“Then he’s cursed,” Tess said coldly. “And I’ll be aggrieved enough for the both of us.”
I didn’t much blame her.
Patrick and John returned to a tension so fraught it crackled in the air. Patrick seemed to ready himself for something. “Right,” he said. “Tell me the trouble.”
Scottie straightened and adjusted his belt. “There’s been some developments, Pat—”
“Not you,” Patrick said blankly. His eyes were on Theo. “I got a feelin’ this story comes from the dead man.” It was said with no malice, no heat.
Theodore exhaled in a gust. “Did you find the Seam?” he asked, eyes turning from Patrick to me.
I hesitated. Nodded.
Theodore inhaled sharply. “And is it now exposed?”
Patrick carefully watched the emotions playing across Theo’s face. “Yes.”
The room seemed to withdraw, shrink.
“Idia save us,” Theodore said, the stalk of his neck falling. He ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “You have to bury it,” he said. “As soon as you can. Tonight!”
“What?” I blurted, frowning at the fear in his face, the dread pulsing from him. “Why?”
“Because any moment, my father is coming on a train,” said Theodore urgently. “He’ll be bringing an army with him.”
Patrick’s expression was neutral. “We’re well aware,” he said. “But he’s too late. By the time he figures out where to go, we’ll have already taken control of the Seam. If Polly is dead, then—”
“She’s alive, Pat,” Donny said. “She’s banged up, but she’ll live. Teddy brought her to Kenton.”
I let out a breath of relief I couldn’t make sense of. I turned my eyes to Theo. “She’s all right?”
He nodded. And what were the odds, that they’d both made it out? That the train had crashed at all? “You derailed it,” I guessed. “Over the marsh?”
He nodded again, slower this time.
His father could have died in that crash. He and Polly might have, too. My throat tightened. “Does your father know where we are?”
He shook his head. “I can’t know for sure, but he seemed confident that he’d soon learn, Nina. It was like he meant it to play out this way exactly. He wanted you to find the Seam. He wanted you to dig it up. That’s why he let you and Patrick go back at the library. He’s only waiting to hear word of your whereabouts. The way he was talking, he’s got ears and eyes everywhere.” Theo looked to Patrick. “For all we know, his army is sitting on a stalled train in the next parish, waiting to funnel in and take control of the Seam.”
“It ain’t a fight we’re ready for, Patty,” Gunner interjected. “We’d lose. Badly.”
Patrick didn’t look away. Not even to me, who stood with my heart lodged in my throat, feeling as though a wire had been tripped, the seconds ticking down.
“It was a swindle, Pat,” Gunner said somberly, grasping his brother’s shoulder. “That bastard needed an earth Charmer to dig up the terranium for him. After that, Nina becomes expendable. And the House will string you up and take you back to the city.”
Patrick looked at his brother darkly. Then he went to retrieve the coal bag he’d left by the door. He hefted it up and set it down on my father’s kitchen table, making the timber legs groan. Terranium ore tumbled out.
A breath shuddered through the house.
“There’s enough for every man and woman in the brink down there,” Patrick muttered. “Enough in here for every Crafter in Scurry.” He looked more violent than he ever had.“Let them come.”
“Patty, it won’t be enough!”
“Then we’ll call on our comrades from Dunnitch and Dorser. Put out the call all the way to Baymouth if we have to!” Patrick looked to each of them. To his father, who said nothing. “The revolution ishere. Everything we’ve prepared for. It’snow.”
Donny looked stricken, eyes shaking in their sockets. He spoke with apology. “Patty… we’ve lost the comrades in Dunnitch and Dorser.”
“In Hesson, too,” Gunner added. “And Trent.”
