A short laugh barked from him. “You’ve got some spirit left, at least,” he said, then pitched my hand off to the side as one shoos a fly. “We’ll have to teach you to box properly.”
I descended to the deck then. Melted to it. Buried my face in the darkness of my hands.
After a moment or two, I felt John join me, his hand patting my shoulder. “For what it’s worth, hen. I’m sorry for your poor ma. There ain’t any justice in it.”
Tears plinked off the wood. I wished he would stop speaking.
“And I apologize for the knife,” he added. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
And that was perhaps the only truth. There was no meaning to any of it.
War was a gentlemen’s game. Women were just the currency.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENNINA
In the first dregs of daylight, we drifted into Morland canals.
Our narrow boat was not followed or intercepted by any other vessel along the way, but I did not voice this strangeness. The canal network was an ever-expanding web of junctions. Perhaps the authorities thought it a waste of time to try and track us down.
I was growing sicker with every sway of the boat, and I suspected fever would take hold soon. The flesh above my bandage was rosy and swollen—the bandage itself still damp with canal water.
I was on the deck as we passed the first Morland buildings. They competed for the skyline, towering above on rickety foundations. Floors and floors of iron rail steps and thin windows. Morland was an ancient province, densely populated, and much like Belavere City, beloved for its fine architecture.
Still, the Artisans preferred to only visit, rather than reside in Morland. The surrounding canals carried a smell up to even the highest of floors, the lanes were too tight, the cobbles buried under layers of dirt, and the churches upstaged by less pious enterprise.
Gambling dens monopolized much of the city’s commerce. It was a place where the rich came to play, while the Crafters served and picked at the stray pennies.
I had traveled to Morland twice before. Once with my Artisan class, to visit the relics, and once under a different name, when I’d laundered clothes in the basement of a shiny hotel. Even the latter felt like lifetimes ago.
I’d spent the remainder of the night on deck, watching the quiet water and listening to John hum his songs in a state of disconnect. Several times I cried, and he didn’t seem to mind.
“My Patty seems quite taken with you,” he commented near dawn, when I’d finally wrung myself dry.
I swallowed. “Not any longer.” It stung to say it.
John grunted a laugh, shook his head. “You know, he nearly lost his own ma when he was a boy.”
I looked over at him, curiosity finding a way through the anguish.
“Terrible times. I was away on business. Came home to find me sons hoverin’ at my wife’s bedside. Gray fever. Damn near took her, too. Have you yet met my wife?”
I nodded, Tess’s tired face floating to mind.
“She’s a force to be reckoned with,” John said, shaking his head. “Bet she gave you the hard word once she saw those stars in Pat’s eyes.”
“She threatened to shoot me.”
John chuckled. “Don’t mind her. She’s threatened to shoot me more times than I can count. Never does it.”
“She thinks you’re dead,” I told him. It was blunt, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to care. “She was sure of it.”
“Ah, well. Take more than a House of swanks to finish me.”
“I suppose she’ll be relieved to know she was wrong.”
John spat into the canal. “You know, miss. I don’t know that relief is the word for it. She was always unhappy to see me go, but she was just as mad when I came home again. I imagine she’ll slug me on sight.” He smiled fondly. “Deservedly, mind you.”
Whether or not he looked forward to this was unclear. Like Patrick, John was difficult to read, and like Donny, everything was buried in humor.
