Donny sighed. “Well now, you can waltz back down the line and tell ’em we got none.”
“No,” Tess said abruptly. “No. In fact, none of you breathe a word of it.” She paced the length of the pub. Isaiah whined from the corner. He’d done so endlessly in Patrick’s absence.
Tess’s tongue clicked. “You’ll tell ’em the bluff is needed here for our wounded, and in Dorser after their raid. Tell ’em it’s a matter of duty between us now. We’re Union. Remind them of the fuckin’ creed, if you have to. It’s a favor we’re askin’,” Tess said. “And doin’ the leader of the Miners Union a favor ought to be motivation enough.”
Scottie sighed. “They know Patty’s been taken, Mrs. Colson. It’s in the newspaper. They named Kenton Hill.”
The news sounded to Donny like a siren. A warning.
“It’s more delicate now,” Scottie continued. “They know where we are, that we’re vulnerable.”
“If we don’t promise ’em somethin’, Ma, they’ll soon come lookin’ for it themselves.”
“Fuckin’Dunnitch,” Tess muttered darkly. “Always with one fuckin’ hand out.”
“Dorser is another story,” Briggs added. “It seems Patrick promised them a whole lot o’ bluff after their raid. Told ’em if he didn’t show up with it, then he was dead.”
There was a strangled kind of silence. No one voiced the possibility that Patrick might indeed be dead.
“We told ’em it was business as usual, but I’m not sure we left ’em with much confidence,” Briggs said. “And their toll was much greater than ours.”
Donny felt a tiredness come over him. He imagined Dorser and Dunnitch on the fringes, closing in. Gunner in his bunk, crying for bluff, the infirmary stacked with wounded fighters, the kitchen behind the bar with not a single vial of bluff.
At that moment, Tess’s coughs racked the air.
Donny stood. “Remind the Dunnitch members of the time Patrick ran their coppers out of town,” he said. “And if they still have their hand out, cut it off.” He took his coat up, wrapped it around his shoulders.
“There’s the cows and the chickens that can be brought to market,” he continued. “It’ll hold us over until Patty gets back. Until then, its business as usual, boys,” he said. “Plenty that needs doin’. Otherwise, he’ll have our heads.”
CHAPTER FOURTEENTHEO
In the dead hours after midnight, Theodore remained in the National House rather than return to his father’s estate. Some Crafter curled over the driver’s bench atop a coach parked on the drive, waiting for him to emerge.
He wouldn’t. He stayed instead by Nina’s side while she slept, her wrists shackled to the iron bed frame. An overly decorative quilt covered her to the throat, and Theo pulled it higher still. She looked softer this way.
It wasn’t chivalry that kept him here, but quite the opposite. His father’s manor had a dozen empty rooms all with portraits of his ancestors looming on the walls, and they watched his every move. The walls listened. They saw each failing and triumph, and at one point in his life, he’d cared about little else. Eventually, though, it had all started to feel backward. The triumphs felt more like a cost. How long had he ignored that pit in his stomach?
Surely it meant something, that sickness. It shouldn’t feel so foul to win.
The door opened, and a steel-jawed maid stepped around the guard to offer him tea.
Theo frowned. “No, thank you,” he said. “I didn’t call for tea.”
Her eyes shifted to the tray she held. “I ought to leave this here… in case,” she said, setting it on the bedside table and muscling a cup and saucer into his hands.
He took it reflexively and saw that a piece of paper was caught between them.
“I’ll leave you be,” said the maid. She couldn’t seem to close the door behind her quickly enough.
Theo set the cup down and pulled the paper free, reading the message scrawled on it.
The Alchemist has asked to speak with you.
Theo frowned once more. He wondered what could be said between them at this late hour.
Nina slept on in her deadened way, and Theo sighed. He knew he oughtn’t lock himself in a room with a man who wanted to flay him.
But then, perhaps he deserved to be flayed.
