But he’d been a boy once. Back before the tunnels. Back before his father had taken him to the police house to watch it burn. Back before John had tugged on his collar and told him that one day, he was going to be the world’s only Alchemist.
Patrick inhaled. “Once we have the translations, we need to go home.”
One of the horses nickered and stomped, and John barked a curse at it. “No can do, son. I ain’t lettin’ those Charmers within a mile of the place again.”
Patrick turned a glare on his father.
“Relax, boy,” John said, lighting another smoke. “Can hardly cut the girl loose, can I? Once we know where the Seam is, we travel without delay. No point returnin’ to Kenton unless we got somethin’ to show for it.”
He spoke of Nina the way he spoke of bad trades, of shady arms dealers, and shipyard thugs. Unsavory folk with whom business must be tendered. Sooner or later, those people ended up injured or dead. He’d seen his father pull a blade enough times when the deals went south. He imagined John now, turning a knife on its edge, its point between a pair of hazel eyes.
“She ain’t yours to cut loose,” Patrick said slowly and very clearly. “She’ll go where she pleases.”
John seemed to expect this. He rolled his eyes to the heavens and scoffed. “You’ve turned soft on me, lad,” he said, with a voice hewn a hundred fathoms below. He turned his eyes to Patrick and looked him over. “You’ve grown a fondness where you shouldn’t have. I warned you and your brothers to keep your eyes and your hands on the work, didn’t I? The women’ll comeand go, but the work ain’t goin’ nowhere. This is the important business, Patty. This is what we’ve been fightin’ for. It ain’t the time to go fallin’ in love.”
Patrick looked away from his father, lest he see the truth. That it was too late. That love had already invaded him, and try as he might, he couldn’t banish it. “She’s on our side, now.”
“She’s a swank, son. You forgot that once, and it’s cost me half the fuckin’ parish.”
Defensiveness punched through, sent Patrick’s blood boiling.
But composed men fared better than the bulls. He closed his eyes and blew smoke up at the moon. “There was a mudslide,” he said. “At the eastern pit. The whole fuckin’ tunnel collapsed.”
John’s face became immediately drawn, feeling, as all miners did, a shiver of terror. “How many dead?” he asked soberly.
Partick flicked ash to the mud. “Four.”
John hesitated, his brow furrowed. “Just four?”
Patrick remembered how he’d crushed his mouth to Nina’s by the shaft, made her promise to come out alive. “Just four.”
John stared, wide-eyed for a moment, calculating.
“Nina stopped it,” Patrick told him. “You should have seen the way the hill fell. Great fuckin’ wall, headed straight for the school. All those kids would’ve been buried, and the street beyond it, too. And she held it all up.” Patrick paused for a moment, remembering the way she’d looked at the bottom of that hill, how impossible the task had been. “Never seen anythin’ so godlike. Then she went into the shaft herself, brought out every man waiting to die in that pit. Nearly killed herself doin’ it, too.” He threw his cigarette to the ground, thinking that Nina hated the smell of it. How it reminded her of Scurry. “You say she cost you half the parish?” Patrick looked his father in the eye, noticed how much older he seemed. “I say if she hadn’t been there, half of it would have gone under.”
John watched him for a long time, his expression never changing. Thatwas the power of John Colson—he was far more perceptive than anyone would believe, all of it hidden beneath a beard and a miner’s grit.
He opened his mouth to speak, but it was cut off by a sudden tremor. The ground shuddered, panicking the horses and rattling the coal bin. Above them, the orange windows of Rickers splintered.
“Fuck,” John swore around his smoke, gripping onto the coach for support. “Earthquake?” he asked above the growing roar.
But Patrick was looking up at those windows, imagining Nina within, picturing a hill sliding toward him. “No,” he said, turning immediately for the street. “Just a girl from Scurry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVENINA
The balcony jolted, and shouts rebounded in my ear.
“Please, don’t kill me,” Polly prayed, her eyes shut tight.
But she had left us all to die, left all of Kenton to burn, hadn’t she? The vendetta rotting out my insides—some of it was saved for her. I understood then, with abrupt clarity, how those soldiers on the battlefield could lift their bayonets again and again without hesitation, adding to an already littered graveyard. An eye for an eye.
I could shoot Polly Prescott right then and add her to the heap. Step over her to the next.
“Nina! Stop!” Theo said, his fingers pressed harshly to the wound on my arm, and the bite of pain sliced through my consciousness, brought a halt to the rush of my mind.
The tremors ceased.
Polly shook like a child. Like a whipped dog.
