“I said, get movin’!” the copper emphasized, stepping past his chums and shooing Patrick as though he were a man who could be shooed. “Or get out of the fuckin’ way.”
But Patrick stepped toward the man with intent, dropping his hold on me, and it only served to raise alarm in the others, who widened their eyes.
And before Patrick’s punch landed, I watched recognition dawn across their faces.
First of me, dressed strangely in a bowler and a minister’s cloak, hands shackled and frantically grasping for Patrick’s winding arm. Then for Patrick himself, who by now must have been pictured in bulletins throughout the city.
His fist came down on the copper’s face like a hammer, blood erupting from a split in the man’s eyebrow, his knees buckling, and Patrick caught his collar and wound his arm back again, then again. Before his colleagues could react, the man was bludgeoned and limp, and Patrick was rearing for a fourth blow.
They wielded their batons, catching Patrick’s back and shoulder, and he barely seemed to register their attempts.
The crowd dispersed around them, men and women backing away from the chaos with shrieks and clutched throats. More police were funneling onto the dock—whether summoned by the racket or sent by Lord Shop, it couldn’t be known, but in they came, shoving would-be passengers out of the way, black helmets bouncing above the sea of people, closer and closer.
Suddenly John was there, pushing Nina back behind him, wielding his blade and pulling a copper off Patrick by his collar, and I watched him jam the knife into the man’s shoulder, and retract it just as fast.
Gunshots next, from no particular direction, and I dropped to all fours with the rest of the crowd. Shrieks rent the air. I heard my named called, the false one. “Get Clarke!” they bellowed. “Hold your fire! That’s the Alchemist!”
And then hands were at my shoulders, around my waist. Men lifting me off my feet as I fought to free myself, wrenching my body in every direction.
“PATRICK!” I shouted over and over.
Another sound was growing. Beyond the shrieks and the ring of shots fired, above the wet thwack of Patrick’s fists and John’s grunts, a roar emerged.
The canal was groaning, rising impossibly high onto the docks, harrying feet, then ankles. Passengers tumbled backward and fled. The dock, thick with spores of rot, turned slick, and the men who tried to carry me away slipped and fell.
All breath was pushed from my lungs, but I had the wherewithal to scramble through the rising water, to flee.
“NINA!” came a shout.
Waiting in the canal was a narrow boat arriving around the bend, the water churning beneath it. The moored boats had crashed into the pylons, capsized onto the dock, or else were paddling away as quickly as the driver could muster.
Standing at the wheel of this newest boat was Theo.
“RUN!” he shouted again, eyes wild, hands outstretched, the water rising by his will.
He pushed funnels of it at officers who rushed toward me, pushing them back, but there were too many, and a larger wave would endanger the many innocents still slipping and wading on the dock, trying to escape, some laden with children.
And here again was John, his arm reaching toward me, Patrick close behind him, both of them bloody.
I reached toward John’s hand as though it were a life raft, and as it lifted me from the wash I felt relief, even as that rough hand slid around my throat. Even as it spun me so that my back crushed to his front, and the cool metal of the blade pressed under my jaw.
Fear delayed, then stampeded in.
John held me with a viselike grip. “Stay calm,” he murmured into my ear. Then he lifted his chin. “GET BACK!” he bellowed out to the dock, and the policemen froze, dripping wet, confused.
“That’s it. Back away now, boys! Or we’ll have the earth Charmer’s throat all over the docks.” There was a sharp jostle. Patrick’s voice saying,“No! Not her.”Then John’s, growling in return. “Just get in the fuckin’ boat. Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t move!” one of the policemen shouted, eyes bulging. “Lower your weapons!”
Slowly, through knee-high water and under the straining eyes of a bevy, John shuffled me backward. The blade never left my throat.
I tried to find purchase on his forearm, but it was as immovable as stone. And I was as afraid of him as I was of the Belavere uniforms.
“Nice and easy,” John said. “They won’t shoot, hen. Don’t you worry.”
The water receded back into the canals, taking a few officers with it as they lost their footing. And I heard the boat behind me jostle against the dock. Soon I was lifted over the side, and then the dock slipped away, eyes following us uselessly, Theo cursing, John shielded by my own body, and Patrick somewhere on the deck, a stream of hisses emitting from him.
The narrow boat moved faster as Theo pushed the current, and soon we turned a corner out of sight. We were barricaded by high brick walls on either side.
