, boy, do you?”
Theo boiled. He and his father had never come to blows. Their sparring was the verbal kind. Boxing was for Craftsmen. But Lord, how Theo wanted to belt him now.
“You let them go,” Theo said in a voice that seethed. “Why?”
His father looked back at him drolly, as though even this disappointed him. “As punishing as it has been of late to be your father, I do not wish for us to be at odds. I know you care for the girl. You’ve made that abundantly clear to me.”
“No. That isn’t all of it,” Theo pressed. “There’s something else.”
“There’s always something else, Theodore,” Lord Shop intoned.“Decisions like these take time. Careful planning. My aim was simply to retrieveThe Stewards’ Testament, the translator, and of course,you. The Alchemist and the earth Charmer are desperate and young and rash. I didn’t much want to incite the kind of gunslinging that would surely have ensued once the rats realized they were cornered.”
Polly breathed through her nose like a bull, hands shaking.
It didn’t make any sense, or perhaps the intricacies were now beyond Theo’s capability. “You had enough fire Charmers to take them all hostage. Enough leverage to tip your hand. Why wouldn’t you have them arrested?”
Lord Shop considered Theo as though he truly could not fathom what had become of his son. He crossed his legs and looked up into the expansive sky. “You know, the thing about rats is that they’re entirely difficult to catch. One might set up a hundred traps with the most enticing bait, and they’ll find a way to steal the bait and slip through the cracks. They’re smarter than they seem. For though they might be vermin, they are…determinedwhen properly motivated.”
Theo tried to follow the words, tried to see what lay between them. This was how an Artisan spoke. In encryptions and mazes and tightening spirals.
Lord Shop spoke on. “One might drive themselves to insanity trying to eradicate an infestation for good. The better thing to do is wait. The rat in the walls soon runs out of bait to eat. It grows frantic, it eats its young, its own foot. Soon, the rat dies. It does the work for you.”
Theo stood, despite the moving wagon, eyes wide and wild.
“We’ve arrived,” his father announced suddenly, and the wagon came to an inelegant halt.
Theo staggered and nearly fell.
With that, Lord Shop gestured to the opening of the wagon, where the uniformed men waited with their sullen faces.
The train station was empty and still but for the steaming plume of a train engine, and the soldiers who waited on its small platform.
“Don’t be stupid, Theodore,” Lord Shop said, rebuttoning his coat. “Your moment of rebellion is over. Do you understand me?”
As though following some invisible summons, the soldiers waiting at the end of the wagon gripped the handles of their batons.
Theo clenched his teeth, tasting blood. He nodded stiffly.
The train, empty but for them and a contingent of soldiers who walked like wraiths between the compartments, labored full-tilt from the moors into marshlands. Wide stretches of water passed, and though it looked glassy and picturesque in the late light, Theo knew the depths were murky, full of eels and whiskered fish and beady-eyed mud-dwellers. Water was sometimes deceptive and sometimes not. Sometimes it rolled and crashed and warned a man of its true nature. But mostly, it reflected something far calmer than what waited beneath the surface.
Lord Shop poured him and Polly a cup of tea. He took up his own and looked out the window of their private compartment, apparently taken with the view. His cane rested beside him. He spoke as though Theo were accompanying him to the countryside for the weekend.
“I often wonder why our ancestors did not build a city further south. The winters are far more pleasant here. I’m afraid you’ll be returning home to a freeze.”
Theo ignored this. He watched his father’s face for its tells. He knew something thrashed beneath the surface.
Polly, however, did not know to wade in carefully. “Where will you take us?” she said, her sobs giving way to something more fierce, as though she’d finally been divested of her fear.
“You’ll speak when spoken to, Scribbler,” Lord Shop said around the lip of the teacup, but in a voice that radiated danger. “Though I daresay you cannot help it, can you? Entitlement is such a scourge upon your generation.”
Theo bid himself to stem his anger, to watch.
