Polly shook beside me, her ribs against my forearm. She might have been weeping or exalting.
“Till the light comes, Patty,” I thought I heard John pant out. His face marred in sweat, in mud. He slapped his son on the back twice, the two of them staring at each other, then somehow, laughing. Falling into great, chest-rattling fits.
“Can’t imagine… anything… less funny,” panted Theodore on all fours, trying and failing to stand.
“Try this one then, Teddy,” John said in response. “What d’you call a swank in a hole?”
Theodore frowned.
“A good fuckin’ start.”
Theodore stood, then leaned to touch his fingertips over my knuckles. “Cl—Nina?” he said breathlessly. “Can you stand?”
I blinked grit from my eyes, nodded, then let him pull me up. He did the same for Polly.
“Where are we?” Theo asked now, blinking out into the gray light. The pit exit loomed a short way ahead, the climb abruptly ending with that circle of merciful sun.
“Trent,” Patrick said, his eyes homing in on Theo’s hand, still wrapped around mine. “We’re in Trent.”
When last I’d ventured into Trent, it was bustling with industry, heavy convoys of wagons and steam carts packed with tree logs. The roads in and out of town clogged with farming Crafters, the landscape heavily wooded and dotted with livestock, but peppered by police.
When I pointed this out to Patrick, he said, “Nowhere to go but out.”
We came aboveground in the outskirts to find it unrecognizable. The woods were stripped of foliage and blackened, the trunks crumpled, half their size—some fire Charmer’s doing. Snow piled the forest floor. The cold rushed in from the distant mountains, and without the windbreakers of pine and spruce and birch, it stole my breath. Sheep stood unperturbed, the thick wool of their coats overgrown, but there were no fences to contain them now. No Crafters to herd them.
We journeyed a road into Trent by foot, passing a boundless grave of tree stalks, the necks craning. We never passed a single soul. I reasoned that the weather was too cold, though I suspected something far more horrible.
“Razed to holy hell,” John said unnecessarily, passing a broken wagon, its bed heaped in snow. “When did the army march in?”
“Couldn’t say,” Patrick frowned, concern marring every inch of his face as he took in the surroundings. “Must be recent. I never received word before we left Kenton.”
“Aye. Well, let’s see who’s left.”
The town proper was made of wide lanes, big enough for tree logging carts. The roads were made of tar and stuck underfoot in the summer, easilyploughed in the winter, yet Trent was mired in fresh snow. Not a single set of footprints in sight.
Signs of conflict seemed stark against the white canvas of it. The brick exterior of Trent’s largest timber mill crumbled into the street. A coal bin had overturned and spilled. Most windows had buckled outward from fire.
“You think any made it to the tunnel?” John asked Patrick, kicking over a stray boot, half buried. “Maybe they’re all holed up in the next parish.”
Patrick looked doubtful. “I hope so.”
I shared his doubt. I suspected that beneath all the snow, blood stained the tar.
In the distance, toward the center of the town, a single chimney coughed into the gray sky, the only sign of life.
“There,” I said, pointing to the smoke. “You see it?”
And Patrick let out sigh of relief, nodded. “Let’s go introduce ourselves, shall we?”
“You’ll be doing no such thing,” came a voice from behind us, and I whirled to the sight of Theodore looking stricken, an arm pressed tightly around his throat, his feet slipping from beneath him.
And a woman at his back, the filleting knife in her hand poised near Theo’s ribs, resignation written all over her. “You’ll stay right where you are and go no further.”
There were voids beneath her eyes, a cracked tooth in her mouth. A bruise on her chin had yellowed her brown skin. She couldn’t have been older than thirty, though she spoke with authority. She handled the knife like she knew how to use it.
Patrick raised his hands cautiously, placatingly, but it was John who said, “Afternoon, miss.” His voice was carefully modulated, the way one would coax a spooked horse. “Before you kill us, at least let me introduce—”
“I know who you are,” she said, throat bobbing. “Your face is all over the bulletins. All over the papers. You’re the new Alchemist from Kenton Hill,” she said to Patrick, then her eyes skirted to mine. “And she’s the earth Charmer. You’re said to be workin’ for the House now.”
